BREAKING: Target Test Prep releases Brand New 2026 On Demand GMAT prep course

Redeem

Veritas CAT vs. actual GMAT

This topic has expert replies
Post new topic Post Reply
Previous Topic Next Topic
Legendary Member
Posts: 1337
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2008 6:29 pm
Thanked: 127 times
Followed by:10 members

Veritas CAT vs. actual GMAT

by Night reader » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:06 am
quick question:

I've just taken free CAT from Veritas and could score only 43 in Quant with 28 correct out of 37 (no missed questions, finished before time). What this would would mean for the real GMAT?
the string of mistakes: 10, 12, 15, 18, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33
Top
Source: — GMAT Strategy |
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:37 pm
The Veritas Prep Simulator test has more difficult questions than those on the official test - on average.

Our research shows that the average quant score on the prep simulator is lower than the corresponding score would be on the GMAT test. So your score would likely be above a 43. I cannot say how much higher.

Remember that these tests do give you an idea of where you are and do help you to know what you need to work on. But of course the Official GMATPrep Test will give a better idea of a score. Or if you have used all of those then the GMAT Focus from GMAC is an option. That is only quant and it does cost $25 for a test of 24 questions (or $65 for three such tests). The GMAT Focus does give you a reliable scoring range at the end of the test. And I would say that the questions on the GMAT Focus are a little "newer" and a little tougher than on the GMATPrep Test.

Good luck!

David
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 574
Joined: Sat Oct 31, 2009 1:47 pm
Location: USA
Thanked: 29 times
Followed by:5 members

by Target2009 » Sat Jan 15, 2011 7:01 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:The Veritas Prep Simulator test has more difficult questions than those on the official test - on average.

Our research shows that the average quant score on the prep simulator is lower than the corresponding score would be on the GMAT test. So your score would likely be above a 43. I cannot say how much higher.
David
Hi David

I just took veritas prep free test today with 47 Q , 27 V. I have couple of observation.

1. I came across only 3 RC passages.All 3 were long dense passages with 5 , 5 and 4 questions respectively. This was something different and put me awkward position cause until last 39th question i was expecting 4th passage and I went fast for few of previous question to save time for last passage.
2. All the CR questions were pretty tough and most of them came very early in the test. In fact out of first 10 que 7 was CR.
3. Most of the SC question came during last part of the exam.

I am not sure why Veritas test are completely different from other practice test, it just cracked my all time management strategy. I found test to be far pretty different from GMATPrep. Please help me understanding the strategy behind this.
Regards
Abhishek
------------------------------
MasterGmat Student
Top
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:40 am
I agree that practice tests can be frustrating, especially when they do something that you do not expect.

I will not say that this is a perfect test and there are things that I would change about it. Not even the GMATPrep is a perfect test as many people say that it is not quite up to the current actual GMAT. I will not even say that the Veritas test is an accurate predictor of your score on test day. But it is a good test.

What I will say is that you can use this as a learning experience, rather than one that causes frustration. It is quite possible that things will happen on test day that are different from what you expect and here is your chance to show that you can handle whatever comes up.

Here are a few observations:

First, last time I took the GMAT, last March, I was keeping track very carefully throughout the verbal. I only got 10 critical reasoning questions and had 17 sentence correction. The sentence correction where throughout the entire section but they were especially at the end when I was thinking of at least a few more CR to get up to, say 12 CR. But no it was sentence correction after sentence correction. So that is something that can happen on the actual test.

Second, unless the GMAT has made a change and not told anyone about it it is possible on the actual exam to get 3 Reading Comp passages - in which case the breakdown would be something like 5 questions - 5 questions - and 4 questions - and that is what you had on the Veritas exam. The purpose of 4 passages on the GMAT is for one of these shorter passages to be experimental and for the entire passage and all questions not to count. So if you get four passages this is probably the case, if you get three passages I would bet that all three count.

Third, It is true that the Critical Reasoning and Reading Comp are pretty tough on the Veritas test, but if you read the reports of people who have taken the actual test recently many of them say that the RC and CR on test day is tougher than on the GMATprep or Official Guide.

Fourth, the distribution of questions is not random on the GMAT, but it can seem to be. It is possible to have one type of question over-represented in the first 10. I am not sure that 7 of the first 10 being critical reasoning is typical but this is not outside the realm of possibility. I had a tutoring student who claims to have gotten 3 reading comp passages in a row and that would be pretty strange!


So that is what I would say, take it all in stride. I think that each of us wants every practice test to be an affirmation of the progress we are making, but then the different tests score differently and behave differently and maybe some particular test we take will not be an affirmation but a learning experience.

Perhaps the strategy is to stretch the boundaries and prepare people for what might happen on test day?
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 36
Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2010 8:46 am
GMAT Score:690

by eyelikecheese » Sun Jan 16, 2011 9:18 am
I received a 690 on the veritas practice CAT 47Q and 42V. I thought the quant was pretty easy, but I did miss about 3-4. I missed every question on one RC passage in the verbal.
Top
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun Jan 16, 2011 12:13 pm
I would say that the Quant is not as "subtle" as on the official test or the GMATPrep -- that deceptive difficulty where official questions guide toward the wrong choice.

The Veritas test has more permutations and combinations and probabilities and some of these things than does the official test.

