GMAT Strategy

programming_max wrote:Hi friends

Actually I had a terrible experience with Gmatprep , as I got 560
and surprisingly my sc was 11 wrongs among 13 questions

My strength is SC and I tried all I could on it.
in manhattan CAT i get 740 as the average of right answers
and I got 700 on manhattan CAT
by the way I didnt try the GMATPREP for second time and tommorow I am going to do so.

therefore I've got 3 main questions

1)is GMATprep allright? , I mean I saw some questions that were so different than what I have seen on OG or Manhattan or other sources

2)What is the best pace for verbal I used
5 - 67
10 58
20 42
31 20
but As always I cannt answer 2 of the latest verbal question (I answer them randomly)


3)can I answer the first 15 Quantitative questions wrong and then answer the rest correct
to get better score

Hi Max!

A couple of quick notes on your questions:

1) the GMATprep test is the most accurate representation out there as this test is produced by GMAC (the producers of the official test). While there will certainly be differences among all the practice CATs (regardless of which company produces them), they all strive to be as close to the "real deal" as possible. That being said, did you do anything differently when taking the GMATprep test relative to the other practice exams? I am surprised that you felt some of the questions were drastically different - I would love for you to provide some that you found the most out of character in a forum so that we could talk about them!

2) It looks like your verbal timing benchmarks are good (except that question 20 should be at 40 minutes rather than 42). If you find that you are still running out of time for the last 2-3 questions, you need to continue working on timed sets and learning when to just let some questions go. It would be better to have 2 random guesses mixed into the test then to have 2 in a row right at the end. Poor results follow strings of wrong answers, particularly if those strings are near the end of the test (just think - you don't have any more questions to redeem yourself with).

3) The answer to this is a definite NO. Trying to "game" the test will just result in you being very unhappy with your score. Just know that every question counts towards your score. If you imagine your score as a sort of average of the difficulty of every question you get right, getting 15 questions wrong is just going to drag you down to the basement where you might get stuck - remember, to get to even see harder questions you have to get easier questions right first!

I hope this clears things up!

Whit