Is this a Cause for Concern?

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Is this a Cause for Concern?

by Aero20 » Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:18 pm
After studying since about January, I finally took my first practice test. I used the first of the official GMAC GMATPrep practice exams and scored as follows:

710 Overall
42 Q 45 V
22/37 Out of the quantitative questions correct, and had to rush/guess on the last 3
38/41 Out of the verbal questions correct, with about 8 minutes to go. Could have finished even faster, but took my time on the last few
I also did the AWA before on this.

However, about a week later, I took Practice Cat 1 that comes with the Kaplan Premier 2011 CD, and scored as follows

560 Overall
33 Q 35 V
16/37 Quantitative Correct. Had about the same pressure as the GMATPrep
25/41 Verbal correct, had to essentially guess on the last 10 questions
Also, I did not do the AWA before this test.

I know that people typically score lower on the Kaplan exams, and I'm encouraged that the GMATPrep is supposedly closest to what you'll actually get on test day, but the difference is so drastic, that I'm a little caught of guard. Particularly in regards to Critical Reasoning, where I didn't miss any on the GMATPlus, and only got 40% right on the Kaplan, as well as Critical Reading, where I only missed 1 on the GMATPlus and misssed a lot on the Kaplan (Kaplan passages were much longer and more complex!). Also since I didn't do the AWA on Kaplan and took it after a week more of studying.


Does this sound normal to you guys, or might I have a problem here?


P.S.: Going through the answers, some of the Kaplan explanations, especially for Critical Reasoning, seem fishy.

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by jaymw » Tue Apr 26, 2011 8:13 pm
Hi Aero 20,

it's definitely not normal to have scores 150 points apart in any 2 CATs with essentially no difference in prep work.

Did anything unusual happen while or shortly before you took the second CAT? Stress, sleep deprivation, etc.?

Your verbal score from GMAT Prep CAT and the fact that you had lots of time to spare at the end of it indicate that you are almost "crazy good" at this part of the test. You just don't get V45 due to luck. Period.

So it's hard to explain this world of difference between the two verbal scores. Kaplan's questions are not poorly written, so I would rule that out as a cause. Also, Kaplan's algorithm usually understates your scaled scores, but that wouldn't account for the difference in wrong and right answers.

Apart from that, Quant seems to be your much weaker area in both of the CATs, so make sure you focus primarily on that section. It helps to keep error logs to discover where your weaknesses are.

I suggest that you take a CAT from a DIFFERENT source soon to see where you stand (Knewton, MGMAT, Veritas, Grockit,... I believe they all have 1 free CAT you can do).

Hope that my advice will help.

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by Aero20 » Tue Apr 26, 2011 8:46 pm
jaymw wrote:Hi Aero 20,

it's definitely not normal to have scores 150 points apart in any 2 CATs with essentially no difference in prep work.

Did anything unusual happen while or shortly before you took the second CAT? Stress, sleep deprivation, etc.?

Your verbal score from GMAT Prep CAT and the fact that you had lots of time to spare at the end of it indicate that you are almost "crazy good" at this part of the test. You just don't get V45 due to luck. Period.

So it's hard to explain this world of difference between the two verbal scores. Kaplan's questions are not poorly written, so I would rule that out as a cause. Also, Kaplan's algorithm usually understates your scaled scores, but that wouldn't account for the difference in wrong and right answers.

Apart from that, Quant seems to be your much weaker area in both of the CATs, so make sure you focus primarily on that section. It helps to keep error logs to discover where your weaknesses are.

I suggest that you take a CAT from a DIFFERENT source soon to see where you stand (Knewton, MGMAT, Veritas, Grockit,... I believe they all have 1 free CAT you can do).

Hope that my advice will help.
Thanks for the insight. I don't think anything different happened before or during the test the second time. I did take the GMATPrep at 3:00 pm and the Kaplan at like 6pm though. If anything, I felt more stressed for the GMATPrep because it was my first practice test. And, like I said, I did do the AWA for GMAT Prep but did not for Kaplan. I guess one thing is that I had already done some practice earlier in the day when I did the GMATPrep, whereas when I did Kaplan, it was the first GMAT thing I did that day.

I aced the sentence correction on both exams, but I felt like the Reading passages I got on the Kaplan were not only about 3X longer but also like 5X in difficulty than the GMAT Prep. Maybe this was one of the reasons why I finished with 7+ minutes to go on GMATPrep Verbal but had about 10 questions with just a few minutes to go on Kaplan Verbal?

For the Critical Reasoning, I didn't miss any on the GMATPrep, but missed around 60% on the Kaplan. I didn't feel like the questions were necessarily harder, but after reading Kaplan's explanations for the ones I missed, I still often wasn't able to figure out where I went wrong. On like 3 of them, I actually disagree with claims they make about the (apparently wrong) answer I chose. This has never happened to me with any other prep material.

I do know that Quant is my weak point and will have to keep working at it. Based on my GMATPrep result, I was hoping that I could tone down verbal prep and focus almost entirely on Quant until my test date in May, but the Kaplan result kind of has me worried.

Probably going to try a Manhattan GMAT CAT and see how that stack ups.

So far in my prep, I've mostly been trying to nail down concepts (going through Manhattan Books, etc) and haven't nailed out OG practice problems. Now I'm going to do practice problems exclusively and make sure to keep an error log. Thanks for the advice. I know it's hard to tell, but do you think I can make a significant improvememtn in my quant by mid-May?

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by Aero20 » Thu May 12, 2011 4:06 pm
I just took the second of the official GMATPrep CATS, and this time I got a 710 again, but my split was 46 quant and 42 verbal. I missed 2 less quant questions but 4 more verbal questions.


So weird how I can go from having quant be my weakness (which is the case for every standardized test I've ever taken) to having verbal be the weakness.

However, I have been studying quant exclusively for the past 2 weeks, so perhaps that is why. Still finished verbal with 8 minutes to go though, so not like I was struggling.

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by David@VeritasPrep » Thu May 12, 2011 6:07 pm
If you took the official test tomorrow I bet you would score between 700 and 730. I took the GMAT the first time after taking the two GMATPrep practice tests and my two GMATPrep scores were 760 and 760 and my score on test day was 760. Now, of course things can happen, but my bet is that you would score very close to those two 710 scores.

Why do you say Verbal is your weakness? A 42 on the Verbal is around the 95th percentile and a 46 on the Quant is around the 75 percentile. Don't let the scaled scores confuse you. You have done much better on the verbal than Quant. And just as an aside, 8 minutes left on the verbal for the GMATPrep test is just about perfect. The Actual GMAT has a little bit more time pressure on the verbal so it may take you five minutes longer than your practice test did - so you should still finish comfortable with a few minutes to spare.

If you are looking for a around a 700 on the GMAT then I say you should schedule your exam. Some people study for too long before taking the exam. If you have to have a 750 you might not be quite ready but otherwise go for it!
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by Aero20 » Thu May 12, 2011 9:35 pm
Taking it next Tuesday.

Now just deciding how much to study Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Not gonna study at all Monday.



If I could get the Verbal of my GMATPrep1 and Quant of my GMATPrep2, I think I'd be very happy :)