I've been slacking on my studying, and considering the fact that I'm planning on applying to at least two schools in the second round, I finally scheduled by test yesterday for next Tuesday. Until then, I'm planning on taking at least one practice test a day (for me, finding my rythm on these things is the most important thing). This is my experience so far:
Kaplan CAT1: 620
Kaplan CAT2: 640
Princteton Review CD Test1: 710
PowerPrep CAT1: 740
I have a question for those here who have taken the real thing: How reflective are these tests, both in scoring and content, to the actual GMAT?
I took my first PowerPrep test last night (I haven't started going through the
OG yet) and, despite a problem with the software telling me that my time had run out in the quant section when I still had 55 minutes left, was surprised by how well I did. I finished both sections in time (Quant with just a couple minutes to spare once I accounted for the software foul-up and the Verbal with 12 minutes to spare) and was surprised by how dramatically different the content was from the Kaplan CATs.
I only ran into one probability question, and that was a data sufficiency question. I managed to miss the first question in quant because I was extremely careless in how I read the question, but didn't miss another until the 18th question, so I wonder how that affected my score and the questions I saw later. As for the verbal, I was surprised by how short the reading comprehension passages were and the fact that the critical reasoning questions were not written in a deliberately confusing manner.
Is my experience on the PowerPrep test what I should expect on the real thing?
My experience with Kaplan has been dramatically different, much moreso than I have expected even knowing that the Kaplan CATs are more difficult. Each time I've taken the Kaplan CAT, I've been extremely short on time in the Quant section and had to randomly guess the last 5 to 7 questions. I've finished the verbal sections, but each time with less than 5 seconds left. Meanwhile, I've found the Kaplan Reading Comprehension to be exceedingly long, the Critical Reasoning questions to be deliberately confusing and ambiguous, and the Sentence Correction questions to largely be awkwardly written, even when correct.
Princeton Review gave me no explanations and the CD is a joke, so I've kind of disregarded that, but I figure it's at least another data point.
I'm curious to hear what other think of how these practice tests compare with the real thing. Sorry for writing such a lengthy post.