Something doesn't add up - Anyone tried Veritas Prep?

I'm going to say that the software messed up or something lol... perhaps a glitch of some sort... never heard of an 8 in verbal by anyone... ever so that's probably a mistake

Those CATs are adaptive, the only thing I noticed is that unlike other practice tests, the Veritas CATs base the score more on how many you get correct, rather than taking into consideration the difficulty level. So when I missed a high level probability question, it counted the same as if I missed a med level number properties question. I wouldn't worry about the score with any practice test, other than the GMAT prep tests. Use all the practice CATs as a tool to highlight weaknesses.

but doe an 8 sound right? 8 as in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 ,8

Hey guys,

Thanks for all of the feedback! Those test, as Osirus mentions, are, indeed, adaptive, and should be taking into consideration the difficulty levels of questions in addition to the percent-correct.

That 8 may well be a computer glitch - the GMAT reserves the extremes of its 0-60 scoring bands (much like the government reserves the ends of the AM/FM radio frequency bands) for expansion as necessary, so scores at the extremes (51 is the highest possible quant score, for example) aren't, at least at this point, practical.

We're looking into that scoring, and consistently monitor the data on our tests to check for anomalies like that in scoring or question difficulty. As an aside, I've always been much more interested in percentiles than scaled scores - it's kind of like the Olympic long jump...they can measure you in meters or feet/inches, but really what matters is whether you win, medal, or fail to qualify for the finals - it's all about how you compare to your competition.

Regardless, thanks for the heads-up on that scoring...we're looking into that, and trust that the test-taking experience, even with a somewhat-erratic score, was beneficial!

Thanks for your replies guys! I counted my net correct answers and the total is a disappointing 15 ..still doesn't explain the 8 anywho...

Hi Brian,
Actually I won't deny that I found the Veritas verbal 'the most' difficult as compared to its competitors (kaplan, princeton and knewton)...and what I mean by this is....Almost none of the sentence corrections displayed the classic gmat 3-2 split...I had to actually read thru all SC choices, and would find one word/tense change at the end of the sentence or sometimes hidden in the sentence. From my OG practice, I recall that majority of the time the GMAT will throw in some sort of split..Is my observation correct?
I also found the comprehensions extremely tough...not because of the content, but the way the questions were framed threw me off...I thought they were convoluted.
Thanks for your reply still, and I will take another veritas exam pretty soon to see how the score scales this time .

boazkhan wrote:Thanks for your replies guys! I counted my net correct answers and the total is a disappointing 15 ..still doesn't explain the 8 anywho...

Hi Brian,
Actually I won't deny that I found the Veritas verbal 'the most' difficult as compared to its competitors (kaplan, princeton and knewton)...and what I mean by this is....Almost none of the sentence corrections displayed the classic gmat 3-2 split...I had to actually read thru all SC choices, and would find one word/tense change at the end of the sentence or sometimes hidden in the sentence. From my OG practice, I recall that majority of the time the GMAT will throw in some sort of split..Is my observation correct?
I also found the comprehensions extremely tough...not because of the content, but the way the questions were framed threw me off...I thought they were convoluted.
Thanks for your reply still, and I will take another veritas exam pretty soon to see how the score scales this time .

From my experience, the thing that tripped me up the most on the real GMAT was the lack of splits. This is why I love the Veritas verbal practice tests, because their SC reminds me of the actual GMAT SC. The only thing I wish those tests had more of would be VICs, but those tests are great practice.

Hi, boazkhan:

Thanks again for the feedback! I'm happy to hear, actually, that you've found those verbal sections to be challenging. From what I've heard from our most-active tutors who have experience with all sorts of tests, the Sentence Correction questions on the updated GMAC practice tests is significantly harder than that found on most other third-party tests (including, unfortunately, a few that we offer), so one of our goals in creating these new tests (including that free one linked to the BTG site) was to try to replicate the evolution of GMAT Sentence Correction.

That 3/2 split logic is still valid in many cases, but definitely isn't an every-question strategy. My philosophy on Sentence Correction has always been that the true difficulty comes from the authors "hiding" the fairly-standard grammatical rule behind unique constructions, obscure idioms, etc. If the test were too grammatical, it wouldn't quite be fair or applicable (business schools want problem solvers and decision makers, not linguistics experts), so the errors are pretty standard and finite, but the authors of the test work hard to make them tougher to find. The key is for you to recognize that you do about 7-8 things well - subject-verb agreement, modifiers, etc. - and look for your opportunity to make a difference using them...much like a company like Amazon realizes that it does a few things better than anyone else (the technologically-streamlined distribution of written - or at least nonperishable media - material being arguably their best) and launches the Kindle to take advantage of that expertise.

I am just wondering why this always pops up and there is never a new comment? So I decided to add a new comment!

Let me take this moment to remind you of the FREE Veritas Prep question bank where we are trying out all kinds of great new questions. The link is here https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat-question-bank/

Have fun!