Are the free practice tests reliable?

[bwhyte]

Hey

I've now done four practice GMAT exams in this order:

GMATPrep 1 - 720
GMATPrep 2 - 710
kaplan online (free test) - 660
princeton review online (free test) - 670

I'm obviously somewhat concerned that my scores are following a downward trend rather than an upward one! But it does beg the question: do you think the 'free' tests on the kaplan and princeton review web sites artifically give you a lower than expected score in order to get you to sign up to one of their courses?

After all, that would make good business sense for them.

Has anyone else noticed this trend of doing better in GMATPrep than on the free online tests? Or should I be getting worried!?

Cheers
Barry

[beatthegmat]

In general, GMATPrep is definitely the best indicator of your actual GMAT performance. I wouldn't read too much into the Kaplan and Princeton Review results because their algorithms definitely do not match that of the actual test.

I can't comment on whether Kaplan or PR actually skew down the results (I thought this was the case myself for a while but I've never seen any hard data to substantiate that). At the end of the day, you should just view any practice test as good practice.

I've seen many members on this forum report similar results like you, that they did better on GMATPrep vs. the other practice tests. The best advice I can give you is to not read too much into it, study your mistakes well, and go into your test with a killer confidence!

Good luck!

[bwhyte]

I've just sat my actual GMAT, and I'm pleased to say that the freebie online tests definitely marked me down!

In addition to the kaplan and princeton review scores above, I did the free Manhattan GMAT exam a couple of days ago and got 670. I was starting to get worried.

In the real exam I just got 720!

You are completely correct - GMATPrep is the only practice software with a scoring mechanism worth taking notice of. I would strongly suggest the free tests deliberately mark you down as a ploy to sell expensive preparation courses - beware! (That's not to say that they aren't good practice, which they definitely are)