I would not spend much time or money on the last 5-10 and rather focus on the top 5

There are 6 full-length tests
There are 5 CAT's

• 3 on the CD (I am verifying this part)
• 2 online

1 Non-CAT paper test

Hi!

I just purchased the Kaplan 2010-2011 Premier, basically only for the included Tests. I just started the Practice Test 2 online (the first one is referred to be the paper test in the book). I only completed the Quant section so far and paused it.
What really surprised me was that it was really, really easy! No real hard question and no advanced concepts. Before, I read that the Kaplan tests are known to be extremely difficult. Before, I did 4 Manhattan GMAT tests, which were much harder.
Does anyone know what's behind this? Are the Kaplan Test on the Cd, the Test which are really hard and the online tests are used to train you from low level to later harder level (maybe practice test 6 is harder)???

So in the meantime I completed the test, my result:

Overall: 650
Overall Percentage: 83%

Quant: 44
Quant %: 93%

Verbal: 39
Verbal %: 89%

Quant: 86% of Questions right
Verbal: 73% of Questions right

I'm quite confused. First of all the are the score a bit inconsitent with what I know/expect from the GMAT scoring. a quant score of 44 = 93%??? normally you need something around 49 to be in 93% as far as I know?
Additionally, Quant % of 93 + Verbal % of 89% equals overall 83%??? Normally as far as I know, if you score about the same % in each section, you should be in a higher % overall?!

Also for the verbal part, I was quite shocked how (relatively) easy the Questions were.

Of course, the overall score of 650 is not great, but I heard that you can easily add 100 point on that.
Anyway, I don't know how to interpret this score.... I still found the Q's quite easy and would expect the real Q's to get more difficult.

Does anyone have similar experiences? Did I maybe picked a practice exam which was made up only of easy questions for people who just started preparation? How comparable is the difficulty of the Kaplan Questions itself to the real questions?

BTW, I am aiming for a score of ~730 (Q:90%; V:70-80%)

Any input would be highly appreciated

Thanks,
Tobias


edit: okay, I just learned, that this test was an linear test and no CAT test... good that this is only told, once you review your score not sure though if the linear test is in any way representative for a CAT test?

If I use GMAT prep multiple times(more than 2 times), what is the chance that I will get repeat questions ?

Here is a link to a thread with supposedly all SC questions and answers (no explanations) extracted from GMAT Prep: extracting-all-the-questions-from-gmat-prep-93555.html

As far as I know I don't think anyone has done this for any of the other question types.

What's the opinion on McGraw Hill's practice tests? I read some posts earlier that said the book isn't very helpful, but what about the tests that come on the CD?

I have "McGraw-Hill 2008 Edition GMAT" and "McGraw-Hill Conquering GMAT Verbal and Writing."

I did a practice test on the CD that came with McGraw-Hill 2008 Edition GMAT and scored a 660. Is that test computer adaptive? Or is it simply just questions by order (so my actual score on the GMAT would be much lower than 660?)

Thanks for your help!