Beat The GMAT

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:16 pm Post subject:

The scoring algorithm is extremely complicated - it's very tough to explain in just a few sentences. It's primarily based on the difficulty levels of the questions you answered correctly and incorrectly and the order in which you did so. Most people get around 50-60% of the questions right, regardless of scoring level, but everyone has different questions (at different difficulty levels) because the test is adapting to the scoring level you demonstrate as you answer questions.

Our test has a standard deviation of 50 points (compared to a standard deviation of about 30 points on the official test). So it is pretty good, but not as good as the real thing. GMATPrep is the closest test to the real thing and, as such, is the best indicator of your current scoring level.

The free test is built on the same scoring algorithm as the 6 CATs available for sale but does not use the same database of questions. (So the 6 CATs for sale use entirely different questions than the free tes.)

This is the busiest season for study right now, and the week-ends are the most likely times that students will take practice tests. If too many people at once all try to access whatever server is closest to you, that can cause some lag / slowness. Or, if you are very far physically from the server that is closest to you, that can also cause some lag / slowness. (The first explanation is most likely, this time of year.) If possible, you could try taking future tests on weekdays or at times that aren't "peak times" for practice tests.

I'm not quite sure how you can print the answer explanations - I've never tried to do that. I know my students have, though. I'll ask our IT department and get back to you.

visa1416 · Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 9:31 pm Post subject:

Appreciate your prompt and comprehensive reply.Many thanks.

Is the difficulty level of free CAT questions comparable to that of the questions on 6 CATs?

I still need to purchase the CATs online. I'll try taking a test on one of the weekdays as suggested by you.

I'll appreciate your feedback on printing of answer explanations.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject:

Turns out there's not an easy way to print the answer explanations at once - basically, that's a mechanism to make it not so easy for someone to copy our stuff and just start distributing it around electronically. You can go through manually, though, and print any individual answer explanation that you want to print. If it's longer than the window and you're using some method that will show only what it actually sees on the screen, I suppose you could copy and paste to a word file to print.

The difficulty of the free CAT questions is comparable to the big pool, yes, BUT there aren't as many questions in the free CAT pool. So if you are scoring either very high or very low in a section, then you may see a broader range of difficulty levels of the questions you're offered than you would see on a regular test (eg, if you're scoring very high in quant, you may have some questions that are easier simply because you're using up a lot of the high level questions in certain content categories).

3gmater · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 11:51 am Post subject:

How are Vertias tests and Catprep.com tests?

I have exhausted MGMAT, Kaplan and Princeton (not to forget the mba.com tests)....during my previous attempts.

I am planning to buy 3 catprep.com tests, but I was wondering if someone could enlighten me about the quality of these tests....before I spend my time (and money) on these tests.

Thx!

-3G

visa1416 · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:24 am Post subject:

Hello Stacey,
Many thanks for answering all my questions.I did get some easy questions as per your explanation.I purchased MGMAT test set(6 online CATs) last week.

Hello 3gmater,
I saw few comments on veritas tests in this post.do a quick "search" to find them.

visa1416 · Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 1:26 am Post subject:

Hello Stacey,

I scored 520 on one of the MGMAT cats last week.When i analysed the test , i came to know that i had lost lot of points due to silly mistakes and poor time management. I need to improve my verbal score by about 20 scaled points and my quant score by 10 scaled points. I will be taking one more test on saturday 11th oct and hopefuly i should score around 600 on it.

Iam aiming at more than 700 on the actual GMAT.I have scheduled my gmat on 23rd october.From your experience, Do you think I will be able to achieve it.I can devote 3 hours aday on working days and 6 hours aday on weekends.

I have realised that key to improving the score is thorough analysis of each and every problem from the previous exams as well as OG problems.I will be doing so.I havent finished doing the OG problems as yet.

Do you think i might need to reschedule the exam (I will then have to take a date in late december)? Will i have to give an explanation for rescheduling my exam in the application? how do adcoms view it?

guvernment · Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:45 am Post subject:

@visa1416 , no u wont have to give any explanation to adcoms for extending the date ..

Stacey ,my Gmat is scheduled on 22 oct .. i am getting a score of 600-630 on Mgmat's .. need to improve on Verbal part by almost 8-10 points .. doing fine in quant .. there's no weakness in a particular section sometimes doing badly on cr's sometimes rc's .. cant figure out how to get a consistent score

my target score in 670+ .. is that achievable now with few days left ?

thnx..

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:56 am Post subject:

Hi, guys

1) No one will know if you reschedule your exam; the only thing the schools will see is if you show up to take an exam but either don't finish it or cancel it at the end (then they'll see that you showed up but cancelled the score).

2) It will be extremely challenging to go from 520 to 700 in a few weeks. That typically takes several months (and even then there are no guarantees - it's hard to get a 700 no matter where you're starting). Anyone in this situation should most likely reschedule the test.

