GMATPrep test, Princetonreview vs Kaplan

[Prasanna]

Moved to GMAT Strategy area

[bates88]

I honestly don't know what to say about how your prep scores are jumping around, other than to look specifically at which question types you're getting wrong. Are you focusing on weaknesses between tests, but not studying for other sections? Give us some more specifics.

The paper test scores are not reliable...only CATs are going to give you a decent idea of how you're doing. The paper ones are pretty much just the OG timed.

[PL]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

I was getting a score around 600 for my initial CATS. Though I consider quant as my strongest area, I practiced more and more in quant (esp probability and some other high difficulty math questions from Kaplan quiz bank). That's when I got 670 in Kaplan CAT. My quant score was 51 and verbal score was around 30. Then I took GMATprep1. For GMATprep1, I felt as if I was getting more and more data sufficiency questions. I was not able to judge the time properly, so towards the end of the quant section, I had to make random guesses to finish the test. For PR online demo CAT, I thought I did equally well in Quant (when compared to Kaplan) but I scored only about 46 or so in quant. I felt that PR was more harder with scoring. My score for verbal was similar to what I got for kaplan or may be a couple of points lesser.

When I took the second GMATprep, I felt that DS questions were the killer ones again. So I bought OG11 and practiced all DS questions in there. I am still working on the rest of the sections in OG, but last weekend, I tried PR CAT (cracking with GMAT). With PR, again, I thought I did well in quant section (about 6 mistakes, most of them towards the end, only 1 incorrect answer around Q7). But still PR gave me a score of only 45 or so in quant. For verbal, it was around 32 or so.

Though I am trying to improve my verbal skills too, I feel I can excel in quant because that is my strongest area, so I have been concentrating more and more in quant. For verbal, I can never seem to get RC questions correctly. When I got 760 in kaplan, I made only 3 mistakes in SC and CR. I made about 6 mistakes in RC. Is kaplan too linient with scoring? Even with 9 mistakes, I got close to 49 in verbal for kaplan.

Anyhow, since my scores in other CATS are only around 620, I am planning to stop taking Kaplan tests. From this website, I read a lot that MGMAT CATs are good resources. Do they give a good indication of my actual scoring? I am planning to order just the CATs. Will that be enough?

[Stacey Koprince]

Your last post explains what happened on your GMATPrep test, at the least - you ran out of time and had to guess at the end. That kills your score - DO NOT get yourself into that situation on the real test.

The official test has a standard deviation of about 30 points. Our tests (MGMAT) have a standard deviation of about 50 points. GMATPrep's standard deviation hasn't been published, but I always think of it as about 40 points (it uses the same algorithm as the official test, but the question pool is shallower). So our tests are pretty close to the real test, but GMATPrep is better (and the real thing is, of course, the best).

The paper tests are only good for practicing individual questions. The scores are not valid in terms of the CAT, nor is the actual mix of questions anything like what you will experience on the official test. So definitely do not take them thinking that you are in any way seeing what the overall CAT will be like. But individual questions are still real GMAT questions, so they're good practice.