Kaplan - How reflective of GMAT

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Kaplan - How reflective of GMAT

by BSchoolPhD » Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:15 am
Hi All,

Firstly congratulations to those who have scored well on the GMAT and wishing my best to those working hard towards their target scores. This is indeed a great website to share one's experience and seek advise on GMAT intricacies. I am a working professional preparing for my GMAT to get in a good marketing PhD program.

Although, there are many resources available to help one prepare for one's GMAT endeavor, ranging from classroom sessions to blogs and forums, 2 resources I couldn't resist talking about are Kaplan and Manhattan GMAT. I have been following this forum for some time now and have observed that most of the people scoring above 700 have taken up MGMAT online tests or Kaplan online tests or both.

I have been preparing for my GMAT, scheduled for the 7th of next month, and added the Kaplan premier book to my arsenal to equip myself for the D-day and registered myself with Kaptest web resource. I was pleased to see that all the content of the book is available on the net along with some sectional practice tests and 6 full length tests. Today, with all excitement, I logged on the website to start the first full length test out of the 6 available tests (no, not the linear ones in the CD. The dynamic ones on the net). But to my surprise, I could not start the first test online, although the resource tags the test as "strongly encouraged". Actually, there are 2 versions of all the full length practice tests from test 2 through test 6 - online and CD, except for test 1 which is only CD. Anyway, I skipped test 1 and moved on to test 2 in anticipation of starting a full length test. But there was another surprise waiting for me there. As I clicked on the link to start test 2, it directly led me to the quantitative section of the test (phew! it would have been wonderful if the actual GMAT was like this as I really wouldn't want to spend an hour writing stories in the name of arguments and issues, but it is not!). I got a little disappointed as a full length test is supposed to be a FULL LENGTH TEST! Sigh! I moved back and thought of doing the practice test from the AWA bin rather so that I can imitate the actual test and thankfully there was an argument waiting for my analysis, but hey! again a disappointment:( I just cannot write my response in the window as the developers probably forgot to create one!! yeah! I had to open fresh word document and write my response to the argument question there. After 30 minutes and a well thought out response, I clicked next in the test window and guess what - there is no 'issue' to be evaluated! >> devastated!! Thankfully my friend at another terminal shared his 'issue' statement with me so that I can continue to imitate test schedule for another 30 minutes and can test my skills at analysis of an issue. So the quest started again in the word processing window:) (i think i should start a fresh paragraph;)

After 60 minutes, finishing AWA section, and struggling with my first experience with Kaptest, I was ready to take on the Quant section. I found the quant in Kaplan online quite OK and was able to finish all 37 questions with a little over 10 minutes to spare. (Just fyi, I am no engineer or maths genius but also would not rate myself as average). But the PS and DS questions were not mixed and jumbled and I got straight questions from PS bin first followed by DS bin, which was probably the reason that I could finish with 10 mins. to spare.

I was feeling quite confident and moved on to the verbal section. Must mention here that the verbal section was not real easy and it threw some good questions at me. But again, the questions followed a boring pattern of SC followed by CR and then RC. It would have been nice to see questions popping on my screen randomly to make it more like a GMAT experience. To my surprise, I was left with the last passage and 5 questions with almost 23 mins. at hand! But it wasn't a race and I read and re-read and re-read the last passage (which was a bomb)to understand it and answer the questions with 5 mins. to spare.

Phew, the scoring screen!
Quant - 34 correct out of 37 but a score of 46? (92%)
Verbal - 31 correct out of 41 and a score of 39 (89%)
overall - 670 (88%)

Now I really don't know how Kaplan rates the responses and how reflective are kaplan scores of the real GMAT. Just fyi, I took a GMAT prep 1 month back and got a 700. Since then I have been studying and expected this to be better!

I would really appreciate you guys taking some time to review my post and suggest if I am on the right direction as I have a little less than a month left to appear for the real thing. I aim to get a 740 and with your help I can make it a reality.

Also, I don't know if there's something wrong with the way I am accessing my account as I did not expect Kaplan to miss out on small things like AWA, etc. Kindly suggest if there's some other way to access my account so that I can get the first test activated as well.

Best
Ashish

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by Frankenstein » Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:54 am
Hi,
I had a similar experience and my scores were pretty close to yours. So, I have requested Kaplan representative to look into that. She has forwarded my scores to the academic team for review, and said she would get back to me. GMATPrep is definitely the closest indicator as it is released by GMAC. So, I suggest you not to think much about other test scores(although it is not easy) and just review mistakes from tests.
Good Luck!
Cheers!

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by BSchoolPhD » Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:22 am
I agree! GMAT prep and OG are the best resources to prepare.
Have you already taken your test or you're also preparing?
I am almost done with OG 10 and 12 and plan to take Kaplan, MGMAT and GMAT Prep tests to get in the mode before I turn up for the big thing.

Thanks for the wishes!

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by Frankenstein » Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:37 am
Hi,
I will be taking my test this month (roughly 10 more days). I have taken few MGMAT tests and 1 GMATPrep. All these nearly 2 months back. I have barely touched OG. So, planning to work on OG for my weaker sections and take the remaining tests in these 10days.
Cheers!

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by rohu27 » Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:09 am
Kaplan tests - just take them to test your stamina levels. I find their algorithm very very weird.
even i had the same issue. the so called adaptive tests give out set of DS,PS questions at a time. I did contact the Kap reps but they couldnt get any convincing reply.

I could take the AWA's though.

as evryone says, GMAT preps are best ones. MGMAT tests are nxt in line.

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by KapTeacherEli » Mon Jul 11, 2011 6:15 am
BschoolPHD, sorry for the confusion with your sores. I hope that at the very least you found the individual problems on your test to be good, test-like practice. can you PM me your login info for your Kaplan website? I've forwarded this along to our academics team, who will investigate your score results and hopefully tell you what's going on.

Thanks so much!
Eli Meyer
Kaplan GMAT Teacher
Cambridge, MA
www.kaptest.com/gmat

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by sumit88 » Sat Jul 16, 2011 10:37 am
I am also facing the same issues with kaplan tests.
First of all no AWA section in online tests. Second, questions are not at all adaptive and are coming in sorted order(maths- first all ps then ds; Verbal-- sc followed by cr then rc). I would have expected it to be more GMAT-like. Could anybody please advice..?
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