So for the past few weeks I've been doing the online practice questions from the 2015 OG Quant book and I normally score between 70-80%, which I'm happy with for the moment. HOWEVER, when I do a full CAT I completely bomb the quant section (last one was a 39 ~48%). I honestly don't know why. I always do quant practice in a timed session and I do 37 questions in a set to mirror the GMAT. I always complete the 37 questions (majority medium to hard difficulty) in less than 75 minutes. Any tips for how I can make my CAT match my practice? It's incredibly frustrating.
Hi shmoowalker,
Many Test Takers take the approach that you've described, but trying to mimic a Quant section in practice never quite works the way that you think it will. Here's why:
1) To mirror Test Day (or a FULL practice CAT), you actually have to go through an Essay and IR section (and an 8-minute break) BEFORE you start the Quant. The mental fatigue that comes with dealing with that first hour of the GMAT WILL impact how you perform on the Quant (and later, how you perform on the Verbal).
2) The practice questions that you've selected to complete in 75 minutes do NOT adapt to your performance, nor do they likely match the "ratio" of question types that you'll see on a fully adaptive exam.
Since the issue is really about how you're performing on your CATs, the first logical step is to do a full question-by-question review of the entire section. Make note of the questions that you got wrong and WHY you got them wrong. How many did you get wrong because of a silly/little mistake? How many did you get wrong because the question was too hard? Did you have a pacing problem and did you have to guess on a bunch of questions at the end just to finish? Etc. Properly defining (and fixing) those little mistakes should be a part of your study process. From there, you might need to invest in some new GMAT resources to help you to improve.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
