Are PowerPrep tests close to the real deal?

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I know its not the latest (GMATPrep is) but since I have it lying around, I took one of the tests offered by PowerPrep.

I had a raw score of 36/37 in Quant and 35/41 in Verbal. The scaled were Q:50 and V:42. Overall 760. This score is definitely inflated because there were at least 4-5 questions in each section that I had come across before.

I am aiming for 7xx score like many of us here, however, since I did not do the AWA and I recognized a few questions on both sections that I had done before, my real score is probably 40-60 points higher on this test.

Do you have to get every single question right to get that elusive 51 in Q? Also, shouldn't 35/41 in Verbal scaled to more than 42? Stacey, Amy, Bueller, anybody???
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givemeanid wrote:I know its not the latest (GMATPrep is) but since I have it lying around, I took one of the tests offered by PowerPrep.

I had a raw score of 36/37 in Quant and 35/41 in Verbal. The scaled were Q:50 and V:42. Overall 760. This score is definitely inflated because there were at least 4-5 questions in each section that I had come across before.

I am aiming for 7xx score like many of us here, however, since I did not do the AWA and I recognized a few questions on both sections that I had done before, my real score is probably 40-60 points higher on this test.

Do you have to get every single question right to get that elusive 51 in Q? Also, shouldn't 35/41 in Verbal scaled to more than 42? Stacey, Amy, Bueller, anybody???
PowerPrep is still a very good indicator of your actual GMAT performance, since it is the predecessor of GMATPrep. There will be some overlap however between PowerPrep and GMATPrep, as you had indicated...

I'm not as familiar with the GMAT scoring algorithm myself, but I think that you don't have to get every question right to get a 51. With regard to your question about Verbal, I'm not quite sure what you're asking...
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:44 pm
PowerPrep's algorithm is not as close to the actual test as GMATPrep's algorithm. It's still generally a decent indicator, but it does not use the official test algorithm (as GMATPrep does). You can see that in the numbers you have - nobody gets 36 out of 37 right in quant on the official test, even if they get a perfect score.

The test does not depend upon percentage correct so much as on the difficulty level of the questions you're answering. Expect to get lots of questions wrong no matter how well you score.

42 verbal scaled score is 96th percentile - the math and verbal scaled scores don't use the same scale (though they do use the same range of numbers). For example, a math 42 is only the 67th percentile.
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by givemeanid » Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:22 am
Thanks Eric and Stacey.

I was also thinking along similar lines but wanted to get expert opinion.

Thanks again guys.
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