MGMAT vs GMATPrep vs Actual GMAT

[tim]

No. The only analysis tools i trust are the ones on MGMAT's site, so i will not be looking at your 800score results. Unfortunately having two different people take the tests on our system has so thoroughly confused the question selection algorithm that the tests you took are completely unrepresentative. i'm sorry to have to tell you that something you did has prevented us from giving you a thorough analysis, but you could probably have anticipated that using our system in a way that was not intended might have negative consequences. The rest of you who are reading should pay careful attention - sharing your account with someone else will very likely make the practice tests for both of you invalid!

[phoenix.rkchr]

Hi Tim,

Today, I appeared for official GMAT test and unfortunately could score only 660 (49Q, 31V).
I am not happy with the score and moreover I do not know which schools I can target with this score?

Thank you for your time and concern.

I would like to hear from you whether I should retake GMAT test?
I will have 7 years of IT industry exp by Sep 2011. I am from India. With this profile and with current score, which USA schools I can traget?

Thank you again.

[StaceyKoprince]

In terms of where to apply, I really don't have much advice to give you; we're GMAT experts, not business school experts. There is another folder here called "Ask an Admissions Expert"; they are the best people to ask re: admissions questions.

If you decide, with the admissions experts' help, that you want to take the test again, then we can help you to figure out how to do that.

You mentioned in an earlier thread having taken MGMAT CATs. I will echo one thing Tim said which is that it's not a good idea to share accounts. (And, technically, it's not allowed in your contract - only one person to an account.) In particular, if you are sharing tests within one set of 6, the algorithm can't repeat any questions, so you may not be given a question because the algorithm thinks you've seen it before, even though that would be the best question for you right now - when really it was your wife who saw it before, not you.

If you would like to go back to some of your own tests to conduct an analysis, you can use this article to help:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

If you would then like to come and post the results of your analysis here, we can help you figure out what to do with the information. (But take to the admissions consultants first to figure out whether you want to take the test again.)

NOTE: the admissions consultants will likely want more information from you. Why do you want to go to b-school? What do you plan to do after? In what areas do you want to concentrate? Do you have any geographical preferences or constraints? What did you study and what was your GPA? Do you have anything that allows you to stand out from the crowd, whether work-related, community-related, or volunteer-related?

(IT experience is fairly common, in general, and in particular for applicants from India, so those two things will not help you to stand out.)

[christopherbuckle]

for what its worth
just wrote the real exam. My score was 80 points higher than the best of the 5 MGMAT Cat's I wrote and identical to gmatprep - think questions on gmatprep are far more similar for those looking to get 660-720 seems like MGMAT trains you for the really hard quant problems, with their verbal section comparable in difficulty to the real exam...

[StaceyKoprince]

Thanks for sharing your results!

Our standard deviation from last MGMAT test to the real thing is about 50 points across all students - so about 2/3 of students score within the 50 point range, and about 1/3 score outside of that.

We also track overall "skew" to make sure that, collectively, scores don't skew too high or too low for our entire student pool. We make sure to keep the collective skew to less than 10 points in either direction.

Individual mileage may vary, in other words. :) I'm very glad that yours varied up!

[timo_grund]

Dear Manhattan team,

I am a German student and currently a bit puzzled when it comes to evaluating where I stand in terms of GMAT preparation (scheduled for July 31st). Would you please be so kind and provide any more insight on whether standard deviation from MGMAT to real GMAT or any other improtant parameters have (considerably) changed in the meanwhile ?

I am wondering what I can expect from test day since I see a large (positive) deviation between MGMAT tests (AWA included, timed sessions) to the official prep material:

in chronological order:

May 11: GMAT Prep 1 - 550 (think it was Q 36, V 30)
Mid June 11: GMAT Prep 2 - 590 (Q 38, V 34)
---
Mid June 11: MGMAT free test - 690 (Q 44, V 39)
July 11: MGMAT 1 - 650 (Q 44, V 35)
Today: MGMAT 2 - 710 (Q 46, V 41)

Thank you very much in advance!

