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SAT to GMAT?

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SAT to GMAT?

by srfn » Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:34 am
Hi,

So, back in high school, like everyone else, I took an SAT. I got a 1400 out of 1600 with a 750 on the math section and a 650 on the verbal section. At the beginning of this month I decided to see how I would do on the GMAT, thinking that it would be a good idea to keep my options open for B-school one day, and that maybe because I did okay on the SAT I'd have a chance to do well on the GMAT.

I enrolled in the online Knewton course (mainly because of the reviews on this website), which I've been enjoying, and just finished taking my first CAT, on which I scored a disappointing 580 (37V; 34Q). The biggest disappointment, though, was scoring so poorly on the Quant section - what I thought would be my strength having been so good at it at in the past (I think I only missed one or two on the entire SAT). I was decently satisfied with my Verbal score (I think 88th percentile), but again, very disappointed with my Quant score. I've been getting 80%-90% right on pretty much all of the assignments in the Knewton course.

My question to you all is - what am I doing wrong? Is there something that someone could recommend to help with the more difficult Quant questions? I realize this was my first real CAT, but I'm still hoping to be able to get a strong overall score within 3-4 months, and I'm willing to continue working hard to get it. My understanding is that if I keep my verbal within the 80%-90% percentile range, and get my Q up to where I think (hope) I can get it, I should be able to get a 700+.

Thank you,
SRFN
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by [email protected] » Mon Feb 24, 2014 3:20 pm
Hi SRFN,

The GMAT actually has a number of factors in common with the SAT, so with your strong performance on the SAT, it's not surprising that you performed decently on your first practice CAT (most people do NOT score as well as you did on CAT1). That having been said, you clearly know that there are some areas that you need to improve in; you also have to train to handle the rigors of taking a Computer Adaptive Test.

I'd suggest that you review your entire CAT, question by question, making notes about what you got right/wrong and WHY. How often did you just make a silly mistake and how often was the question too hard to understand? Once that's done, you'll be able to focus on the necessary content areas to raise your score. For the Quant section, you'll likely need some additional DS practice, since that's an area that most people are not familiar enough with in the early stages of their studies.

The rest is practice and learning the various ways to tackle each of the major question types. Keep in mind that most Test Takers need 3 months (or more) of consistent study to hit their respective peak scores.

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by srfn » Mon Feb 24, 2014 6:43 pm
Rich,

Thank you for the reply. It's much appreciated! I have indeed been practicing. I'm using the Knewton course, which I've been enjoying, but it just seems like most of the practice questions are on the easier side, and when I took the CAT, they were much more difficult.

What have you heard about the Knewton course? Do you have any experience with it? Can you recommend one study item that I should be supplementing it with?

Anyway, again, I very much appreciate the feedback. I'm going to go back through my CAT results and make sure I understand exactly what happened with each question.

SRFN
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by [email protected] » Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:03 pm
Hi SRFN,

I don't really have any opinion to offer on any other GMAT Course. I will say that it's tough to judge the effectiveness of a product (Course, tutor, book, etc.) until you've completed it (or at least used it for awhile).

How long have you been studying?

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by dabral » Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:29 am
srfn,

Was this a Knewton practice test? It is hard to gauge accurately from non-official GMAT tests because often they don't correlate well with actual GMAT tests. I would recommend taking the GMATPrep Official Practice Test(two free tests), you can download them from here: https://www.mba.com/india/store/store-ca ... tware.aspx

In my experience working with students, it is difficult to do well when you take the adaptive test for the first time. A lot of it has to do with lack of familiarity and dealing with stress. Generally, most students end up scoring 100 points higher than their initial diagnostic test, if they prepare adequately(these are numbers I see). If you got a 580(assuming that is an accurate reflection) and you obtained that after completing the entire course, then the improvement would be less. If this happened in the early stages, then I would not worry too much about that and just focus on getting the fundamentals down, and also getting used to the GMAT style.

