Is GMATPrep reflective enough of the actual GMAT ??

[mad.grad]

This might seem as a whiny beat after the test, but just wanted to vent my thoughts about the actual test. I just wanted to get others' opinion on the difference between the toughness of GMATPrep ( from the official mba.com site ) and the actual GMAT test.

I appeared for my GMAT test yesterday and let me tell you , i did not score anywhere closer to what i was before the test. I was scoring a consistent 760 in the days leading up to the test. I agree some Qs' do repeat with the re-takes , but they are minor. I ended up scoring in the low 600's in the actual test.

Believe me the test was tough as hell throughout with no let up. Bulky passages in CRs, convoluted RC passages .... yeah fine until that , i was adept to parse the dense paragraphs GMAT was throwing at me and picking the right answers the way i used to answer all the Qs in the Official Guides and GMATprep ....

Even the Quant was hell .... but i was getting thru' only believing i was on top ...... which is good ...

But when it was time to look at the scores , a low 600 pops up ... why ???

I was consistently scoring 80-90% on the OG questions under 2 mins. each , timing myself for about a month. Consistently was getting scores between 730-760 on the GMATPrep tests and i end up with this ....

I was really pissed off yesterday , since i see no reason to re-appear soon as long as GMAT has this discrepancy between GMATPrep and actual GMAT .....

I just want to know from other recent test takers their opinion on the toughness in their actual tests ...

[money9111]

i think the consensus here is that GMATPrep is the closest

[ninamehta]

Actually i noticed that too. i didn't discover this forum till just before my test date and that to from a cousin who was using it for his prep.
while using GMAT Prep i was also scoring around 750ish but in the actual test (Aug 2009) i scored 650. this was partly my fault. math was really really tough to a point where i felt i was guessing. that totally psyched me out and my mind just conked on me during english (which ironically is my strong point). when the scores came back it was english that pulled me down. go figure!!!
anyway back to the topic at hand. i did feel that the GMAT Prep was not adequately representative of the actual test. Just my thoughts.
Plan on giving the test again this year (around Sept) and i hope its better this time round.

[mad.grad]

thanks for the replies guys ....

yeah , i understand that GMATPrep is the closest thing to the regular test , but at least they have to update the level of the Qs in the pool , i mean the Verbal in the actual test is understandable but dense, no way you can wrap that in under 2 mins. per Q. Only thing that comes close to the actual level of complexity of the real exam are the Qs in the OG 12th edition , the very last Qs and that is it. They are too few for us to actively judge ourselves before the big date. Some Qs in the GMATPrep date back to 2007-2008 when we look up for solutions online. That i think is not relevant to the present day . My only issue is that GMAC has to bring both the tests (GMATPrep and GMAT) to the same level and not spook the users in to believing otherwise.

[money9111]

"but at least they have to update the level of the Qs in the pool"

agreed

[Osirus@VeritasPrep]

My GMAT score was 20 points lower than my GMAT prep score. My quant score went up and my verbal score went down. Overall, I think it is easier, but not by that much, and I didn't think the verbal was easier on GMAT prep at all. Verbal was about the same, but math was harder on the real thing.