[StaceyKoprince]

The SDs are still about the same - about 50 points for our test, about 30 points for the real thing.

You may want to take another GMATPrep just to see what that is now, but no, there isn't a consistent skew one way or the other across all students. Some people do better on GMATPrep, some do worse, some do about the same (compared to our tests).

It looks like you took GMATPrep 2 and MGMAT Free at about the same time; it would be worthwhile to figure out why you did so much better (on both sections) on the MGMAT test. How was your timing on both tests? Did you do them both under 100% official conditions? Did you run out of time, have to guess a lot, have strings of wrong answers on either test? Did you take them at roughly the same time of day? Did you take one right after the other, or did you have a period of several days (at least) to rest in between? And so on.

Analyze the two situations and tell us what you think here.

[timo_grund]

The SDs are still about the same - about 50 points for our test, about 30 points for the real thing.

You may want to take another GMATPrep just to see what that is now, but no, there isn't a consistent skew one way or the other across all students. Some people do better on GMATPrep, some do worse, some do about the same (compared to our tests).

It looks like you took GMATPrep 2 and MGMAT Free at about the same time; it would be worthwhile to figure out why you did so much better (on both sections) on the MGMAT test. How was your timing on both tests? Did you do them both under 100% official conditions? Did you run out of time, have to guess a lot, have strings of wrong answers on either test? Did you take them at roughly the same time of day? Did you take one right after the other, or did you have a period of several days (at least) to rest in between? And so on.

Analyze the two situations and tell us what you think here.

Hi there!

Thanks for your reply. Well, actually I did the 2nd official (590) test two days before the first Manhattan GMAT (690) at roughly the same time in the morning and under the same conditions (only left out the AWAs at that stage).

I did not run out of time in either of the two tests or did feel that I had to guess a lot. The main difference I guess is that I did quite a lot stupid mistakes in the quant section of the official test. While I had a couple of strings of two wrong answers in a row in both the quant and verbal section of MGMAT, I did the first four Quant questions wrong in the official test (in total 10 questions wrong, 2nd half only one incorrect).

The first two in Verbal were also wrong (then quite equally distributed, one string of three wrong answers in the middle of Verbal), but the same was true for the MGMAT Verbal part.

[StaceyKoprince]

The scoring is not primarily based on the number correct, but on the difficulty levels of the ones you answer correctly vs. incorrectly. If you made lots of careless mistakes, that would lead you to get a mix of lower-difficulty questions, and that would make it even more difficult for you to raise your score.

Why do you think you made so many more careless mistakes on the GMATPrep test? You may want to take a look at this article:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm

Note: we're also starting to get into a personal analysis of your issues, while this thread is really for questions about these practice tests. If you want to dive deeper into your individual issues, please start a new thread for yourself; you can copy and paste what we've discussed so far. Thanks!

[raghuism]

The scoring is not primarily based on the number correct, but on the difficulty levels of the ones you answer correctly vs. incorrectly. If you made lots of careless mistakes, that would lead you to get a mix of lower-difficulty questions, and that would make it even more difficult for you to raise your score.

Why do you think you made so many more careless mistakes on the GMATPrep test? You may want to take a look at this article:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm

Note: we're also starting to get into a personal analysis of your issues, while this thread is really for questions about these practice tests. If you want to dive deeper into your individual issues, please start a new thread for yourself; you can copy and paste what we've discussed so far. Thanks!

Hi Stacey,

I have given a few MGMAT CAT's and would like to get some feedback from your analysis. I'll be really grateful if you can help me with some tips on improvement of a score, that seems a bit stagnant to me. How do I PM my details.... Is there a way in which I can mail you/get your feedback mailed to me?

Thanks & Regards
Raghu

[StaceyKoprince]

If you would like free help, then you need to do the analysis yourself and tell me what you think (and I'll help you figure out what to do about it). We do also offer private tutoring if you want a teacher to do the analysis for you and work from there - you don't have to do the work, but it's pretty expensive...

For the free help, use the below article to analyze your CAT(s) and then start a new thread to post your analysis:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

(Note: do share your analysis with us, not just the raw data. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results - figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)