wow....how disheartening!

allenkt · Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:26 pm Post subject: wow....how disheartening!

Due to various life/family/work circumstances I have just under a month until I have to take the GMAT. I had the 2006 Kaplan book and got through most of that in about a week. But then after reading the recommendations on this forum I picked up the OG, 11th edition and the OG math review (they didn't have the verbal review so I'll pick that up later this week).

So I sat down this morning to take the diagnostic test and was quickly floored at how different it was from Kaplan. On the various math sections in Kaplan I had been scoring around 80%, which I felt was decent since I haven't reviewed math other than what was in that study guide. But here I am 12 questions into the diagnostic in the OG and I have already had to flat-out guess on five of the questions because I was clueless. And I'm not exactly a math dummy either. During my undergrad work (I graduated six years ago), I got A's in college Algebra, Trig and Calc I so I figured this wouldn't be terribly difficult. Boy was I wrong.

So now it's back to review mode and trying to quickly relearn this stuff. Sorry for the rant, but thanks for this forum. I only found it yesterday and it's already been the most helpful resource I've come across.

Karl

beatthegmat · Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:45 am Post subject: Re: wow....how disheartening!

Stacey Koprince · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:03 am Post subject:

Make sure you learn how the test works, too. This test is NOT scored the way school tests were - where you worried about the percentage of questions you got right.

You should expect to get about half of the questions wrong (unless you score a 720+) and you should expect to have to guess on multiple questions in each section. The test is designed such that, no matter how good you are, it can throw something at you that you can't do in the time allocated (about 2 minutes per question, on average).

The difficulty level of the questions that you get (right and wrong!) is the big determinant of your score - don't make the mistake of thinking it is scored as tests in school were.