Confused with my scores.Should I postpone my exam?

[sireev]

Hi,

I am confused about my scores.

I took the follwoing tests

Princeton Review CAT 1 - 590
KAPLAN Premier Paper based TEST (in teh book) - 630
Princeton Review CAT 1 - 570
Took GMAT PREP CAT 1 - 580.

I have scheduled for the GMAT on AUG 23rd.I am not able to get to the upper 600's in my score.Should I postpone my exam?

I have just started working with OG 11th edition and purple verbal review and green quant.I have worked with the following for the past few months

1.Princeton Review -Cracking the GMAT
2.Kaplan Premier 2008
3.Kaplan 800
4.Manhattan GMAT - Sentence Correction

Ihave completed every problem in the above books and tried to understand teh concept as best as I could.My problem is consistency.In one exam, if I do a concept right,I am making a mistake on that very same concept in another test.

How can I improve and should I postpone my exam date?

Thank you,
Sireesha.

[Stacey Koprince]

You're taking tests from multiple sources. That's fine to do, but understand that the scores aren't easily comparable. If you take exams from the same source, there's a wide standard deviation already - there's an even wider standard deviation if you're trying to compare exam results from multiple sources.

GMATPrep is the best indicator of your current scoring ability, so let's use that one.

You're in the high 500s right now. You have been using test prep sources for a few months, but you haven't been using OG. Your best learning is going to come from examining and analyzing OG questions - nothing's better than the real thing. Use the test prep books to help you learn what you need to learn as you discover problems and weaknesses via your OG study.

We've got about a month to go and you'd like to improve by 100 points. I think there's a pretty good chance that you will need more time. I'd say most people need about 2-3 months to achieve a 100 point increase, particularly if they've already been studying for a while.

You didn't mention the dates on which you took the practice tests, but the scores are generally in the same range. I'll assume that you've taken them over the length of your study (over the past few months). If that's the case, you may need to rethink the way you're studying to make sure that you're making the kinds of improvements you want to make.

Make sure you closely examine whatever reports are generated - get that data and figure out (in great detail!) what your strengths and weaknesses are. Don't forget that you have to pay attention to timing and difficulty level. Just because you got something wrong doesn't mean that thing is a weakness - maybe it was a 700+ level question! And just because you got something right doesn't mean that thing is a strength - maybe you spent 3 minutes instead of 2!

Use the data to help you study - both what to study and how to study (the way you'd study something if you don't know the basic content is different than the way you'd study if you knew the content but couldn't do it in the appropriate amount of time - etc.). If what you have been doing so far hasn't been giving you the results you want, you'll need to find some other way to do things.

One more thing: don't take any more paper tests - not even official paper GMATs. The way in which you have to take the CAT is VERY different from the way in which we take paper-based tests. In some ways, what we need to do is almost the opposite, so training on paper-based tests could actually hurt you if you don't know what you're NOT supposed to be doing / learning. (And even if you do know, it's hard to hold yourself to that. For example, on the real test, you can't skip around. You have to answer the questions in the order given. When taking a paper-based test, can you really force yourself not to look ahead, not to skip a question and come back to it later, etc? If you let yourself do that in your practice tests, you're in great danger of not learning the lesson that you have to let go and move on - forever - on the CAT when you just can't get the question that's currently on the screen.)

[sireev]

Stacey,

Thank you very much for the tips.I will postpone my exam and start practicing with OG and see how it goes.Thank you for the insight.It's very helpful.

-Sireesha.