Problems with PowerPrep Scores

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Problems with PowerPrep Scores

by jaymw » Thu Sep 16, 2010 7:17 am
Hi everyone,


today I did a PowerPrep CAT to see what still needs to be done before I take the real test.

To be honest, I was a little devastated by the results. Whereas quant went over just fine (Q49), I seemed to have screwed up the verbal part completely (V23).

Now, from my own appraisal, without wanting to come across as arrogant or anything, I feel that my English abilities are not below average, and if they are, then they are not THAT MUCH below average. I am not a native English speaker, but have always received the highest grades in school and have also aced the TOEFL. I am aware that those 3 things (GMAT, school ,and TOEFL) are not necessarily comparable but still I can't get over the feeling that I should have scored higher.

When I reviewed my mistakes, I found out that I had gotten 19 ot of 30 questions right. Now, that would actually mean that in order to get to the 50th percentile (which is far away from the 28th PowerPrep gave me), I should be able to get a lot more than 19 questions right, maybe 23 or 24 out of 30.

This seems really weird to me, so I would like to hear your opinions on the matter.

Did you experience similar problems with PowerPrep's algorithms or should I really start worrying about my verbal skills?

Thanks a lot!

Jan
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by Dinen » Thu Sep 16, 2010 8:04 am
I just finished the powerprep cat now. It was my first cat, score 700(q46,v40). Upon review I also had 19/30 correct in verbal...so yeh tis abit weird when compared to your score. However I must add that my incorrect answers were almost exclusively SC...so could be a weighting issue. Sorry I cannot be of more assistence.
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by jaymw » Thu Sep 16, 2010 2:15 pm
Thanks for your interesting reply. My overall score was 600. Taking into account that our quant scores were almost equal, the weighting of questions cannot explain a score differnce of 100. Or can it?

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by Dinen » Thu Sep 16, 2010 2:31 pm
Not sure mate. However one possibility is that most of my incorrect answers were experimental ones that do not count and by sheer bad luck, yours were'nt. The test does make some mention at the beginning regarding experimental questions....otherwise I am as stumped as u are wrt the large difference.
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by jaymw » Fri Sep 17, 2010 1:42 am
The big difference is not a problem for me as long as this doesnt happen again on the real deal;)

But I think PowerPrep takes out the experimental questions in the review. You answer 41 but only 30 get evaluated, so my guess is they take out the 11 experimental ones.

I ll see how my next prep tests goes:) Good luck for your prep!