Confusing results

[gmatcats]

Hi Everyone- This is my first time posting on here and this forum is great! It really helps to read through explanations and its been a life saver!

I am scheduled to take the gmat a week from tomorrow and I have been getting really weird and a wide range of results.

Mgmat Cats

1) A week or 2 ago 43- Quant 38 Verbal 670

2) Yesterday 47- Quant 33 verbal 670

3) Gmat Prep week ago 44 quant 35 verbal 640


My scores fluctuate so much and my target score is a 700- not sure if I am even ready for the test. Also I find the gmat prep much harder than manhattan gmat- especially quant- Yes i seem to be the only one on here who thinks that. I think manhattan gmat is tedious,long but understandable. Gmat prep I find just understanding the question is half the battle.

Additionally, I am having trouble with verbal. When I practice I seem to have no trouble at all with RC, sc have improved accuracy to 80 percent, and CR 100 percent on the easy questions and 70 percent on the medium/ hard ones. Yet I never perform well on the tests.

Is there any way for someone to look at my mgmat tests and maybe give me a better explanation on my weaknesses as well as concerns about my scores? Thanks a lot everyone!

[jnelson0612]

Hi Everyone- This is my first time posting on here and this forum is great! It really helps to read through explanations and its been a life saver!

I am scheduled to take the gmat a week from tomorrow and I have been getting really weird and a wide range of results.

Mgmat Cats

1) A week or 2 ago 43- Quant 38 Verbal 670

2) Yesterday 47- Quant 33 verbal 670

3) Gmat Prep week ago 44 quant 35 verbal 640


My scores fluctuate so much and my target score is a 700- not sure if I am even ready for the test. Also I find the gmat prep much harder than manhattan gmat- especially quant- Yes i seem to be the only one on here who thinks that. I think manhattan gmat is tedious,long but understandable. Gmat prep I find just understanding the question is half the battle.

Additionally, I am having trouble with verbal. When I practice I seem to have no trouble at all with RC, sc have improved accuracy to 80 percent, and CR 100 percent on the easy questions and 70 percent on the medium/ hard ones. Yet I never perform well on the tests.

Is there any way for someone to look at my mgmat tests and maybe give me a better explanation on my weaknesses as well as concerns about my scores? Thanks a lot everyone!

Hi gmatcats,
Welcome! It's interesting that you find that GMAT Prep test quant more difficult than ours; as you know, you are in the minority in that opinion. :-) Our tests are designed to simulate the real GMAT and overall do a pretty good job. The best predictor of your score is the GMAT Prep test but our tests are close behind as predictors.

Anyway, regarding your verbal, are you doing the practice problems timed? That may make a big difference. If so, I wonder if you are doing problems at a difficulty level comparable to what you are getting on the test. You are doing well so you are getting fairly difficult problems on the test; they are probably comparable to the later half to one-third of each section in the Official Guide and Verbal Review books. If you are doing the more difficult problems in the OG and the VR books, then I wonder if you possibly experience some test anxiety which is impacting your performance. Just some possibilities. :-)

Looking at your tests would absolutely be very interesting and revealing, but unfortunately it's outside the scope of what we can do here. If you are a course student you should immediately sign up for a post-course assessment, and if you are not a course student there is always private tutoring. Otherwise, take a shot at analyzing your tests yourself: http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

Wishing you the best on your test!

[gmatcats]

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for your help. I do get nervous and I think it may very possibly be the reason this happens. I do have a tutor and after getting a 33 on the verbal, we went through maybe 6 or 7 passages of harder levels together and I did not get one question wrong. I don't know why I cant simulate this on the actual test though. Tomorrow I am going to take another gmat prep and really try to just calm down and take it very relaxed and see how it goes. Regarding the quant- I feel gmat prep is much harder because although manhattan gmat is much more tedious- they are much more straight forward. On mgmat cat's its very clear what there asking for- even if its a longer process I'm usually pretty quick with calculations once I know what to do. With gmat prep I find it very difficult to even understand what there asking; there wording makes it so hard. I am hoping between my 43/44 on quant gmat prep and my 47 on mgmat I'll level out to a 46 on test day on thursday. I just don't know how that verbal will hit 40 as well to get the 700 mark. Thanks again.

[StaceyKoprince]

There might also be timing and stamina issues going on. It's much easier to stick to appropriate timing when doing just a few questions - but once you're 10 or 15 questions into a long section, you can lose track and start messing up your timing (which might mean running out of time or finishing way too early, but it can also simply mean spending too much time on some and speeding up on others to make it up - so you still finish on time, but you make mistakes due to rushing on some questions).

I'll second what Jamie said about analyzing your test results. You can share that analysis with us here and we'll tell you whether we think you're on the right track (but you need to do the initial analysis yourself - that's an important skill to develop for yourself :)

With gmat prep I find it very difficult to even understand what there asking; there wording makes it so hard.

Okay, it's really good to know that this is a tougher area for you. Start asking yourself, afterwards, HOW should I have known that they were really asking about XYZ? What are the clues in the problem or the statements? (The clues are there - you just haven't learned how to read them yet!)

Make flashcards that say "When I see ______" on one side and "I'll think / do _______" on the other. You're teaching yourself how to translate from "GMAT-speak" into normal language so that you know what to do! They're really good at writing questions that disguise what they're truly testing... but there are only so many disguises that can be used. So if you start learning what they are and recognizing them, you'll be able to handle a lot more questions in future.

Take a look at this article; it describes the kinds of questions to ask ourselves so that we ultimately do learn how to recognize similar (and similarly weird!) questions in future:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm