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GMATPrep - please advise

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GMATPrep - please advise

by mriiidula » Sun Jun 05, 2011 9:03 am
A lot of people on this forum are suggesting taking one of the tests from GMATPrep at the beginning, and to use that to prepare a study plan. I already know that I'm going to have to focus a lot more on verbal (75-25 at least), especially reading comprehension, where my mind always tends to wander.

Isn't taking one full test a bit of a waste, especially considering that GMATPrep is most like the real GMAT? What about the diagnostic test available in the OG? Somehow I'm getting the feeling that since I haven't done any preparation, I would do horribly in the test, and hence it seems wasteful..

Also, is it advisable to take full length practice tests every week? I will be starting my preparation at the end of this month and will only be taking the test in October, so that's around 13-14 tests I'll need..
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by cans » Sun Jun 05, 2011 9:08 am
Hi mriidulla,
GMAT Prep exam defines a baseline.
Also there are around 5000 questions in GMAT Prep,and so you can take a test many times (instead of just taking it once)
It might have some repeated questions but most of the questions will be different.
Diagnostic test in OG12 is also good but it is not adaptive.
And OG12 people recommend to take diagnostic test without any time limit and thus you can evaluate which areas you need to work on.
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by mriiidula » Sun Jun 05, 2011 9:11 am
cans wrote: And OG12 people recommend to take diagnostic test without any time limit and thus you can evaluate which areas you need to work on.
Thanks for your reply.

Therefore isn't it better to start with the diagnostic test, which tells you your main areas of weakness? Or is it better to take it untimed and just use as practice?
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by arun@crackverbal » Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:51 am
At the outset, it is a BAD strategy to save the GMATPrep questions for the end. Way too many students make this mistake. Do not wait to take the GMATPrep tests! Sorry if I am scaring you - that is however my intention here :)

Here are 3 solid reasons why you should take the GMATPrep tests earlier than later in your prep.

#1 The fact that you would be taking it in the comfort of your house + not be as stressed would automatically induce some spike in the scores. Additonally, no matter how hard you avoid you will still see a few questions from OG, and a few others you would have seen on forums. Even 4-5 questions can improve your scores by 50 points or so.

#2 If you take a GMATPrep at the start of your prep then the sequence of questions you will see will be different when you take the test at the end of your prep (assuming you show improvement :D). So apart from say 1-2 questions in the beginning you should see a different set. Even that problem can be overcome by taking an older GMATPrep version of the software (easily available on the internet).

#3 GMATPrep are the second most valuable resource for actual GMAT questions (after the OG). It would be a pity if you did not solve the GMATPrep questions (available in document form on this forum). Keep atleast the last 2 weeks to beat the GMATPrep questions to death! :)

Hope this helps. So take that GMATPrep test NOW!!

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by mriiidula » Sun Jun 19, 2011 4:57 am
Thanks Arun! That made a lot of sense. I'm dreading my score though, I think it'll be awful, considering I haven't reviewed anything.
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by bblast » Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:28 am
SLIGHT correction, I donno if u mistype d but cans GMAT prep does not have 5000 questions !!! I wish it had so many, we would not need any other prep material !!!

It has close to 700-800 questions as per most experts. IF u dig deeper u will find documents on google people have combined using gmat prep questions. There are roughly 100+ CR questions, 200 SC's and some 300 quants.


Also as per math expert Ian Stewart- the OG diagnostic is full of hard questions. So if u use a good old stop watch and time the diagnostic, you might as well gain some data as to where u need to focus from there.
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by mriiidula » Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:56 am
bblast wrote:SLIGHT correction, I donno if u mistype d but cans GMAT prep does not have 5000 questions !!!
Damn, and I was so thrilled about that! Though of course, if each test can be taken 3 times, thats 6 tests right there. You cant really ask for more than that.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:08 pm
You will see repeated questions each time you retake the GMATPrep practice tests, but the benefits of taking each test multiple times outweigh the negative effects of seeing repeated questions.

I wrote a BTG article a while back that addresses this: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... iple-times

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by mriiidula » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:04 am
Cheers Brent! The article addressed my exact worry.
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by Ian Stewart » Thu Jun 23, 2011 3:21 pm
Brent's post above is (as always) very good advice. To the reasons he outlines for taking a prep test early on, I'd add that you want to know the balance of your Quant and Verbal skills to apportion your study time most effectively. Verbal scores are much lower, on average, than Quant scores, so you should not just compare your raw scaled scores; instead look at the percentile charts at the back of any Official Guide.

After that initial test, there really is no good reason to continue taking practice tests until you've done a thorough content review. You should ask yourself *why* you're taking tests. Tests are not a good way to learn concepts. Especially early in your preparation, it makes much more sense to review a topic, then do questions on that topic, than it does to do questions which switch from topic to topic at random, as on a simulated test. The main reason to take practice tests is to practice your test-taking strategy, and especially your pacing strategy. If you struggle with pacing, you'll want to work on your pacing strategy a lot by doing several realistic practice tests, and GMATPrep has the most realistic question bank. The one other reason practice tests are useful is that they give you an estimate of your likely score on test day, so you'll know if it's a good idea to sign up for a real test. For that purpose, you need diagnostic tests which give accurate scores, and GMATPrep is the most accurate test available.

So, since you don't need to practice pacing early in your studies - after all, if you don't know the material well, of course you're going to struggle with timing on a lot of questions - taking repeated tests early on is not a good idea. It's after you've learned the material that you want to focus on test-taking practice. By that time, you likely will have forgotten the questions you saw on the GMATPrep you took at the start of your prep, so you haven't 'wasted' a test at all. Further, the question bank is large enough in each test that you can take each several times without seeing especially many repeated questions. Even the first question on the Quant test is selected from a batch of 4 questions, so in theory you could take each test 4 times and have a different first question each time.

You really want to (mostly) save GMATPrep for later in your study, because it's the only realistic practice test: it gives the most reliable score estimates, and the most realistic pacing practice. If you exhaust GMATPrep early in your prep, as one person suggested above, you won't have any good tests left when you really need them. The questions in GMATPrep are absolutely the most useful questions around - they're more recent, in general, than the OG questions, and there is a larger supply of high-level questions in GMATPrep than in the OG - but early in your preparation there are a ton of good questions to practice from (in the Official Guides, the old paper tests, from company providers, etc). You don't need to see GMATPrep questions early on. Later in your prep, though, you should get as much value from the GMATPrep questions as you can.
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by mriiidula » Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:44 am
Thanks for all the information.

I did the first practice test on GMATPrep. I rushed so much since I was scared of going over time, and ended up finishing the test 22 mins early for quant and 18 mins early for verbal. I scored 600. Freaked out a little actually, but figured I would've done a lot better if I'd just stayed calm.

The good bit was I got all my SC questions correct, and almost all of my quant mistakes, except for two or three questions, were careless errors. So hopefully I'll score better with time.
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