Is there any diagnostic exam that shows problem areas!

romanmar · Guest

My biggest problem with GMAT, is I don't have enough time to finish the exam.
I'de like to take a diagnostic gmat exam, which would tell me, what questions took me a long time to solve, so I could look for a strategy to arrive at answer faster, and what areas I need to concentrate in which I get the answers wrong.

Thanks in advance for help!

Guest · Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:05 pm Post subject:

The PR and Kaplan tests give you a little bit of the breakdown you're looking for--but you'll likely need to use your own error logs to thoroughly understand where you are weak.

mayonnai5e · Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:44 am Post subject:

MGMAT CATs provide an extremely thorough diagnostic on each individual CAT as well as overall statistics. The information is excellent and well organized. You can access the CATs if you buy one of their guides or you can buy access directly from their website (it's a much better value to buy a guide and get free access to the CATs). If you decide to buy a guide, the SC guide would probably be the best choice.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:10 am Post subject:

Yep, our tests record how long you spend on every question and give you that data, as well as reports showing how long you spend on average for different question types and content areas (and the reports will even tell you whether you spent more or less time on questions you got right vs. wrong). Lots of data to work with!

And I'm glad to see you're thinking about timing - a lot of people just focus on accuracy and don't give much thought to timing.

Also, as mayonnai5e said, it's cheaper to buy one strategy guide (which gives you access to the tests) rather than buy direct access to the tests. Wink

Tenore · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:58 am Post subject:

As said above, the MGMAT tests give you an excellent post-test breakdown with as much info as you would hope for.

One point I’d like to make is that you will never have as much time as you want an an adaptive test like the GMAT. This is because when you get a question right, you'll get a harder question next. Eventually, if you are doing well, you will get questions that are past the difficulty that you can comfortably handle in 2 – 3 minutes. If you try to do many of these, you’re going to run out of time in the end.

When I get any question that looks like it’s beyond my ability to do in 2 – 3 minutes, I resort to effective guessing. If you can eliminate 2 or 3 of the possible answers and then make an educated guess, you have a fair shot at getting it correct. More importantly, if you can do this in under a minute, then you’ll have more time to devote to the problems you really know.

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:10 am Post subject:

Excellent point, Tenore - everybody, at some point, will have to "pull the plug" on questions, make an educated guess, and move on.

I also wanted to add that GMAC is coming out with a new diagnostic test in January (at least, that's the ETA). They'll have a quant diagnostic first, which will tell you the areas in which you are weak and what to study from OG11 as a result. The verbal version of the diagnostic won't be out until sometime later next year (after the January release of the quant diagnostic).

When I last spoke with someone over there, they hadn't finalized the pricing yet, but they're thinking of charging about $30 (and I believe you will be able to keep taking it - it won't be just one test for $30).