MGMAT CAT experience

[karunya25]

I took my fourth practice CAT and scored lower than what I expected. I found the Math part to be brutally hard and the VErbal section had weird CRs.
Anyone here who had a similar experience? I think this test was REALLY ridiculous.

[StaceyKoprince]

All of the tests use exactly the same algorithm and pull from the same database of questions. There is no objective difference in the tests.

There can always be subjective differences, however. On some tests, you will get a few more things that are in your areas of weakness, and that test might feel a lot harder.

Also, as you get better, the test does feel harder, because you are answering a harder mix of questions. This is counterintuitive, because we're used to (paper) tests getting easier as we learn more - because paper tests are static and don't adapt to our increasing ability level.

What I see happen a lot is this: someone gets better, so they start getting harder questions. Then, they get caught up in some of those questions and they mis-manage their time. They then either play catch-up by rushing on other questions, or they just run out of time at the end and have to guess - either way, they get questions wrong that they shouldn't have gotten wrong. And then the score drops.

Could that have happened to you?

[karunya25]

Stacey, appreciate your time and your reply. Thank you.

Well, may be it did so happen that the questions are from a major weakness are of mine. However, I did notice that time was a huge mess for me. I had some 15 mins to spare in each of the sections and that has never happened to me. I guessed a lot on the Quant part and that was one reason for so much time left. In the verbal section - I know what I did - I did not read RC carefully!

I will take another test soon to see where I stand.
also, I have 3 weeks to my test and I've not completed the OG 12 yet. is it too late? I have finished a few questions though(the ones in the mgmat books)

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay - yes, 15m left is definitely too much time left! It's just as much of a problem to finish too early - if you're rushing that much, you're going to miss a lot of questions just due to careless mistakes.

You don't need to finish all of OG12, but you do want to do enough of the problems that you feel comfortable with the different question types and content areas - so just keep working through them.

[karunya25]

Thanks Stacey. I shall improve on my timing and also do as much OG questions as I can.

[StaceyKoprince]

Do a decent number of OG problems, but really make sure you're studying / learning from them. Don't just do them in order to do a bunch, without really extracting all the lessons you can from them! :)