Just curious, If you found the quantitative to be fairly easy are you pretty good at pure math (algebra, geometry, etc.)?
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 36
Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2010 8:46 am
GMAT Score:690

by eyelikecheese » Sun Jan 16, 2011 12:19 pm
Not particularly a "natural" quant, but I have been studying countless hours for about 3 months. My initial diagnostic was a Q33. My scores fluctuate from around 44-49.
Top
Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 10:50 pm

by varunjaswal » Fri Sep 23, 2011 12:08 pm
I have taken two veritas tests in last couple of days. Here are my scores:

CAT 1: 680 (51Q, 33V)----Maths 2 incorrect and Verbal 14 incorrect
CAT 2: 690 (51Q, 34V)----Maths 1 incorrect and Verbal 13 incorrect

I found maths section way too easy whereas struggled on verbal section especially RC. I could understand the RC's but the main problem lied in the questions asked. Almost all of the questions required reference to RC whereas in other tests i found that no more than 1 question would require entire RC reference. But still i am quite worried about by verbal scores. Experts, please guide.

Note: I scored 720 (51Q, 40V) in Knewton free GMAT cat.

Thanks,
Varun Jaswal
Top
Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 222
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2008 4:04 pm
Thanked: 3 times
Followed by:2 members

by venmic » Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:27 am
Hi David

I scored a 600 on the Veritas prep -
35 Verbal and 38 Quant

The RC s in verbal were really tough.. the Quant was tricky

I need to know how much does this reflect on my actual score

- I have already completed all the gmat prep tests - there were many repetitions and scored a 700 there

Manattan range - 650 -690

Please give me your opinion - how many points more do you thing I would get on the actual test

your opinion is very important to me

Thanks
VM


David@VeritasPrep wrote:I would say that the Quant is not as "subtle" as on the official test or the GMATPrep -- that deceptive difficulty where official questions guide toward the wrong choice.

The Veritas test has more permutations and combinations and probabilities and some of these things than does the official test.

Just curious, If you found the quantitative to be fairly easy are you pretty good at pure math (algebra, geometry, etc.)?
Top
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sun Sep 02, 2012 1:03 pm
VM -

I could not predict your official score, but I would think that it would be closer to the score that you got on the GMATPrep test. That is the best predictor of score. The MGMAT tests are known to be difficult so those scores you received would correspond to the 700 on the GMATPrep.

The Veritas test can be particularly tough in terms of score and can underscore by up to about 100 points. So you might still be in the 700 range, the one thing that gives me pause is that the 700 you got on the GMATPrep was with "many repetitions."

In short I think that you would be closer to a 700 than to a 600, given the results that you have submitted, but of course that is just my speculation and it all depends on how you do on test day.

Were you trying to decide when to sit for the test?
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:41 am

by __neo » Sat Oct 20, 2012 2:10 am
Hi David

I took the first veritas simulator test today. I had a few observations if you can clarify.

1. Maths was much less convoluted than GMAT prep or MGMAT(As expected), but i saw the same concept being tested again and again. I had almost 4 Work/rate questions, which revolved around the same concept to find combined rate !
2.Specially in RC, the answer choices were so close that it was very difficult to tell them apart. Also, I found that only a few concepts were tested repeatedly!

In your experience, how accurate do you think is veritas scoring to actual gmat? And whats the best way to derive value out of RC passages i got wrong in the mock?

Thanks
Top
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Sat Oct 20, 2012 4:52 am
As I mentioned above it is tough to say how the various non-official tests compare to what you might score on test day.

It seems as if the questions that you faced had some things in common, more so that would be true on test day. If you are good at those things that were so common that would likely elevate your score on the Veritas test and if you are not good then you will have missed several questions that are all similar.

As to RC, try to learn from your mistakes and remember what I always say when I look at a non-official question, the closer it feels to the real thing the more I have to know why I missed it. Answer choices being very similar could happen on the harder questions, but it could also be that some of those questions on the practice test are actually unfair because the choices are too close together.

I have seen the score on this practice test be very close to where a person is, but I have also seen it be off by 100 points. So as I said above, don't really use the non-official practice tests for anything except practice. Only the GMATPrep has official questions and the official scoring algorithm.
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
User avatar
Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:39 am

by daddyv » Tue Oct 30, 2012 1:57 am
I hope you're right about veritas prep underscoring you. I have been studying for only a month (in hindsight probably shouldve put in more time, but work doesnt leave me with a lot of time) and am sitting the GMAT on Friday. I did a couple of MGMAT tests before starting n scored 620 n 630. Now after 3 weeks of semi-intense study i felt like i was gonna do pretty well n ended up with a mediocre 670 (q50,v34) on veritas CAT which i must admit has slightly discouraged me.
The quant seemed pretty straight forward n i think i got 5 wrong, and i must admit the verbal wasn't overly difficult, but the clock messed with my head n i found myself rushing through RC cause i thought i was falling behind but in the end finished with 3+ minutes to spare!!!!!
Top
User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2193
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pm
Location: Vermont and Boston, MA
Thanked: 1186 times
Followed by:512 members
GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Oct 30, 2012 5:46 am
Take the Official GMATPrep and see where you are!

You could be scoring over 700 right now...
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Veritas Prep Reviews
Save $100 off any live Veritas Prep GMAT Course
Top
Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 258
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2012 4:39 am
Location: Bengaluru, India
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:3 members
GMAT Score:640

by sachindia » Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:28 am
I took the test today..
scored a 660.. ( Q 45 , V 38 )

Missed 8 questions in quant , yet ended up with only 45

and isn't 45 in Q and 38 in V supposed to be 680?
Regards,
Sach
Top
Post new topic Post Reply