Practice tests a bit misleading?

[rath.tyler]

Hello all,

I just finished up taking my 2nd GMAT a few hours ago. I took my first one 6 months ago or so, scoring a 640 - 53rd percentile math, 89th verbal. I knew I had left easy points on the table in the quant sections so I wanted to retake it. However I went to Europe for 3 weeks. Luckily, when I got back my company was sponsoring a MGMAT course. Sign me up! So I took the course, really stayed on top of everything. Did all the homework, all the labs, never missed a class, etc. etc. I really thought it was going well, I got a 700 on my last MGMAT test. The entire time my already strong verbal skills just got stronger and stronger. I went from 89th percentile to 96th. Definitely helped make up for my weak math.

Sure enough today, as the computer sat calculating my score, and I expecting to see a 680+... bam, a 640. Again. My math has improved to the 68th percentile, while my verbal had receeded to the 68th percentile. This has to be some sort of mistake, right?

Anyway, I'm already involved in applications, I've already sent in 2 applications. I don't know how much more GMAT I can take, a family crisis has arisen and I'm definitely stressed, but I know that score is not reflective of my abilities. Well for math, probably, but definitely not verbal. Should I just move on? I can't blame MGMAT, but certainly can't feel a bit disappointed after so much hard work.

[StaceyKoprince]

Something certainly happened to cause your verbal score to drop that far - not even talking about your practice test scores, because we have a real first test score with which to compare. We want to figure out what that is.

First, call or email the office right now. You're eligible for a free Post-Exam Assessment. This is a phone call with an instructor to figure out what went wrong and come up with a plan to re-take the test. Call 800.576.GMAT or send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment.

Couple of questions: were you studying verbal much during the course or was most of your attention focused on quant? When you took practice tests, did you take the essays, too?

I'm a little worried that you (understandably, given the data) spent a lot of time on quant while not worrying about verbal. Next, if you were taking the practice tests without the essays, then you might have undertrained in terms of the stamina required - you would have been used to finishing the test around the same time that you were starting verbal on the real test.

Finally, given where you started out on verbal, yes, your verbal test scores may have been inflated (though not by that much because there isn't that much inflation possible when your score is already so high). You were scoring 85+ percentile from the beginning; there aren't enough questions in the database for 6 full tests only at that high level. For later tests, the algorithm would have been forbidden from giving you questions you'd already seen, so it would have had to give you easier questions, but it wouldn't penalize you for the fact that harder ones weren't available, so your score would have been inflated (if this happened).

Well, those are some ideas, but contact the office right away to ask for the PEA - then you and the instructor can dig into it and try to figure out what went wrong. (Oh, and congrats on the lift in your quant score. I know you're not happy with your overall score, but at least you know you accomplished that!)

[rath.tyler]

Well let's just say that there is some good news. That would be that I am done with the GMAT, forever. Given all the effort I put into the GMAT the first couple of times, including being on the ball for the entire MGMAT course, I only improved 20 points after the PEA. (From a 640 to a 660) The PEA was not really tailored to my issues, as is evident in my score "improvement". I basically scored the exact same score as I had without MGMAT's course, just 1 point higher in the quant. So was 4 extra months of work and the price of the class worth it? Certainly not to me, but given all the other great reviews of MGMAT, I am in the minority. I will say though that I was performing in the low 700s on my practice exams, which just makes me wonder what could have been... very disappointing indeed.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm very sorry to hear that. If you would like, certainly do email or call the office to provide more detailed feedback - we would like to know where we failed you and what we might be able to do to improve things for future.

Good luck with applications / business school.