GMAT Strategy

hi all - frequent lurker, first time poster.

i have taken a few of the Kaplan GMAT CAT tests.

their tests give me a score, and percentile ranks. what do they mean? for example, i see a lot of posts on this website stating they scored the following on the actual GMAT: 720 (Q49,V40).

how can i calculate that from my Kaplan score?

your help is greatly appreciated. thank you!

Does that score give you percentiles? Is it a scaled score like Q49 V40 that you mentioned.

Kaplan does not give scores, only percentiles. The last time i took their CAT my quant performance was "BELOW 85th PERCENTILE" ... So i assumed it to be around a Q48.

Tommy Wallach wrote:Hey Vom,

There's no way Kaplan doesn't give a score...that would be crazy. And people are often posting Kaplan scores on here. Are you sure you aren't taking a GRE (which scores in a much different way), or that you're not missing the page?

On the real test, an 85th percentile is 48-49.

-t

Kaplan does give an overall score, but does not give a Q V score like all other test prep companies, and the GMAC . Even i was surprised to see no SCORE on the kaplan, i searched around and indeed they do not offer a score (only offer percentiles) on the new CAT's (the ones from kaptest, that include IR). I have attached my score report, to show how they report scores (really very strange)...

Thank you kindly for the feedback--I will pass it along. Keep in mind that the 1-60 sectional scaled scores are derived from the percentile score in the first place--so in a way they are redundant. The percentile score gives you more information than the 1-60 score, which is why we likely aren't including it in. Another possible reason is variance in percentile to 1-60 conversion. For example, a few years ago, a score of 85th percentile on verbal would put you maybe in the early 40s.

Thanks again!

You could just use a chart of GMAT scores, like that at the back of the Official Guide 13th edition and convert the percentiles into scaled score.

If it says "Verbal score below 65th percentile" on your score report I might look to the next scaled score below that number.

By the way, practice tests that are not the official GMATPrep test should not be taken literally in terms of scoring anyway. A small variation in any number of factors, such as distribution of questions, the time pressure exerted by the questions, the scoring algorithm, etc. Can easily result in 50+ points difference in an overall score. And people will then really feel like there is a big difference between say a 650 and a 700, when the difference is in the various practice tests and not necessarily in the performance of the test taker.

Thank you for responding. I used the OG 13 suggested by David@VeritasPrep to get a general sense of my score.

Hi,

A related but different question - I also was confused by the lack of scaled score on the Kaplan but also confused but my score of 660 - having only got just over 50% of questions correct.

I know that the percentage of correct questions should not be taken too literally because of the scoring algorithm but surely 50% of questions wrong should be lower than 660??

I have only been studying a few weeks, so this score seems unrealistic based on my GMATPREP 1 score of 600 two weeks ago. Many other posts on this forum suggest that kaplan is much harder than the real GMAT which seems to conflicts with my ability...

Any advice???

jdmecheng wrote:Hi,

A related but different question - I also was confused by the lack of scaled score on the Kaplan but also confused but my score of 660 - having only got just over 50% of questions correct.

I know that the percentage of correct questions should not be taken too literally because of the scoring algorithm but surely 50% of questions wrong should be lower than 660??

I have only been studying a few weeks, so this score seems unrealistic based on my GMATPREP 1 score of 600 two weeks ago. Many other posts on this forum suggest that kaplan is much harder than the real GMAT which seems to conflicts with my ability...

Any advice???

In my experience (Taken all MGMAT CAT's, 3 Kaplan CAT's , All Veritas Prep CAT's, All GMAT PREP CAT's, plus the GMAT) Kaplan is a bit easier on quant (as it turned out, a lot easier in my case) and tougher with RC and CR. I was getting consistently 64-70 percentile in Verbal on kaplan (three tests in a row) and ended up with a 92 percentile GMAT score in verbal (Consistent with GMAT PREP, MGMAT, Veritas Prep). If you are very very good in verbal (95+ percentile GMAT PREP) and end up scoring fairly decent on the kaplan, your score should be within 20-30 points of the real thing. However if you are in the 36-40 range in verbal, your score may (from my experience) go down significantly thereby effecting your overall score.

Overall i felt GMAT PREP was a better benchmark , compared to Kaplan however in my case it over estmated my score by 20-30 points ( But i guess you should expect +20 point swing with mocks). My best score on Kaplan was 650, a full 30 points lower then the real thing, however the mix was totally different (Quant went from 48 to 44, Verbal went from 32 to 41) .

Tommy is right...

If you get more than 50% of the questions right there is a good chance (depending on the level of questions that you miss of course) that you will be over the median score.

People tend to focus on the questions that they might miss (I call this fear-based) they should be focused on getting questions right (a more positive approach).