GMAT Strategy

Hi guys and gals,

I am only aspiring to beat the GMAT (the date is about a month from today), so technically I shouldn't be posting in this section... but I thought that you lucky ones are the right crowd to ask this question: how predictive (in your experience, AFTER you took the real GMAT) are GMAT Prep test scores of your actual GMAT score?

I took two official GMAT prep tests, and scored 750 on both (took them within a week of each other), Q49,V42 on one attempt, and Q48, V44 on the other attempt. Pretty consistent. I will be happy with a score of around 710 on the real GMAT, and accounting for the nerves/having to write AWAs, I think I can do it. BUT: I am worried--are the questions I got on the prep tests indicative of the level of difficulty of the questions I'll be getting on the real GMAT?

Quant section worries me more than Verbal. It didn't seem overwhelmingly complicated in either GMAT prep test. I didn't get a single probability question, for example. In addition, I tried taking MGMAT yesterday, and the difficulty of quant questions horrified me (they also weren't phrased the way GMAT prep q's are). They all(!) were beyond the most difficult q's I saw in OG12. I still scored 43, but I didn't give it my best (was so surprised by what I'm seeing that just wanted it to be over and done with). Didn't do the verbal section...

Let me know what you think, and how it went in your personal experience. I'm studying mostly with the OG12 and the OG verbal and quant reviews, 2nd edition + the Princeton Review.

Thanks,
K.

I felt the same when i took my first GMAT exam. First of all, before my first attempt, i never knew anything about the GMAT. Until the exam, i never knew how tough the exam would be and thought that the exam difficulty level would be similar to OG's and i was confident enough to crack as i found it easy to solve OG questions (Quants especially). But i got terrified by the difficulty level of quants questions. I never practiced those kinds of questions at all.

I must say that OG quants (even OG 12) is never near to actual GMAT. Nowadays, quants have become really tough. We can practice the OG questions to improve our fundamentals maybe. But DON'T EVER think that you would get the same kind of questions. Practice much harder questions, so that you will get used to it. This is my first lesson for my second attempt!!

Hi,
I'm not an GMAT expert but I feel two tests aren't sufficient and considering that you've approx 1 month to go, give more tests, kaplan maths is good for challenging problems.

Thanks! I will definitely be doing more tests, but I don't get it -- why wouldn't the OG and the GMAT Prep tests give the problems at the difficulty level of the real GMAT??? Sigh. Thanks again! Back to studying...

unikatrin wrote:Thanks! I will definitely be doing more tests, but I don't get it -- why wouldn't the OG and the GMAT Prep tests give the problems at the difficulty level of the real GMAT??? Sigh. Thanks again! Back to studying...

hmmm it has two aspects in my view
1. If GMAT was very easy i.e. if most of questions were based on OG then most of people would have got 700+
2. Irrationaly speaking it's kind of business, so many people take GMAT in my view - no hard feelings GMAC , I dont want to open can of worms

Sure, if the problems were too easy, many people would get 700+. But I'm not asking for easy problems, I'm asking for the OG to give examples of the problems that are at the level of 700+ on the real GMAT. But I agree, it's a can of worms, and there's not much we can do (but study). Good luck.