550 unofficial score must be wrong

[snowpimpa]

550-Total 49th % Quant 56th % verbal. I don’t know what went wrong! I previously took the test in October 2006 and received a 540 without much preparation at all. By the way the last time I took the test I went out drinking the night before and had a slight hangover for the test.

But since January I have totally focused on improving by score, I studied 25-30 hours per week, I took a prep course, I mastered virtually every problem in the OG 11 and supplementary verbal and quant review. I also studied and made sure I knew every stick problem in the Manhattan Series work books. I received 650+ on both gmat cats which I took about a month ago and more recently scored a 710 and 650 on the Manhattan cat.

I felt great after finishing the test, that is until I saw my score. I couldn’t believe it. There were only 5 or 6 math questions I was not sure of. And I felt much better on the verbal section than I ever had, thanks to reviewing the Manhattan Gmat sentence correction prep. I even memorized 200 idioms! So my question is can the unofficial Gmat score be wrong? Seriously, all this time and dedication does not seem to correlate to a 10 point increase. By the way made 700 flash Gmat flash cards! So what should I do now?

[beatthegmat]

550-Total 49th % Quant 56th % verbal. I don’t know what went wrong! I previously took the test in October 2006 and received a 540 without much preparation at all. By the way the last time I took the test I went out drinking the night before and had a slight hangover for the test.

But since January I have totally focused on improving by score, I studied 25-30 hours per week, I took a prep course, I mastered virtually every problem in the OG 11 and supplementary verbal and quant review. I also studied and made sure I knew every stick problem in the Manhattan Series work books. I received 650+ on both gmat cats which I took about a month ago and more recently scored a 710 and 650 on the Manhattan cat.

I felt great after finishing the test, that is until I saw my score. I couldn’t believe it. There were only 5 or 6 math questions I was not sure of. And I felt much better on the verbal section than I ever had, thanks to reviewing the Manhattan Gmat sentence correction prep. I even memorized 200 idioms! So my question is can the unofficial Gmat score be wrong? Seriously, all this time and dedication does not seem to correlate to a 10 point increase. By the way made 700 flash Gmat flash cards! So what should I do now?

Hi snowpimpa:

I'm really sorry to hear about your disappointment. You seemed to have a very solid study plan, and great scores on your practice tests. I agree--something doesn't seem to be adding up.

I'm not sure whether you can ask for a re-grading of your GMAT, but it's certainly worth investigating (if you think that something got screwed up).

One thing to think about--if the test seemed easy to you, it's not usually a good sign. That means that you are only answering questions from the easy bin, and you definitely want to be answering out of the most difficult bin possible. A "good" test experience is usually exhausting for the test taker because he/she was dealing with only tough questions the entire time.

Do you have other thoughts as to what could have made your actual GMAT deviate from your practice performance?

Best of luck!

[snowpimpa]

Not really. I did ask to have the test regraded and they informed me the grade was acurate. I am going to take it in a month and see what happens. I will probably use the og 11th and supplemental reviews again. and I will look over the manhattan gmat material again. Does anyone have any sugjestions of any good quant or setence correction material?

[VirtualM]

Hello snowmpimpa,

I had a very similar experience to yours. I studied very very hard for a month, and was getting scores of 690, 730, 700, 730 and so on in my GMATPrep and Manhattan GMAT practice tests. I was very surprised to see that my grade in the actual test was 650, and my quant was at 55%. I also had an easy time with the Math question. At first, I couldn't understand why my math was so much lower than what I got in practice tests. Up to this day, I seriously suspect that maybe the program got a glitch and just kept on throwing me easy questions. But I already asked Pearson to review my case, and they said that every exam is verified and double-checked. The only logical possibility is that I made a lot of careless mistakes. But even then, the result doesn't seem to be consistent with my practice test grades....

Either I made lots of careless mistakes, or Pearson did something to make the scoring curve steeper this year.

[isisalaska]

wow guys, this is scary !
my story is I scored 660 with a CAT adaptative Manahttan review and above 500 with the GMAt official CAT and the day of the exam I only got 490!
I am concerned about the curve getting steeper this year...

[aim-wsc]

Very soon I'll publish an article on this issue on my blog... I have been observing the trend and the relation between GMAT Prep and actual score...

[snapplesf]

Hey guys,

I'm pretty convinved that manhattan gmat is NOT a good indicator of the real test. The best indicator is GMATPrep and I would take the GMATPrep score and then reduce it some.

I was consistently getting 710-740 scores on ManhattanGmat, but got a 610 on my real test. Going for another one this week.. lets see how that one goes.

[aim-wsc]

wow!
all the best, snapple

[scoutkb]

Checkout this post on the MGMAT forum regarding their tests.


https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=46

[isisalaska]

...and that's why the best predictor for you real score is the GMAT official CAT prep

[aim-wsc]

...and that's why the best predictor for you real score is the GMAT official CAT prep

c'mon the name is "GMAT Prep"

[isisalaska]

sorry Johnny...

[jackcrystal]

snowpimpa, how did you do in your 2nd exam. I have exactly same thing happened to me.

[gmat009]

550-Total 49th % Quant 56th % verbal. I don’t know what went wrong! I previously took the test in October 2006 and received a 540 without much preparation at all. By the way the last time I took the test I went out drinking the night before and had a slight hangover for the test.

But since January I have totally focused on improving by score, I studied 25-30 hours per week, I took a prep course, I mastered virtually every problem in the OG 11 and supplementary verbal and quant review. I also studied and made sure I knew every stick problem in the Manhattan Series work books. I received 650+ on both gmat cats which I took about a month ago and more recently scored a 710 and 650 on the Manhattan cat.

I felt great after finishing the test, that is until I saw my score. I couldn’t believe it. There were only 5 or 6 math questions I was not sure of. And I felt much better on the verbal section than I ever had, thanks to reviewing the Manhattan Gmat sentence correction prep. I even memorized 200 idioms! So my question is can the unofficial Gmat score be wrong? Seriously, all this time and dedication does not seem to correlate to a 10 point increase. By the way made 700 flash Gmat flash cards! So what should I do now?

I took test 2 days back and had exactly similar experience. I was getting a score of above 700 in my Gmatprep but got 580 in my real Gmat. I am pretty sure something is wrong with their scoring because I thought I am doing good in Verbal and I got 60th % in verbal which is not possible.

[amitdgr]

I took test 2 days back and had exactly similar experience. I was getting a score of above 700 in my Gmatprep but got 580 in my real Gmat. I am pretty sure something is wrong with their scoring because I thought I am doing good in Verbal and I got 60th % in verbal which is not possible.

@ gmat009

Did you take full length practice tests AWA + Q + V ? Esp when you were getting 700+ on GMATPrep