Hi!

This is my first post to the GMAT club forum--

I have been studying since Fall 2009 for the GMAT and I went into this really nervous as I am not a good standardized test taker...I got a 1250 on my SATs back in the day but pulled a 4.0 in the first 2 years at Carnegie Mellon (my Dean actually told me that according to CMU's chart, they anticipated my first year GPA to actually be more like a 3.0 or slightly less, never knew they had such a thing to analyze students when they first enter college!)

I've always thought my Quant was the super weak side but it appears that its slightly stronger than my Verbal though sometimes they're also just even!

Anyhow, here are my stats so far:

Asian
Female
28 (just turned 28
Carnegie Mellon University Undergrad: Double Major History Policy & International Relations with a Chinese Minor
3.83 GPA
Target Schools: USC, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and Wharton (though that's a crazy thought at the moment with my GMAT)


December 14th, 2009: GMAT 560 29V/38Q

(felt super disappointed as I had hoped for a 600 at least and I had been going thru the Manhattan GMAT books on my own and OG problems and practice tests and I THINK I had been scoring roughly 620s in the MGMAT practice tests and the GMAT Prep Tests)

regrouped, got a private tutor, studied with her twice a week for 3 hours at a time trying to ensure I knew my math/number properties in and out but I think her math wasn't as strong as I had hoped and there were times I figured stuff out before she did =(
and often times, for Verbal, she just said she didn't know how to explain why the correct SC answer was better than the 2nd best one

Along the way though, I took more practice tests (but I dont know if the practice paper tests from GMAT were not good practice tests as they have different structure, different timing and also it goes from easy to hard which I think makes it easier for me anyhow since I feel "eased" into the problems

I also have a tendency to hold onto a problem even if itstoo hard or too much time has passed, especially the initial 5-10 math ones I encounter, I feel like I freeze, but with the official GMAT paper tests, I felt much more at ease since the first 5 are usually pretty easy for each math section

Has anyone else found it helpful to use the GMAT official paper tests from before or just skip those completely?

2/11/10 Paper Test 14 660 37V/45Q

2/17/10 Paper Test 31 650 36V/44Q

2/22/10 Manhattan GMAT CAT#6 690 39V/45Q

2/24/10 Paper Test 28 670 38V/44Q

3/2/10 Paper Test 42 680 42V/42Q

3/6/10 GMAT Prep #1 690 40V/44Q

3/13/10 GMAT Prep #2 670 38V/44Q


AND THEN

March 15th, 2010: GMAT 560 36V/32Q
I was stunned by this setback, especially such a huge drop in math

I couldn't even tell it was going so badly as I seem to be a very bad gauge of how these tests are going...sometimes I have felt like quitting while taking my practice tests just cos I felt so frustrated with not knowing how to do some of the (so many in my head) math problems and I feel like I can't focus on the Verbal section...but I always pushed through and all those times I atleast scored above 650!

THis time during the actual GMAT (actually both times in December and in March most recently) I felt calm I thought, I didn't feel like I did amazing--since I dont think I could be THAT confident or I may jinx myself LOL...but each time the score floored me.

Anyhow, I enrolled in the Veritas Prep course on Tue/Thursdays in the Tysons, VA area and am wondering if anyone has any tips...I was on a pretty rigorous practice test-taking schedule before and doing many problems...and now I'm trying to focus my energy on areas I need more work in (knowing number properties IN AND OUT AND mixed with other types of problems, rate problems and sentence correction)

I've read many stories of people improving by leaps and bounds and that really has helped me keep my head up...



Also curious if anyone else has had experiences with Veritas Prep that they would like to share...and how accurate the Veritas Prep's GMAT Simulator CAT exams are???

I am taking my first GMAT practice test since my March 15th disaster...doing it on the Veritas Prep GMAT Simulator CAT exam #1 but would like to know how other people thought about the test itself and how it compared with their experiences in MGMAT and GMAT Prep etc

Thank you for trying out the new test and posting your feedback! And congratulations on the score – while on the surface it may seem a little high (and I probably wouldn’t use it, as you said, as the “forecast for the lowest score to be expected”) I dug into the item responses in your particular test and it looks like the scoring behaved as expected based on your performance. (One clarification: In your post you mentioned that you left 8 questions unanswered in the Quant section, but it looks like you actually only left 6 unanswered.)

This probably isn’t all that important/helpful for your actual GMAT, but in the way of explanation – computer-adaptive tests score and “penalize” (for unanswered questions) using numbers you’ll never see (called “theta estimates”) and then convert those numbers to the scaled scores and percentiles. So on a scaled score basis the penalty for omitting questions doesn’t look that harsh, on the theta basis it was significant…you went from theta that gave you a “high” 49 to a theta that have you a score of 48. And based on your answer pattern, that 78th percentile that corresponds to a 48 looks to be just about right.

And while we have this discussion open – according to GMAC the way that the unanswered-item penalty is scored (and how it’s applied on our tests, too) is that your theta score is multiplied by the number of questions you answered, then divided by the number of questions total. So if you answered 31 out of 37 quant questions, your theta gets multiplied by 31/37.

