Experts, Fellow Kaplan CAT Takers, Fellow GMAT aspirants....

[resolehtmai]

....OR ANYBODY who has anything to do with GMAT. Please tell me what do you think of the following analysis.
I am feeling that Kaplan CAT's are too generous in awarding points. Here are the details of the two CAT's I attempted :
CAT 1 - 710
Quant - 92%ile
Correct - 24
Incorrect - 13
Accuracy - 65%

Verbal - 83 %ile
Correct - 25
Incorrect - 16
Accuracy - 61%

CAT 2 - 740
Quant - 98 %ile
Correct - 26
Incorrect - 11
Accuracy - 70%

Verbal - 74 %ile
Correct - 23
Incorrect - 17
Accuracy - 58%

I barely crossed 700 in my 6 MGMAT CATs.

I mean 740 even after 58% accuracy in Verbal. Come on!! I know that its not about the number of questions one gets wrong, but the level of questions that are wrong and blah blah blah.

What makes the scores more surprising is the following list of highlights in CAT 2
-6 incorrect (including a string of 4)out of the last 8 questions VERBAL.
-A couple of strings of as many as 4 questions wrong in VERBAL.
-5 out of 10 incorrect in the first 10 questions in VERBAL, which are the most crucial questions as per my knowledge. I mean this alone shouldve pulled my score to 650.
-6 consecutive incorrects out of last 7 in QUANTS. 98%ile even after this is unacceptable.

I had heard a lot about Kaplan CATs being overly strict & demoralizing and what not. But I simply cannot accept these scores as a representative of my disastrous performance.
And 98%ile in Quants after 11 incorrects? Thats a 51 as per mba.com's percentile to score conversion table.

These kind of scores will make a test taker over confident and relaxed, which is wrong.
I am eagerly looking forward to all of your comments.

[[email protected]]

Hi resolehtmai,

You're correct to be a bit skeptical of any 3rd party CATs (even ones such as Kaplan's and Manhattan GMATs), but until you take the real thing, you have to use something to gauge your progress. So here are some things to keep in mind:

1) The percentiles are essentially "where you are in line" for people who took THAT CAT. Percentiles likely won't match up from test to test and they probably won't line up with the real GMAT either. That data point can be deceptive. For Kaplan's CAT1, you performed at or above 92% of test takers in THAT Quant Section. Considering the number of people who took THAT CAT over the years, you performed at a fairly high level.

2) The overall score takes into account a number of factors, which I won't go into here, but I agree that 60 - 65% accuracy likely won't get you a 710 on the real GMAT. But under the right circumstances, it could be close to that.

3) How have you done on the 2 CATs from MBA.com? They represent the "closest" you can get to an actual GMAT without taking it. You're concerned about the accuracy of these practice CATs; that's fair. But if you haven't taken one of the MBA.com CATs yet (or even the real GMAT for that matter), then how do you KNOW if these results are off or not? So take one, and report back on how you did. THAT data will help you to figure out how accurate these CATS were in evaluating your performance.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[resolehtmai]

Thanks for the reply Rich. I am saving gmatprep tests for a later date. But as you said , i will use the third party tests just to gauge my progress, and not let the high scores make me overconfident. even i felt that its unlikely to score 710+ with a 60-65% acuracy.

[imskpwr]

....OR ANYBODY who has anything to do with GMAT. Please tell me what do you think of the following analysis.
I am feeling that Kaplan CAT's are too generous in awarding points. Here are the details of the two CAT's I attempted :
CAT 1 - 710
Quant - 92%ile
Correct - 24
Incorrect - 13
Accuracy - 65%

Verbal - 83 %ile
Correct - 25
Incorrect - 16
Accuracy - 61%

CAT 2 - 740
Quant - 98 %ile
Correct - 26
Incorrect - 11
Accuracy - 70%

Verbal - 74 %ile
Correct - 23
Incorrect - 17
Accuracy - 58%

I barely crossed 700 in my 6 MGMAT CATs.

I mean 740 even after 58% accuracy in Verbal. Come on!! I know that its not about the number of questions one gets wrong, but the level of questions that are wrong and blah blah blah.

What makes the scores more surprising is the following list of highlights in CAT 2
-6 incorrect (including a string of 4)out of the last 8 questions VERBAL.
-A couple of strings of as many as 4 questions wrong in VERBAL.
-5 out of 10 incorrect in the first 10 questions in VERBAL, which are the most crucial questions as per my knowledge. I mean this alone shouldve pulled my score to 650.
-6 consecutive incorrects out of last 7 in QUANTS. 98%ile even after this is unacceptable.

I had heard a lot about Kaplan CATs being overly strict & demoralizing and what not. But I simply cannot accept these scores as a representative of my disastrous performance.
And 98%ile in Quants after 11 incorrects? Thats a 51 as per mba.com's percentile to score conversion table.

These kind of scores will make a test taker over confident and relaxed, which is wrong.
I am eagerly looking forward to all of your comments.

