GMAT Official Practice Exam n.4 - Is it realistic or easy?

[EmanueleB476]

Hi Guys,
and thanks for everything you do for this forum.

I really need an expert opinion about the GMAT Official Practice Exam n.4: is it realistic or too easy?

I am asking because in my last simulations (Manhattan Prep), two weeks ago I was between 610 and 640, with Q42 and V34.

Today, I tried the Official Practice Exam n.4 and scored 720 (Q49 and V40).
I think it was too easy, in particular math. Have you already experienced this issue? Why is that?

Thank you very much for any help you can give me to understand my situation!
All the Best,

Manu03

[StaceyKoprince]

As far as I'm aware, all of the official practice exams are built the same way, so I don't think one of their exams is easier than the others. But a lot of people do think that the official exam can feel easier at the highest scoring levels. (It's true in my own personal experience. I've gotten an 800 on the official practice exam multiple times but the highest I've ever gotten on the real thing is 780. )

The official practice exams have a separate question pool for each exam (contrast that with ours, which has one huge database that all of our exams draw from). The potential drawback to having a separate question pool is that the pool may end up being a little too shallow at the ends (low and high). So my guess is that this is true for the official practice exams and so it can be easier (depending on your strengths and weaknesses and the luck of the draw) to get a higher score.

But the difference you reported is a pretty big difference—I don't usually see that big of a difference between ours and theirs. You have been studying for the last two weeks, so part of the difference is probably that you did actually get better. And part of the difference may be what I described above.

I have a third potential hypothesis to add to the mix: How was your time management / executive decision making? When you mess up your timing on this exam, that can have a pretty serious impact on your score—and that can sometimes explain a 100 or even 200-point difference. Our test puts at least as much time pressure on you as the real thing does (and maybe a little bit more—I want you to be overprepared going into the real thing!), so part of the difference may be indicating a time management / decision-making issue.

The real test is more stressful than any of your practice tests because you know it counts this time, and that knowledge can *seriously* mess up your decision-making and time management. So if that was part of what was going on, then I'd want you to address that before you get into the real thing. Our test (in my opinion) does a better job than the official practice test of teasing out this particular issue / potential weakness.

Best guess, I'd say that your score has probably increased in the last two weeks, so you are probably in the upper 600s now (if not higher). I'd want you to take a second exam to consolidate that 700+ score to say that you're solidly up there—but you are moving in the right direction for sure!

Aside: Have you seen / been using this?
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/08/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

[EmanueleB476]

Hi Stacey,
and thanks a lot for your answer.

Of course I tried all of your 6 tests, where I scored from 610 to 640. Then Official Practice 3 - 660 and then official exam much lower. Then, 720 on official practice 4.

I really believe the difference is that in your test, and probably also in the real one, i see medium question for 62 minutes straight while in this practice exam I only saw easy questions (5% to 45% in accordance with statistics from Gmat Club). That makes a lot of difference... 62 minutes on medium questions every 2 minutes or easy question every two minutes makes a lot of difference.

But hey, thanks, I will try another one. The thing is, I only have practice 5 and 6 left. I hope they will be more challenging, or I cannot get a realistic assessment!

I wish you all the best!

Manu03

[StaceyKoprince]

Got it. You can take more of our exams but you might see questions you've seen before once you get past test 6. If it's been a while since you did most of those, though, then chances are you'll have forgotten those earlier questions—so that could be worth doing.

You can also retake the official ones, but because the question pools are shallower, it's more common to see repeated questions. But again, if it's been a while since you did the first two, you could try those again.

Good luck—let me know how it goes!