GMAT Strategy

at what level were these questions?

there are 2 things that may be at work here:
(1) some of our highest-level problems contain a bit more work than do comparable problems on the official tests. they aren't necessarily harder; they just require more steps / more labor than do the official problems.
(2) our tests don't currently contain any experimental questions, so, if you're scoring at a high level, all of the problems on the test will be pretty hard. by contrast, on the official exam, the experimental questions (of which there are 9-10 per section) will always be of random difficulty levels, so you're guaranteed at least a few easier ones even if you're nailing the exam.

if you're scoring at a high level, then either or both of these may be affecting your test.
we realize that this causes a slight discrepancy with the official exams, but, because the vast majority of students have problems with taking too much time, the extra time pressure is a very good thing indeed: it really lights a fire under students in terms of better time management.

also, if you're not seeing relatively large numbers of 700+ level questions in your cat exam analysis, then neither of the above issues should matter very much in your case.

Gmatter@2008 wrote:Hi Lunar,

What is a relatively large number of 700+ level questions? Over half? Thanks.

well, enough that it will have a significant impact on your time management. i'd say that the extra work on these problems, when there is such extra work, is only about 20-30 seconds' worth or so - and not all the 700+ problems are this way. therefore, it will take a significant concentration of those problems to make even a few minutes' difference in your time management.

in any case - unless you're one of those rare souls who actually doesn't use enough time on the exam - the extra time crunch should prove beneficial for you in the long run, because you'll emerge from it with super-tight time management skills.

amitdgr wrote:Ron,

I do believe that MGMAT has its algorithm pretty close to the real one. But I have a query regarding the questions in quant section.

When the real GMAT does not focus on calculation intensive steps, why does MGMAT feature such problems (I found MGMAT heavy on lengthy steps) ? Aren't we learning the wrong skills from MGMAT CATs ??

i'd be careful about painting the real gmat with such a broad brush. it may be true that our tests feature proportionally more calculation-intensive problems, but it is not at all the case that such problems are absent from the real test.

here's one such problem from gmatprep (meaning that it probably was a real test problem in a previous life):
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post16250.html
this problem features a ridiculous amount of work, much more even than most of our problems that we've tagged as "work intensive".

also, the official repertoire has occasionally included problems that require obscene amounts of work in other, non-calculation-related ways, such as the listing of 24 separate possibilities, followed by counting, in this problem:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/post5773.html

the point is that the intensive calculation does happen on the official problems, although perhaps not with the frequency with which it occurs on our exams.

we are also working on developing more difficult CAT problems that are not only difficult, but also concise (as are many of the more ingenious difficult problems on the gmat cat).
i myself am one of the masterminds behind this project, so rest assured that It Is Happening. now that our new strategy guides have been published, we're digging into revising the can exams in full force, although the new questions aren't going to be showing up in the super-immediate future. (in other words, we have no projected release date for more cat questions yet, but they are in development.)

in any case, check out the 2 problems above - along with more that you'll certainly encounter if you're keeping your eyes open for that sort of thing - for evidence that the intensive calculation isn't entirely in vain.