I too faced the same issue today.
I took cat-8 from my kaplan on-demand gmat course and the result was 720. In my earlier kaplan tests, I scored 690 ( both in cat-9 and diagnostic test). 720 is definitely very odd at this stage because the accuracy in verbal was only 58%.

[[email protected]]

Hi imskpwr,

720 is within range of 690, so that performance shouldn't be surprising. The GMAC statisticians admit that the GMAT score you earn will typically be with + or - 29 points of your potential. So scoring 690 means you COULD be scoring 720. These little shifts in score usually come down to a handful of questions that you either get correct or incorrect, so focus on keeping the silly mistakes from happening.

I'm excited for both of you. You're scoring at a high level and you're right on the edge of elite. Those missing points won't be hard to find either...

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[avik.ch]

I do not think that the results are so unrealistic that it can be ignored. Kaplan Verbal are much tougher than GMAT Prep or any other test prep companies verbal. For instance consider some higher lever RC or SC questions - some will just blow your head off !!

In fact, in many high level question, the percentage attempt of the correct answer is as low as 22% -22% is the probability of getting a question right just by guessing. So when people are playing at that level ( both of you above), I do not think that percentage accuracy does mater. For instance, getting all 770 level question wrong doesn't harm you, if your target score in 750.

[resolehtmai]

I am eagerly waiting for next week coz i have decided to give some test other than Kaplan. I have used all my MGMAT tests too. So I will mostly try veritas free test or 800score or maybe gmatpill. Will update my scores in this post. Till then I am looking forward to more comments.

[imskpwr]

I am eagerly waiting for next week coz i have decided to give some test other than Kaplan. I have used all my MGMAT tests too. So I will mostly try veritas free test or 800score or maybe gmatpill. Will update my scores in this post. Till then I am looking forward to more comments.

Still Undecided..........
If you put a lot of hard work, then things like that will demoralize you.
I am eagerly waiting for next to next week for my OFFICIAL GMAT PREP-1 exam. After that I can decide whether to put more efforts or to rejoice over these scores. Until then, these two weeks will be a bit difficult with mixed feelings.

[injotb]

Well, I had a very similar experience.

I just took Kaplan CAT 3 (as part of 5 Kaplan Tests that come free with the purchase of the book)

I scored a 680 (92% Quant and 58% Verbal)

I think Quant is pretty accurate as I got a similar percentile on my first GMATPrep Practice Test. But verbal is way off the mark. In verbal of Kaplan , I missed last 4 questions because of lack of time + had a 60% hit rate with rest of the questions . This is a disastrous performance as per my standards. But still got 680 . This is weird.

I am going to take another Kaplan this week with an aim to finish it in time , lets see how the score turn out.

My previous scores:

GMATPrep 1: 710
800score CAT's: All in range 660-690

[injotb]

Yesterday took another Kaplan CAT .

This time finished both the sections on time. Here is the split

SCORE: 710 (Q50 , V35)
Got 12 Wrong on Quant and about 19 Wrong on Verbal.

Also , Verbal RC's in both the CAT's were tough and Quant was easy on both as compared with the GMATPrep.

[resolehtmai]

So I attempted Veritas test this week. Here are the details :
Total 700 (90%ile)
Quants : 49 (83%ile)
Correct : 25
Incorrect : 12 (adequately distributed)
Accuracy:68%

Verbal : 37 (81%ile)
Correct : 24
Incorrect : 17 (2 RC sets completely wrong)
Accuracy: 59%

This looks like a more believable score & a closer representative of my actual performance than Kaplan.

[imskpwr]

Below are the details of my Manhattan Cat-5
Attempted on 01/08/2013

Overall : 660(81%le)

Verbal: 36(79%le) 15 incorrect

Verbal Break-up
Sentence Correction : 12 correct/ 15 total
Critical Reasoning : 10 correct/ 14 total
Reading Comprehension : 4 correct/ 12 total

Quant: 44(63%le) 18 incorrect


Quant Break-up
Problem Solving : 11 correct/ 22 total
Data Sufficiency : 8 correct/ 15 total


Since I am planning to give GMAT by mid sep'13, any guidance from our instructors as to what needs to be done now

[resolehtmai]

same boat imskpwr . atleast you are getting decent CR accuracy. In my case CR & RC take me down everytime.

[imskpwr]

same boat imskpwr . atleast you are getting decent CR accuracy. In my case CR & RC take me down everytime.

It's faulty to say that a one-eyed man is better than a blind. ACTUALLY, both are handicapped in some way.
What EQUATES US is our need to BEAT gmat ASAP.

From my experience, you can say that even both CR and SC are not sufficient. RC too plays a very major role in your verbal score ie without it you cannot cross 40.

[injotb123]

roselehtmai,

I have very similar results too.

As I posted earlier , I got a 680 on Kaplan CAT 2 without even finishing the it on time.

Then I took three more Kaplan [CAT 3, CAT 4 and CAT5] with scores: 710,710 and 750 (the last one had a 5-6 repeat questions).

Then I took Veritas today and scored: 700 (Q49,V37) , with a pathetic CR accuracy of 23%

Next I am taking the Princeton CAT, lets see how it goes.