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Manhattan GMAT CAT's - some questions

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Manhattan GMAT CAT's - some questions

by momentary_lapse » Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:35 am
To Stacy and the other resident experts as well as anyone who has given the MGMAT CAT's:

I have done the following tests and here are the scores:

1) GMAT PRep test 1 - 690 - this was without any prep
2) GMAT Prep test 2 - 660 - after one month of prep :( - was totally demoralised
3) GMAT Prep test 1 - 720 - after another week of focussing on SC
4) GMAT Prep test 2 - 730 - another week later
5) Manhattan GMAT test 1 - 750 - 2 weeks later after doing more of quant, verbal

Now I am a bit confused.. Are the manhattan GMAT scores inflated? I saw another post where Stacy mentioned that they may be but not as much as 50 points. Is there some accurate indication.

I also found that the best level of questions were those of OG11 diagnostic test. They seemed to be the most indicative of the standard of the GMAT Prep.

Is there any way I can get more of the GMAT Prep tests. Just two tests dont seem to be enough and the second time I took them, I noticed about 3-4 questions common in both quant and verbal.

I would like to bump my score up further by practicing but I fell Im not getting an accurate indication of my score.

Please help

Thanks
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by Stacey Koprince » Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:40 pm
Hi, GMATPrep is the best, but unfortunately there are only two.

The official test has a standard deviation of about 30 points, which means that anytime you take the official test, you can expect your score to be 30 points below to 30 points above your score. (So if you score a 650, your expected range is 620 to 680.) It's a pretty wide deviation, when you think about it - it would be nice to have "exact" scores but even the official test doesn't give you that, and any practice tests are by definition going to be of lower accuracy - that is, the "range" will be wider.

Our standard deviation (for our tests) is in the 50s, so if we took that same 650 from above, on our test, you'd expect to get 600 to 700. So ours is close but not as good as the real thing. GMAC has not said what the standard deviation of the GMATPrep tests is, but it is, at best, 30 (and probably a little worse).

I remember answering someone else's post a while ago and that person had a swing of like 120 or something, which is much more than the norm - more than 2 standard deviations.

Anyway, so based on your last few tests (ours and GMATPrep) you look like you're consistently in the 700 range. (Which is nice :))
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by momentary_lapse » Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:46 pm
Yes. It does seem like I would be within the 700 range.

But somehow I dont feel confident and so I am delaying scheduling the test till I feel confident enough.

For ex: when I looked at the results of my Manhattan GMAT test, in both Quant and Verbal I got almost 30% of the answers incorrect. On the GMAT prep, i got 12 wrong in quant and 8 wrong in verbal and still managed scores of 720,730 etc.

In verbal, I can narrow it down to 2 choices very quickly and then get stuck for some time. In quant sometimes it seems like the solution is right there but Im not able to complete in time.

In quant esp.. i found in all my tests that I had about 10-12 questions left for the last 10 minutes and I randomly guessed 4-5 of those getting maybe 1 correct on average.. I just read the question and made a guess in 30 seconds.

So what would be a good time to actually schedule the test? Would it be when I feel confident that I can get a 700 consistently (since thats my target) or would it be when I feel that out of 37 quant I can get 30-35 right each time and between 5-10 wrong in verbal consistently.

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by Stacey Koprince » Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:05 pm
If you were to get only 5-10 wrong in each section, you would score an 800 (which would be great! but I don't think you want to wait that long...). Do NOT base it on the percentage right. The score is based much more on the difficulty level of the questions that you answer, NOT the percentage correct.

Of course, you want to feel confident before you get in there, but I wouldn't wait too long, because it's difficult to maintain your performance over a long period of time. Think of an athlete who peaks for a big event - s/he can't just stay at the peak indefinitely.

It does sound like you need to work more on your pacing. Know before you go in that you will need to guess on at least 5 questions in your weaker section (and possibly up to 10 or so) and at least 3 questions (and possibly up to 10 or so) on your stronger section.

The key is to choose the hardest ones throughout the test and guess on those (and make them educated guesses rather than random guesses), rather than being forced to make random guesses on questions at the end just because they appear at the end. The problem is, you could actually do some of those, if you could just get to them. And if you are running into this problem, it means that you are spending too much time earlier in the test on questions that you are probably not going to get right anyway. No matter how good you are, they can throw something at you that you cannot get right in the available time. So don't fall into the trap and have it hurt you at the end of the test.
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by momentary_lapse » Tue Apr 03, 2007 12:15 am
Thanks Stacey.. This helps a lot. I noticed that in the Manhattan GMAT.. I got most questions in quant from the 700-800 range .. even at the end when i guessed about 8-10 questions.. i used to get 5 wrong in a row and then the question level would go down to 600-700. then when i got that correct it would jump back to 700-800 and stay there even if i got the next 3-4 wrong. guess i must be doing good there..

in verbal i finshed with 5 minutes to spare and still did worse.. but i guess my verbal is not as good..

thanks a lot for your tips.. will work on these things.. since i am doing a full time job where i need to work about 10 - 12 hours a day.. i get in about 4 hours of study (1 hour for 4 days) during weekdays and about 2 hours each on the weekends. when i take a test on a weekend.i spend about 4 hours.. 2.5 for the test and another 1.5 analyzing and working out the probs i missed.. in that case i dont study the rest of the weekend.. im targetting may 15th as the day i take the test... i will be on vacation for one week between 20th april and 28th april and will not be able to study more than about 6-7 hours that week..

just hope this is enough :)
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Apr 03, 2007 11:43 am
Do the essays when you take a practice test. They take energy and you will be partially drained before you get to the multiple choice - and even more so on the real thing if you haven't been practicing this way.
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