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[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)
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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 Post subject: Re: MGMAT vs GMATPrep vs Actual GMAT Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:26 pm


ManhattanGMAT Staff
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Posts: 5300
Location: San Francisco 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.

_________________
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT





timo_grund Post subject: Re: MGMAT vs GMATPrep vs Actual GMAT Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 1:55 pm


Students
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Posts: 2 StaceyKoprince wrote: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 Post subject: Re: MGMAT vs GMATPrep vs Actual GMAT Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 6:37 pm


ManhattanGMAT Staff
User Control PanelWebsite


Posts: 5300
Location: San Francisco 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!

_________________
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT


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Dear Stacey,

as suggested I am starting a new thread in order to dive a bit deeper.

Timo

[jnelson0612]

Hi timo,
To me, you seem to be in very good shape for the test. The GMAT preps are slightly more accurate than our tests in determining a likely score outcome; as Stacey mentioned early, their standard deviation is just a bit smaller. Given your most recent MGMAT test, you have about a 2/3 chance of scoring anywhere from 660-760 on the real GMAT based on your MGMAT score of 710. It looks as if you continued to make progress from your last test and have learned and improved a lot as you have studied.

I would not be so worried about your GMATPrep score in June; it appears that the long strings of silly mistakes in both math and verbal accounted for much of the discrepancy. Clearly you have eliminated such mistakes now.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Best,
Jamie Nelson