3) It may be possible to go from 630 to 670 in a few weeks. Remember that all of these tests have standard deviations. The SD on our test is about 50 points and the SD on the official test is about 30 points, so it's fairly wide (most people are surprised by how large the SD is - people tend to think that if it's scored in 10-point increments, then it's actually accurate to within 10 points). At this point, you should assume you'll go for it, but take a last practice test about a week before and make your decision then. (If you cancel at least a week in advance, you get to apply most of the money to your next test date.)

4) In order to improve, it's very important to understand your weaknesses. guvernment, you said that you're struggling to figure out where you're doing badly. Look at the difficulty levels of the questions you're talking about - maybe the issue is just that you're struggling with the harder questions. Alternatively, maybe there are certain sub-types of questions that are giving you trouble so, when you get more of those, you do worse on CR or RC as a whole. Eg, maybe you're struggling with draw a conclusion or explain a situation. Or maybe you're struggling with specific detail questions on science passages. Or whatever. Dig in a little deeper and see if you can find any patterns there.

Also check out your timing and performance as you progress through the test. Are you using a little too much time in the earlier part and then having to pick up speed in the later part? And is that hurting your performance during the second half or the last third of the questions? In that case, if you happen to get more CRs there, you'd think you're doing worse on CR, but it's really just because you're pressed for time and possibly anxious because you know you're pressed for time. That will hurt your performance. Or it could be a stamina thing - you may be running out of energy towards the end of the section - that would again show up as inconsistent "weaknesses" across different question types.

5) visa, yes, analyzing the problems and your thought process is key to improvement. Look around the forums here for discussions about how to analyze various types of problems on the test.

kunsjoi · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:30 am Post subject:

My first full GMAT test was the Kaplan Diagnostic that I gave around a month and a half ago when I was just about to begin my GMAT preparations. At that point I scored 550 on the test. Quite contrary to what I had expected I did well on Verbal(I had never done any critical reasoning or sentence correction before that). Anyways right away I decided to take a GMATPrep test and I scored 580 on it. I had read online that GmatPrep is somewhat easy and so I was expecting more than 600 or somesuch. Anyways I had just begun my preparations so I was not that worried.

About 3 weeks later after doing a lot of math mostly I decided to take Gmat Prep again and this time around I scored 650 on it. I scored well in Quant but my verbal was not good at all. A day later I took a paper based official test and scored 680, again doing well on quant and not verbal.

Then just last week after reviewing some verbal material and doing few practice questions off OG I decided to take the 1st Kaplan CAT out of the 5 I bought online. I did the test and I was dejected to see only 580 as my score. I scored poorly on both Quant and verbal (Q:40, V: 27). I had 12 silly mistakes in Quant and these were like proper silly mistakes (like forgot to convert mintues to hours at the end, or found x but had to find y). In Verbal I just was going through motions because I could not concentrate at all. Anyways after a thorough review of my answers I decided to take Kaplan CAT 2. The toughness level was pretty similar. But this time around I scored 700 on the test. (Q:54, V: 30). The 3 questions that were wrong on the quant section were all silly mistakes again (conversion mistakes mostly, not sure why I'm unable to get rid of those mistakes.). Verbal was again the same going through motions and just clicking through.

Anyways going forward I'm going to give the rest of the Kaplan CATs. I have also bought the MGMAT CATs and lets see how I do on those. And during the last week I will give the GmatPrep test 2 and PowerPrep tests.

sxdas

Can someone please tell me what is the range of difference in scores one can expect between the MGMAT tests and the real test? Rolling Eyes

Test day is getting closer and I'm still fluctuating between 590 and 640 (That's about 50-ish points from wht I need).

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:49 am Post subject:

Our standard deviation is about 50 points. The SD on the official test is about 30 points.

sxdas · Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:02 am Post subject:

praneeth · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:48 am Post subject:

Accuracy of the algorithm for scoring aside, which tests provide the best practice (besides GMATPREP)?

You could have a completely different test and still get to a low SD to actual score by tweaking the scoring algorithm, I feel.

emsjj · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 4:06 am Post subject:

In the last few days, I did MGMAT, Kaplan and GMATPrep exams (1 of each). My scores were 640, 630 and 700, respectively.

-Kaplan RC passages seemed harder (or at least longer) than others.

-MGMAT seemed to give a high number of difficult questions (as someone already stated). I was surprised to get 640 with getting quite a number of questions wrong.

-GMATPrep math questions seemed harder those of the other two.

Overall, MGMAT provided the best analysis and user experience.

I was aiming for 550 and my exam is in 8 days.

nikvana · Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:59 pm Post subject:

i got a 730 on gmatscore.com 12 days before my test. Is it representative of the actual score?

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