i remember reading a Kaplan rep's post on here in the past month or two that they had stopped forcibly trending down their CAT scores.

that should explain your observations.

I would not say Kaplan tests score you lower, but I can definitely say that GMAT prep is better indicator of your score.

Thus if you have two scores one from Kaplan & other from GMAT Prep.
then I'd consider my GMAT prep score instead of adding ~80 points in Kaplan score.

I'm in agreement with aim-wsc here.

That said, I think the Math section on Kaplan Online CATs (not the one on CDs) is actually very trivial. On 3 of those tests I scored 54 once, and 51 twice and all 3 times I was in 99 percentile. Additionally, I completed the math section with time on hand. Compared to Kaplan Math section, real GMAT's math section was definitely one notch higher.

In regards to the Verbal section, Kaplan is slightly difficult than the real GMAT. But I think their questions are not in line with the real GMAT. The CRs specifically seem very vague, and convoluted. GMATPrep's verbal section is a close indicator of the real GMAT's verbal section.

Where can you go to take a GMAT Prep test like the ones you guys are mentioning above vs. the Kaplan Test?

I just took a Kaplan CD-ROM CAT and scored a 470. I need a 600 on the real GMAT but when I was hearing that the CD-ROM tests score 70-100 points lower than an actual GMAT score, I felt pretty good and confident that I scored a 540-570 which is pretty close to 600.

Now that I am reading this thread I am a little discouraged and I would like to take the GMAT prep test to see what that score gives me.

A newbie to GMAT world or this forum should check all resources available at the forums

I'd recommend you (all) reading this article: https://jc-gmat.blocked/2007/01/how ... -gmat.html