Strange behaviour of MGMAT CAT

[PatrickBateman]

I recently completed MGMAT CAT#5.

I'm pretty sure that something messed up.
It reported a score of 780 (Q51, V45).

But when I look at the detailed question list, my last 10-15 questions on both V and Q were 600-700 range questions.

I got them all correct.

Not sure what's going on here, because it just seems like I didn't get very many 7-800 questions at all.

[mdinerstein]

Hi Patrick,

What happened at the end of your CAT is that you ran out of all 700 - 800 level questions in the CAT pool. This happens when a student is particularly strong in a section and consistently scores in the 700+ level for all question types. This brings up two questions:

1. "Is my score correct?"

In short, your raw score is going to be skewed higher due to this issue. However, because we have assessment reports, you will still be able to analyze your performance on specific questions and use specific takeaways from the results to guide your studying. In fact, we highly recommend looking at your CAT Exams in this manner as opposed to simply looking at the raw score. We don't administer the real test and our practice questions, while re-calibrated for accuracy, are still not going to be a good predictor of your true score on the test. In reality, no practice test can, which is why many students often have issues with them no matter which company's exams they use. Yes, it's true that some are better than others, and we believe ours to be on the higher end of that spectrum, but none will ever be truly predictive. Instead, we recommend students download the GMATPrep Software from MBA.com to receive an accurate assessment of their overall score before they take the real test. If you have exhausted all the high level questions from our CAT Pool, this would be the next step. Chances are, you will do well because it's not easy to deplete all of our high-level questions.

2. "When are you going to fix this?"

Manhattan GMAT is going to tackle this issue soon by vastly expanding upon its CAT pool. The issue of maxing out the CAT pool in a given section comes up rarely and happens primarily to students already prepared for that section of the exam. Furthermore, we have enough questions to provide students with 6 full-length exams as it is. However, we are committed to quality, and are planning to roll out a thorough revision of our CAT pool.

I hope this answers your question. If you need anything else, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best,

Michael Dinerstein
Marketing & Student Services
michael@manhattangmat.com
800-576-4628
212-721-7400

[Guest]

I got the same score
MGMAT #5: 780 (51,45)

The score seems misleading since I got 3 incorrect in Quant. and 10 incorrect in Verbal.
In verbal, i have 5 incorrect in the first 12 questions itself !!
Can someonce advise.

My score in the 5 tests so far have been
690 (48,36)
710 (48,38)
710 (47,40)
730 (50,39)
780 (51,45)

Are the MGMATS programmed to be progressively easier ? Or they simply show better scores in the later tests ?

Over the 5 tests, I consistently had more than 10 incorrect In the Verbal section; In Quant the number of incorrect ans improved from 19 to 4.
Seems the score is highly skewed towards the performance in Quant section.

I am just anxious to find out whether my performance is actually improving, or there is some glitch in these tests.

I guess I'll find out when I take the gmatprep tests.
However, will appreciate if someone kindly sheds some light on my dilemma.
I am appearing for the GMAT next monday.


Thanks,

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry I'm only getting to this now - I didn't notice your post because it's up in the sticky. For future posters: make a new regular post so we make sure to see your posts and answer them more quickly. I know the current poster has already taken his / her test by now, but I'll still respond in case others have the same questions.

First, the algorithm is not programmed to work differently on any test - it works the same way every time.

There is a limitation however: there are "only" 1200 questions in the pool. That's generally enough for most people, but you started at a 48 in quant, which is already very high, so you may have begun to exhaust the pool of the highest-level quant questions. Because the algorithm is not allowed to give you questions you've seen before, it may be giving you some easier questions if you have already used up, for example, the 95th+ percentile 3-D geometry problems.

That's partially why, in quant, you've had so few questions wrong. Expect to get more than that wrong on the official test. :)
On verbal, you've had more improvement over time (because you started from a lower score), so you started with lower level questions and then only recently did you start knocking verbal out of the park too. That's why your # wrong has stayed relatively level - and that's more like the real test, actually.

The overall moral, though, is that you're doing a great job. Keep up the good work (er... or, since you've already taken the test, hope it went well. Let us know how you did, if you're willing to share)!

[bsliu17]

This happened to me as well. I got 780 ( 51Q and 45 V). I was quite elated until i realized that I had all easy questions ; ('

Is there a way that we can do only those 700-800 questions?

[StaceyKoprince]

Unfortunately, no, because that would just introduce different problems (such as getting too many questions of one type, etc.).

I actually have a question for you - if you're doing that well consistently, when are you planning to take the real test? It sounds like it may be time to get in there. :)

[Guest]

I have two questions about CAT exam:

1.I was taking my first exam and on the Verbal Section my computer/internet connection( I am not sure what happened) got frozen. When I was able to continue, I was back on the same question I was working on.

I scored 460 and Verbal percentage was too low. My question is : did I messed up or technical or/and connection problem might be a cause

I am just wondering what happened, because I got much higher score on GMATPrep.

2. after finishing my first CAT exam, the second exam did not appear below my first one.

Does it take time ?

Thank you in advance,

Best Wishes,

Tamo

[Briehan_in_SS]

Hi Tamo-

In order to answer your question, I'd really need to be able to look into your account. If you can shoot me an email at studentservices@manhattangmat.com with your account username, I can get you some answers.

Best,
Brie Truesdell
Student Services Associate
800-576-4628
studentservices@manhattangmat.com
www.manhattangmat.com