When to target Gprep/Manhattan CAT questions practice ?

[patil.ambar]

I understand that it is very to study important from the right sources .

I found that on the Manhattan forum itself we have a huge collection of Gprep Questions and Manhattan CAT Questions and Most important i.e. Ron's responses . I would like to cover most of these since these are supposed to be the most representative.

But here is my question :
I would like to go through most ( and if time permits all ) Gprep questions and Ron's responses on this forum . I am sure doing this will help me prepare immensely . However , if I do these questions before taking tests , it might inflate my Gprep score. it might give me an edge and inflate my score in the tests and that is not the true representation of where I stand .

I am confused as to when I should go through these quality questions available on the forum itself .

Please advise.

[StaceyKoprince]

You are exactly right that you don't want to expose yourself to these questions before you take the practice tests - otherwise, you'll inflate your practice scores and you won't be able to get a true picture of your scoring level.

Use the GMATPrep and MGMAT CAT posts as ways to check your work and get explanations AFTER you have taken the tests. So, for example, let's say you take a GMATPrep this week-end. Then, you can come onto here and search for the text of specific problems that you received when you took the CAT. If the problem has already been posted, then you can read the existing discussion and explanations, and you can add your own questions or comments. If the problem has not yet been posted, then you can post it yourself and ask any questions that you'd like to ask.

You can take GMATPrep twice without question repeats. Some people will take each GMATPrep a second time (for a total of 4 tests), even though they probably will see some questions repeated. After that, it's not a good idea to take GMATPrep anymore, because you'll see too many repeated questions. At that point, then, you could just start going through all of the posted GMATPrep questions on the forums to find ones that you didn't see while you were taking the exam yourself.

A couple of other things:
- when taking GMATPrep, time yourself on every question; that's super valuable data and GMATPrep doesn't keep track
- if you are taking a test on which you might see repeated questions, follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have. Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.