GMAT Strategy

chipjet wrote:So, I'm looking for comments I guess. I took my first MGMAT prep test today and scored an extremely frustrating 630 (M-36 (wtf?), V - 40).

Seriously, I felt like the math section was ridiculous. I was taking forever just to read and understand some of the questions. I ended having to completely guess on the last 7 questions!

On other practice tests, I've generally been able to finish with about 1 or 2 minutes to spare!

For reference, my other recent practice tests have been:
PR#3: 700 (M - 44, V - 43)
PR#4: 740 (M - 50, V - 43)
GMAT Prep #1: 700 (M - 47, V - 40)

Has anybody else experienced similar results?? I am genuinely concerned about that differential in my math results. I know that the MGMAT tests generally skew harder for the quant, but has anybody else suffered such a dramatic drop?

hi -

you are correct that some of our math problems, especially the more difficult ones, tend to feature long problem statements and/or unusually long algebraic solutions.

a large part of what you're seeing, though, is a direct result of the lack of EXPERIMENTAL QUESTIONS on our tests. in other words, when you take one of our tests, ALL 37 problems on the quant section are presented in an adaptive manner. unlike the authentic gmat, then, our tests won't occasionally break the monotony with easier experimental questions - if you're doing well, you'll get difficult problem after difficult problem. (we have experimental questions in the works, but for now the tests are 100% adaptive.)

in any case, a nice side effect of taking tests featuring longer problems is the extra incentive to practice good time management.

regardless of these sorts of differences, though, we have found (with a very large sample size) that our practice tests are nicely predictive of the result of the official test. so, even if you spot discrepancies in certain areas (such as problem length), you can still rest assured that the test's result will be meaningful.