feed back from instructor.

[alexei600]

hi there.
I am scoring on practice tests around 700 some days 730 some 690. I am looking to get a solid 600 on the real GMAT. Should I keep on passing the 760 line on practice exams or ?
Thanks is advance.

[StaceyKoprince]

That range is typical for standardized tests - you never score exactly the same thing.

Some questions for you:
(1) Did you mean to say that you want a 600 on the test? If so, you are ready - get in there and take it. :) If you actually meant to type 700, read on.

(2) Did you take the test under 100% official conditions, including essays and length of breaks? Did you see questions that you'd seen before or were all of the questions new?

If the tests were "clean" (no repeated questions, taken under official conditions), then you are in the range that you need right now to score 700. Will you definitely score 700? Nobody can guarantee that, of course. But take it and see what happens. If you get it, you're done. If you don't get it, you just study a bit more (and you'd have to study more anyway if you didn't take it). The schools look at your highest score, so there's no real downside here, unless you've already taken it multiple times.

If the tests were not "clean," then it's possibly that your scores were artificially inflated. You need to take a clean test to see what your true scoring range is.

[alexei600]

Thanks for your reply.
yes I meant 600(six), some of the problems did reapear. I have taken another one today MGMAt and got 690. Re; conditions I take w/o a brake and put extra fatigue on my brain before the exam.
P.S I find the easy ones 500-600 verbal section to be more difficult than the 700. SC in particular.
Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Ah, okay - so you're discounting because of the repeats. So the question is how much your score is inflated - are you seeing just a few repeats or a lot? How do you handle repeated questions? Do you get them right all the time - even if maybe you would get them wrong if they really were new? Do you spend normal time on them or do you finish them faster than you would if they were really new?

If you can, take a test where you won't see repeats - maybe GMATPrep or a test from another test prep company. See how you do there - and take it under 100% official conditions, including the essays.

P.S I find the easy ones 500-600 verbal section to be more difficult than the 700. SC in particular.

That happens sometimes - your strengths and weaknesses may not be matching the strengths and weaknesses of the overall population. When that happens, you'll just have to do what you always do when you get a question wrong: identify WHY you got it wrong so that you can go study whatever you need to study in order to fix that gap!

[alexei600]

On my last MGMAT I scored 740, with a a few repeat questions, alas on the real GMAT I scored only 560. I find it is quite of flactuation. Turns out to be that the MGMAT practice tests are no where close to be a good score indicator. The verbal part on Real thing was way different from MGMAT practice exams.

[StaceyKoprince]

We do track results across all of our students and the standard deviation from last practice test to real test score is 50 points.

Obviously some people do fall outside of that range, by definition, but you would be doing yourself a disservice if you simply blamed it on the practice test. You need to figure out why your score dropped so significantly so that you can take concrete steps to prevent it from happening again next time - otherwise, you can't go in with confidence knowing that you have fixed all of the problems.

Read this article and do the analysis described:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26 ... went-wrong

If you would like, you can share your analysis here and we'll tell you what we think.

Note: you don't mention fully how you were taking our practice tests (with the essays, for example?) nor how you handled repeats (answer them more quickly or even immediately, thereby giving yourself an artificial time advantage? answering correctly even when you got the question wrong the first time, thereby giving yourself an artificial scoring advantage?). Those things can artificially inflate your score quite a bit, depending upon the variables.

[alexei600]

To make my test more realistic I did the MGMAT with essays, whereas on the real test I skipped them. The repeats I have solved from A to Z. So here is the story.
I have sighned up for anothet test prep company for way lower fee.
Let see what they have to offer and then we can compare.
After all I might publish a book re; prep industry.

[terence.battle1]

You took the real test without doing the essays? Am I missing something here? If you were scoring in the 750 range on the practice tests and scored a 590 on the real test then you really missed something. Even if the verbal was harder on the real exam your quant should of compensated based on what you said your practice test scores were. Manhattan quant is harder typically then gmatprep quant so not sure where your breakdown was here.

[StaceyKoprince]

I just want to caution people about skipping the essays on the real test. According to my source at GMAC, they reserve the right to cancel test scores for what they consider "irregular behavior" and one of the possible triggers is skipping the essays.

They will not automatically cancel your score if you skip the essays, but they have explicitly said that they MAY if they think that indicated some kind of irregularity. So just be very careful about skipping the essays...

[alexei600]

I do another prep course, and i find that the verbal with Manhattan is not as good as for international students. The Quant is fine, though 'M' lacks some intermidiate lessons, which really hurt the score. The intermidiate stuff does not get enough attention, whereas the Uber tough stuff is not as important to score in 700 range. The RC and CR basically are not properly covered.

[StaceyKoprince]

I *think* you're saying that the other material you've found is working better for you than our material. I'm glad you've found something that is working for you. Good luck!

[alexei600]

Yes, basically I am saying that the 'other' stuff, which cost 5 times less, works out much better for the verbal part. Many topics such as: comma splice rules, inverted s-v sentences ,amoung many other, are not properly covered with MGMAT. SC and CR basically are not covered at all! The only topic that is well covered is number property.
I will be back with more updates.

[alexei600]

Hello,
I am back with more updates.
The RC is way easier at MGMAT then the actual test. The topics ,written on GMAT, are ussing a much more complex language. The correlation causation MGAMt doesnot explain well enough ither. On the other hans the double matrix approach is quite good with MGMAT.
More to come.

[StaceyKoprince]

thanks for your feedback

[alexei600]

I am back with updates. I found that MGMAT doesnot cover well the issue of comma splice. The whole issue of independant clauses. In addition, the coordinate geometry is poorly covered with you guys.
More to come.