can I really improve this much in a week?

[jeremy.hansen]

on 3/26 I took a CAT with another service and scored a 530. I then took the Manhattan diagnostic and realized that some basic math skills were holding me back. Chief among them Geometry. I spent the week going through a Math foundational workbook and just completed my first Manhattan CAT.

Conditions - completed the essays first(giving full effort), and timed each section 75 min, no food or drink taken. During the test I felt like I was doing terribly. Very uncertain in most answers and I had trouble with stamina and focus feeling distracted many times. My eyes also felt tired. I was not optimistic.

My score ..680! Which is at the lower end of my goal range 680 - 700. Obviously very excited by also very skeptical. *Edit: I'm taking GMAT on 6/15*

I ran the Manhattan reports.

Q: 43 70th
V: 39 89th
Total 680 90th

Still low on the quant side but strong on the verbal - which was inline with my diagnostic where I think I got every question right. I read an instructor essays which stated that verbal can be weighted more heavily due do rarity of strong verbal types but this much?

Quant assessment

P/S Avg right 590 2:07 Avg wrong 660 1:34
D/S AVg right 620 1:27 Avg wrong 680 0:58

S/C Avg right 740 1:11 Avg wrong 750 1:13
C/R Avg right 700 1:31 Avg wrong 750 1:47
R/C Avg right 750 1:52 Avg wrong 720 (WTF?) 1:19

Number properties were my worst and my fastest - I assume this means slow down and also study so I'm not guessing as much - basically when I didn't know what I was doing I just guessed quickly.

Algebra was my best and slowest - so I think I need to work on problem recognition - perhaps just practice doing a lot of questions?

My question is two fold - #1 what is the likely hood that these results are accurate? or what are the chances I just go really lucky? Should I take another CAT sooner than I planned which is once every week.

#2 Based on the results where should I go from here. I'm thinking go over all of the questions and determine if I know why I picked the answer I did on the correct questions and mark the incorrect questions as follow up areas. Additionally I've now scored pretty well in the verbal section consecutive times - so maybe just devote a couple hours a weeks for review and refresh - or would it be better to try to really dominate this section and leverage my apparent strength.

I apologize for the length in advance. Any council from instructors and students appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

I don't know why there's such a big difference in your two test scores. You mention that the first test was from another service, so I can't even interpret based on that. (For instance, some companies have a bit of a reputation for "underscoring" the first test to make you think you're a lot lower than you really are. Some companies have tests that aren't truly adaptive, and that can make a difference. Etc.)

I can tell you that our test is built on the same algorithmic theory as the real test and that it's very hard to "game" either the real test or our test. If you did that well, you earned it - assuming you took the test under official conditions, which it sounds like you did.

During the test I felt like I was doing terribly.

One of the weird things about this test is that, the better you do, the worse you feel you're doing. :)

The overall score is not based on what we would normally expect (an average of the two scores), so it's not unusual to see an overall percentile that is outside of the range of the two sub-score percentiles. Based on the two subscores, you're placed into a category relative to all of the other test-takers in terms of how your collective ability ranks relative to the others. You're relatively strong in both categories, and that's more unusual, so you get a higher ranking, essentially.

So what I've noticed from your data:

Why so fast on DS? Can you do better there simply by spending the time you should be spending? In particular, averaging under 1m for wrong answers is WAY WAY too fast. You're losing some points there just due to speed.

Verbal's awesome. Yeah, the RC wrong answer difficulty levels were slightly below, on average, RC right answer difficulty levels, but they're both super-high and close enough, so I'm not too worried about that. (Though do check and see - did you have a careless mistake?)

NP - yes, slow down and study more.
Alg - go back and figure out WHY you were slow. If it really did take you a while to figure out what to do, then yes, study problem recognition. You can start that by going back to look at a bunch of problems you've already done and then, when you feel you've made progress, you can test yourself on new problems. But if something else was going on (maybe you know what to do but are slow with the actual calculations?), then you have to address that.

What to do from here:
I can't speak about the other test you took, but it's not very likely that you just got really lucky on our test (again, assuming you took it under full official conditions).

You should NOT take a CAT every week at this point. Once a week is reserved for the final 2-3 weeks before the test. Before that, it's generally not worth it to take a CAT more frequently than every 2 to 4 weeks. Basically, you use the CAT (a) to test how much progress you've made from your last CAT and (b) to know what to go and fix before you take another CAT. There's easily 2-3 weeks' worth of work out of every CAT you take, so taking another CAT before you're done processing everything from the first one negates reason (b). And if you haven't done everything that you could have done out of the first one, then you're not going to make as much progress before you take the next test, which negates reason (a).

You don't mention whether you're taking a course right now or how you're studying. If you're taking a course, generally follow the syllabus of the course, adjusting for your own strengths and weaknesses. If you're not taking a course, read this article. It will help you to develop your own study plan:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/09/developing-a-study-plan

If you have any questions about the data or what to do after you've started to try to develop your own plan, just let us know!

Also, on the same website above (Beat The GMAT), I have another article coming out in 2-3 days. It'll be called something like "How To Learn From Your Mistakes." Keep an eye out for that - I think it would be valuable for you.