While I think that it's a great idea to re-take GMATprep and PowerPrep multiple times, I think that it's a HUGE MISTAKE to use those tests exclusively.
If you do so, you ROB yourself of the essential experience of encountering a test with ALL NEW questions. Repetition of real GMAC questions is very useful; experiencing NEW questions is extremely important.
Don't limit yourself to only taking the same 4 tests OVER AND OVER again.
cooldude wrote:1.is kaplan hard coz its question are hard or coz its marking is hard.coz most people say that on gmat u wld score around 60-70 more than kaplan
Both. Kaplan's questions are tough and their conversion to scaled score is also unforgiving.
beatthegmat wrote:
Kaplan is difficult because (1) the questions are not written very well and tend to be much harder than the actual GMAT, and (2) the scoring algorithm seems to be biased heavily below what you should actually expect on the real GMAT.
I have tremendous respect for Eric and think that 99% of what he says is golden. However, I can't agree that the Qs on Kaplan's simulated GMAT CATs are "not written very well."
I've tutored dozens and dozens of GMAT tutoring students. Many of these tutoring sessions have consisted of my going over questions from various CAT tests (GMAC, Kaplan, TPR, 800score.com, etc). There's no question that both Kaplan and TPR's question-writing style can be idiosyncratic. Kaplan's tough, no doubt. But the questions aren't badly worded.
If anyone can find three or more badly worded Kaplan-written questions on a Kaplan CAT and sends them to me, I'll give that student 2 hours of FREE tutoring.
HONESTY DISCLOSURE: I did work for Kaplan for NINE years. (I've been "Kaplan-FREE" since 1998.) I happily worked there but am very glad to have been working on my own these last 8 years. I should also point out that Kaplan screws up big-time periodically. (Yesterday, I found an egregious error in the 5th Edition of Kaplan's GMAT Math Worbook that didn't exist in the 3rd or 4th Editions.) There's LOTS of lousy things that I could say about Kaplan. Badly worded questions wouldn't be among them.
beatthegmat wrote:Haven't seen the Manhattan GMAT sample tests. I don't hear much mention of them.
That's because, as far as I know, Manhattan GMAT doesn't have ANY of their own simulated ADAPTIVE tests. Amazingly, they provide Cambridge CAT exams. While the Cambridge tests are quite useful, they don't taste, smell or feel enough like the real thing.
(The ONLY 3rd party tests that I've seen that come close to appproximating the real thing are from Kaplan and Princeton.)
I'd expect Manhattan GMAT to develop decent simulated GMAT CATs soon though. The smart folks that wrote their excellent books can't possibly believe that the Cambridge simulations are good enough.