But in general SAT and GMAT scores do correlate fairly well and I would expect you to do well on the GMAT quant, provided you refresh all the core concepts and get familiar with the style and presentation of the GMAT.

Cheers,
Dabral
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by srfn » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:04 am
Rich,

I started the course a couple weeks ago. With my tough work schedule it's been hard to find blocks of time to put in, but I've been able to get in at least an hour most days of the week, and a bit longer during the weekends. I don't have a real time table or test date set, so I'm not in a rush and plan on studying for several months.

Dabral,

Yes, this was a Knewton CAT. The 580 I got was after 2-3 weeks of studying, having gone through five or so of the Knewton "chapters," and having completed all of the required homeworks.

Thanks for the info on the free GMAT official practice tests. I will certainly take advantage of them at some point, but I'm wondering whether I should wait a bit longer, until I've gotten through more of the Knewton curriculum.

Again, THANK YOU to both of you, this info is very helpful.

SRFN
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by [email protected] » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:59 pm
Hi SRFN,

It sounds like you've given yourself enough time to properly prepare, which is good. Many Test Takers try to "cram" in too much material in too short a period of time and that process ends up hampering their chances at achieving their score goals. As I mentioned before, you should plan for 3 months of consistent study. You might actually consider scheduling your Official GMAT for a little more than 2 months from now. That deadline will serve as a reminder of your goal (and most people perform better when they're working under a reasonable deadline). In the event that you have to push back your Test Date, then you'll only need to pay the rescheduling fee (currently $50, but you must reschedule at least 7 days before your Test Date).

As far as the practice CATs from mba.com, I'd suggest that you save those for a little later on. Those are the Official practice CATs; since they're populated with Official GMAT questions that once appeared on the actual exam, these CATs are the most realistic ones that you have access to. Once you're comfortable with all the various GMAT concepts, you'll want to see how you perform on those CATs.

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by srfn » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:05 am
So I've been studying a bit, and last night took another Knewton CAT. I got a 690 total, with my verbal going up to 44, which I'm pretty happy about (95%+ percentile, I believe), but my math score was still pretty weak - a 43 (around 55% percentile). This is a bit surprising, as I've usually been very strong at math and less strong on verbal. As I mentioned above, when I took the SAT back in high school, I got a 750 on the math section, only missing, I think, two questions on the whole thing.

I take this as good and bad news - on the one hand, I'm happy with a 690 at this stage in my studying, and knowing that I have the capability to do well on the verbal section means that I know where I need to improve to get my 700+, but on the other hand, my math hasn't much improved over the last month and I'm not sure why.

Does anyone have any recommendations for online programs to help me sort of drill down specifically on difficult math questions so that I can master each topic and get my score up? While I do like the Knewton course and would recommend it, there seems to be a pretty limited amount of difficult math questions, and the video lessons are more geared to very basic concepts which I think I've got a pretty decent grasp of already.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:17 am
srfn wrote: As I mentioned above, when I took the SAT back in high school, I got a 750 on the math section, only missing, I think, two questions on the whole thing.
Since the SAT covers pretty much all of the content (and more) that the GMAT tests, you should be getting a high quant score (assuming you remember the SAT math :-)). HOWEVER, about 40% of the GMAT math questions are Data Sufficiency (DS) questions, which are totally unique to the GMAT. I suspect that you may still have some weaknesses in this area and this is what's causing your lower quant scores. Have you reviewed your practice tests to confirm whether this is the case?

If you're looking for some extra DS resources, we have a free set of videos that cover everything you need to know: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-data-sufficiency

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by [email protected] » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:40 pm
Hi srfn,

I agree with Brent that DS is likely the biggest subject in your "missing points" in the Quant section. You've referred to "math" often in your posts and that might also be part of the problem. The GMAT Quant section isn't really a "math test", so if that's how you're perceiving it, then that might help to explain why your Quant Scaled Score isn't higher. Beyond the extra DS reps, you would also likely benefit from focusing on Quant tactics for a bit.

