GMAT Strategy

Just wondering: what hit rates do the people who score over 700 usually get in their preparation? 80%? 90% Are these timed hit rates? Untimed hit rates?

When I do practice problems without any kind of timing involved my hits rates range from 80% to 95% depending on the topic; however, this does not seem to translate well for me when I take the practice CATs (560, 550, 650, 570). I'm sure some of that is due to timing and extra stress/pressure from the CATs.

But I'm still curious. I've been contemplating the idea of doing all practice timed and seeing how my hit rates change to give me a better estimate of my potential.

It's not about hit rates. It's about the level of difficulty of the questions that you are hitting. People can get up to 50% wrong and still get 700+. This has been discussed many times before; search through some of the older threads.

beny wrote:It's not about hit rates. It's about the level of difficulty of the questions that you are hitting. People can get up to 50% wrong and still get 700+. This has been discussed many times before; search through some of the older threads.

I was talking about practice problems actually. Assuming each of us goes through every problem of the OG11, we should all see the same problems and same level of difficulty. I was not referring to hit rates during the CATs as I am aware that hit rates do not matter in these cases. The question concerns only hit rates on practice problems.

Actually, intuitively it would appear that hit rates do affect your score on the CAT since the level of difficulty of any particular question you encounter on the CAT should depend on how you have been doing on the questions prior to that particular question. Perhaps my understanding of the algorithm is incorrect, but if you get 1 problem right and then 9 correct in a row wouldn't the level of difficulty of the problem be higher than if you got 4 problems right then missed one then got 5 right afterwards? I have read on this forum that the important thing is to get consecutive problems right so that the problems get progressively harder. In this scenario, it seems like a higher hit rate should allow you to get more consecutive problems correct. But again, I can't be sure. Maybe Stacy can answer.

OG11 I hit b/w 90-95% correct, depending on section (untimed). I believe DS was my worst (~90%), PS was my best (~95%). Most of my errors were careless/stupid mistakes.