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Improvement between your 1st practise test and final GMAT

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Improvement between your 1st practise test and final GMAT

by kiwiana » Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:59 am
Hi everyone -

Perhaps I am over thinking this one, but I recently took my first practice test (a free one from the Princeton Review site) after two months of studying. I got a 680. I spoke to about 3-4 friends who have taken the GMAT, and they all had a consistent line of thought - that their test scores improved about 80-100 points between the first practice test they took and the actual GMAT.

I plan to give the test in about 5 weeks' time, and in the meantime probably aim to get through another 8-10 practice tests. Based on advice from my friends, I am shooting for a 760+ score. Is this realistic? What should I focus on between now and the final exam aside from practice tests? (couldn't find any obvious weakness areas in either verbal or quant).

Thanks for the advice.
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by killerdrummer » Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:14 am
Hio Kiwiana,

First of all great job!! I must say 680 is pretty decent score on 1st attempt.However, I will suggest you to give one GMATprep test also ( comprised of retired questions from offical gmat test ) because that is the best test when it comes to comparing your actual score on G-DAY and the best thing it is available on their website (mba.com) for free. :)


Happy Learning!!

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KP
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by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Mar 19, 2013 3:15 pm
The score increase that one can expect will vary greatly from person to person. If you are already familiar with the format and if you have - as you say - no real weaknesses then it may be tough to improve as much.

That is not to discourage you at all, just to say that you will likely have to work hard at it.

I must agree with Killer Drummer, until you take the Official GMATPrep practice test you will not know where you truly are. Perhaps you are already over 700 on the GMATPrep - it would make it easier to get over 760! Or perhaps you will get something lower.

Please let us know when you have taken the GMATPrep test! Here is an article discussing how to best simulate a practice test. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/07/ ... tice-tests
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by kiwiana » Sun Mar 24, 2013 3:19 pm
I've taken a few more practice tests, and now see where some weaknesses might have developed. For example, I focused specifically on weak areas in Math in the week preceding my most recent practice test, and ended up scoring higher on quant, but lower in verbal (ironic). Plan to focus on weak areas in Math and verbal this week so hope to put that all together for a 700+ score in the coming week.

One thing I have noticed though, is that the quant questions in the Manhattan GMAT test are exceedingly harder than the ones in the Official guide book. If I run through a question set from the official guide, I usually get 14 out of 15 right or thereabouts. In the MGMAT tests, I find the questions are much harder, and often more time consuming than the ones on the official guide or the Princeton review tests.

Thoughts?
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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:39 pm
The questions in the Official Guide are predominately not at the top level of the scale. I do not mean to say anything bad about the Official Guide. It is a great book. But just because they have to take into account lots of people that will use the book... so most of the questions are in the middle sort of range.

Therefore you will find that outside sources often have harder questions, more like those that a test-taker who is doing quite well on the test would see.

Have you ever tried the new Veritas question bank? There are some questions in there that will stand up to anything! There was one I tried, where the average person who attempted it took like 20 minutes and most still missed it!!

Veritas Question Bank: https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat-question-bank/
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