These tests are fairly new and we’re still monitoring the scoring pretty closely so we really do appreciate the feedback. The scaled scores are pegged closely to the percentiles they represent, so your 48 in our system indicated that your performance on the quant ranks better than about ¾ of test-takers in the system. To date we’ve seen quite a few “my Veritas score exactly matched my official or GMAT Prep score” and others that are off by some, and we’ll continue to monitor that feedback to see if any shifts are necessary.

Most importantly, we hope that you use the diagnostic tools (how your pacing compared to the norm, whether you fell for trap answers, etc.) to improve your performance for your upcoming test day, and we thank you for your feedback!
_________________

Brian

Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Save 10% on Veritas Prep GMAT Courses And Admissions Consulting
For a limited time, receive access to five Veritas Prep Computer Adaptive practice tests when you purchase a Veritas Prep GMAT book! Buy Now!
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Thnx Vudsri ... just took the actual GMAT yesterday and got a score of 740 (Q50,V40) .. So, it's slightly less than the veritas test .. even from my experience i felt that veritas test was a bit easier than the actual GMAT .. however,GMATprep was the most accurate indicator (I got exactly 740 on GMATprep also) ... so,maybe you should take a GMATprep test and rely on that rather than on any other test,and if it's slightly less than the veritas score,you can be doubly sure about the accuracy of the GMATprep score

Hey HumptyDumpty,

Thanks for the debrief, and it's great to hear that our scoring holds up so well to GMATPrep!

As for your situation, a few thoughts:

1) There just isn't a better predictor available than the GMAT Prep tests, so if you're worrying about which tests to trust, trust that one.

2) Regardless of the scoring algorithm / question quality on that most recent test you took, there are plenty of factors that could have contributed to a lackluster performance - your stamina might have been sapped as you near the finish line, you may have been a little distracted having done so much work leading up to it, etc. And not to make excuses for you, but take that lesson as "When I'm on I'm mid 700s, but if I let my attention wander, if I don't go in well-rested and focused, etc., nothing is guaranteed". There's something to be learned from that most recent test. Try to replicate the conditions from those 730s on test day.

3) Maybe most importantly...YOU CANNOT FAKE A 730 on GMAT PREP! Unless you saw a bunch of repeat questions, that 730 isn't a fluke, and with a very-similar breakdown 730 on the Veritas test you have some validation that it most certainly wasn't a fluke. Be confident - no one scores 700+ on one of those tests by accident, so it's pretty clear that the MGMAT test was the outlier, for whatever reason. You have 700+ potential this week, so be confident in that, and keep doing the things that led you to those back-to-back 730s recently and you should be successful on test day!
_________________

Brian

Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

Save 10% on Veritas Prep GMAT Courses And Admissions Consulting
For a limited time, receive access to five Veritas Prep Computer Adaptive practice tests when you purchase a Veritas Prep GMAT book! Buy Now!
Enroll now. Pay later. Take advantage of Veritas Prep's flexible payment plan options.

thanks for your reply/welcome!!

hopefully i will hear something from others who have taken the Veritas GMAT simulated tests though it seems a bit new too so maybe thats why not many have tried it out...

Took the Veritas GMAT simulated CAT #1 test yesterday

610 34V/41Q

It's online, nothing to download...

Interface was okay, very white background, you can adjust the font size, has a timer that counts down at the top left corner and the problem number you are on at the top right corner

Overall Thoughts

-felt that the Math was a bit too easy, I've missed many more on MGMAT GMAT tests and scored higher on the Math section
-don't recall any exponent problems which i was surprised about
-data sufficiency problems didn't seem challenging enough
-Verbal seemed the most off
-near the tail end of my Verbal, i think i had about 7-8 SC problems straight which is unusual right?
-also the RC passages were very difficult to read, not in a challenging way but the subject matters were also off...philosophy and ethical issues...i didn't have a science RC passage

I think I'll stick to the MGMAT and GMAT Prep ones for now and if I run out will hit up the Kaplan 2009 CD for more testing...and also work on OG problems for math and verbal since I know verbal is the hardest to replicate questions on...

Hi!

This is my first time posting, and I tried VEritas practice test and as I agreet with casnoopy's overview of the test.

calsnoopy: You may think I'm making this up, but I've been getting extremely similar grades as yours! Even the actual test's score! It's really frustrating to get a score way different from the scores you've been getting on the practice tests. Trust me, I know it...

So are you attending any prep currently? I'm planning to take a crash course, as I'm taking another test next month. Not sure which one would be worth the bang. I was planning to take the MGMAT, but it seems that I have to take the private tutoring, as they don't have any courses for such short period of time.

So how 's studying going? Did u decide to take the Veritas course?

hi,

I just took the veritas free test and got 760 (Q51,V46) .. i think it's quite accurate ..

very good to know! thank you

On other hand, may be my veritas score is an anomaly ... dunno