Kaplan 2010 CATs

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rp327: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2010 12:10 pm; Thanked: 1 times

by rp327 » Wed Jun 09, 2010 12:15 pm

I am in the last three weeks of GMAT studying. I have taken 4 Kaplan CATs and received the following scores: 670;640;750;660, in that order. I have not yet taken the GMATPrep CATs. but plan to do so. I may also take a Princeton Review CAT. I am consistently getting 99 percentile in the verbal section, so all of my variability in these scores is coming from the math section.

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience taking the CATs from the 2010 edition of Kaplan's GMAT Premier. How did your scores compare to other practice CATs or to the real test? I know that many people have traditionally scored lower on the Kaplan CATs, but I have also heard something about Kaplan tweaking the algorithm on their more recent CATs. In essence, I want to see if the conventional wisdom about Kaplan CATs being harder still holds true.

Thanks.

Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Wed Jun 09, 2010 12:15 pm

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Dan@VinciaPrep: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 384; Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:54 amFollowed by: 13 members; Location: Paris; Thanked: 92 times

by Dan@VinciaPrep » Thu Jun 10, 2010 12:09 am

rp327 wrote:I am in the last three weeks of GMAT studying. I have taken 4 Kaplan CATs and received the following scores: 670;640;750;660, in that order. I have not yet taken the GMATPrep CATs. but plan to do so. I may also take a Princeton Review CAT. I am consistently getting 99 percentile in the verbal section, so all of my variability in these scores is coming from the math section.

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience taking the CATs from the 2010 edition of Kaplan's GMAT Premier. How did your scores compare to other practice CATs or to the real test? I know that many people have traditionally scored lower on the Kaplan CATs, but I have also heard something about Kaplan tweaking the algorithm on their more recent CATs. In essence, I want to see if the conventional wisdom about Kaplan CATs being harder still holds true.

Thanks.

I took two of their tests form the 2010 premier edition and thought the scores were a bit low (20-30 points). I think you'll see for yourself once you take the GMATPrep tests since they tend to be pretty good predictors of how you're going to do (as long as you take them under real test circumstances). I've got a question for you now though- I can't seem to remember if the questions were really adaptive or not, and I think they might not have been mixed up. That is, I think I had all SC, the CR, the RC, but I'm not sure. Could you remind me what the test format was like?

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rp327: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2010 12:10 pm; Thanked: 1 times

by rp327 » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:37 am

In the Kaplan premier suite, there is one test that is not adaptive. It has one set of questions right after the other - it's essentially a paper test, but only online. However, the other four or five Kaplan tests are adaptive; the questions are intermingled, and I can tell you from experience that they definitely get harder depending on how you answer them. On my 750, the questions were really hard at the end - I thought I was doing poorly. In contrast, when I got the 660, the questions were noticeably easier at the end.

bynddrvn: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 33; Joined: Thu Apr 16, 2009 6:58 am; Location: Boston; Thanked: 2 times

by bynddrvn » Fri Jun 11, 2010 6:21 am

I would STRONGLY suggest you go over some of the math problems from the Official GMAT Guide and use the official software.

From reading over the posts of people who did really well on the GMAT exam, I noticed almost all used the OG and the official software.

rp327: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 9; Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2010 12:10 pm; Thanked: 1 times

by rp327 » Fri Jun 11, 2010 6:34 am

Thanks for the tip - I have done all of the problems in the OG Guide and in the OG Quant Guide, as well as time practice sets with old GMAT paper tests, pre-CAT. I am going to take one of the official GMATPrep CATs this weekend, and maybe a Princeton Review test too. I make a post reporting how I do, as this may be useful to other people preparing for the GMAT.

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