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by srfn » Wed Apr 16, 2014 7:32 pm
Apologies for the misnomer, and thank you very much to both of you for taking the time to help. It's much appreciated!

I took a look at my results on my latest CAT, and it doesn't appear that my issues lie within the DS category of questions. Going through each question one by one, most of my wrong answers were the result of a "stupid error" rather than not knowing how to approach the problem. So (I'm hoping) I just need to do some additional practice and will be able to get my score up substantially.

That said, I guess I'll continue to focus on my "Quant tactics" for now. Any recommendations as to where I can find difficult Quant questions from prior tests? As I mentioned before, I've sort of exhausted the Quant bank on Knewton. Thanks again!
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Apr 16, 2014 7:40 pm
srfn wrote:Going through each question one by one, most of my wrong answers were the result of a "stupid error" rather than not knowing how to approach the problem.
If silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article for BTG: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/ ... n-the-gmat

srfn wrote: Any recommendations as to where I can find difficult Quant questions from prior tests? As I mentioned before, I've sort of exhausted the Quant bank on Knewton. Thanks again!
I recommend this website - there are thousands of questions here (with expert solutions).

Cheers,
Brent
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by dabral » Fri Apr 18, 2014 6:30 am
First, SAT math/quantitative section is far easier compared to the GMAT, at least in my opinion. This is even more so true at the higher end of the score. The competition on the GMAT quant is far more and this has been evident over the last five years with average GMAT scores creeping. A Q51 is 98% today, it used to be 99%.

For high scorers, one can't really just rely on the Official Guides, those are far too easy. This is not to say they are not important, one does need to have solid familiarity with everything that is in the Official Guides. The questions written by test prep companies are either pretty dilute or are unnecessary convoluted. Your best bet is to stick with real Official GMAT questions. The real source of harder GMAT questions are: GMATPrep Question Pack1, Exam Pack 1, the database of questions in GMATPrep, GMATFocus, etc. This is what will give you a realistic sense of what the real GMAT is. Most test prep companies have a pretty dilute offering and none of them are relevant for high scorers, they are okay for 600 to 650 GMAT scorers.

Also, to score high on the quant, you will need to have absolute fluency with recognizing patterns, manipulating expressions, and all the basic operations. Those need to be in place before one can tackle the harder problems. My recommendation would be to stage your preparation and keep raising the bar of difficulty.

Cheers,
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by AbhiJ » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:25 am
dabral wrote:First, SAT math/quantitative section is far easier compared to the GMAT, at least in my opinion. This is even more so true at the higher end of the score. The competition on the GMAT quant is far more and this has been evident over the last five years with average GMAT scores creeping. A Q51 is 98% today, it used to be 99%.

For high scorers, one can't really just rely on the Official Guides, those are far too easy. This is not to say they are not important, one does need to have solid familiarity with everything that is in the Official Guides. The questions written by test prep companies are either pretty dilute or are unnecessary convoluted. Your best bet is to stick with real Official GMAT questions. The real source of harder GMAT questions are: GMATPrep Question Pack1, Exam Pack 1, the database of questions in GMATPrep, GMATFocus, etc. This is what will give you a realistic sense of what the real GMAT is. Most test prep companies have a pretty dilute offering and none of them are relevant for high scorers, they are okay for 600 to 650 GMAT scorers.

Also, to score high on the quant, you will need to have absolute fluency with recognizing patterns, manipulating expressions, and all the basic operations. Those need to be in place before one can tackle the harder problems. My recommendation would be to stage your preparation and keep raising the bar of difficulty.

Cheers,
Dabral
Actually Q51 is 97%ile.
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by dabral » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:43 am
@AbhiJ

Thanks, yes indeed now it is down to 97%. This just shows how a larger portion of students are doing so well on the GMAT. No wonder the GMAT writers have had to make the questions at the upper level harder.

Cheers,
Dabral
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