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)???

check through the forums here, i remember one of the kaplan teacher's mentioning (sometime this week) that they recently played with their scoring algorithm.

i agree with you though: on the gmat let's say you have an 80%/80% split you would expect a final score significantly above that (maybe around 90%) and not anything below - it frankly makes no sense!

when i went through my kaplan and mgmat practice test, i definitely thought mgmat was harder and testing more advanced concepts.

i still feel there is value in the kaplan tests to practice your timing and eliminate careless errors

now i do not know much about their linear tests, the ones i took where all cat (or so it said)
hope that reliefs some worries
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I took one of the CAT's offered in the the Kaplan 2010 Premium online package and scored a 680 for the second time. I am very concerned as I have a target score of 750 and it appears as though I am stagnant at 70 points below my target.

I was searching for a previous thread addressing the scoring algorithm but found none. Can someone give me some insight?

that looks way different than the one i see. i log into kaptest.com to take the practice cats. this is what my 1st one looked like.

yeah, I think the Kaplan tests are quite confusing.... especially, as they seem to underestimate your score.
I read in other forums that Kaplan normally underestimates your scoure 50-100 points and I hope this is still the case
On top of this, there seems to be many different kaplan sources "where" you do the test, as the screenshots are different (on top of that, there is also the Kaplan CD with practice tests)

first of all to clarify some confusion, I think the "linear test" (in my case test #1 & #2) seems to have another distribution of scaled scores and percentiles.
@TimeSquareDesi: it seems your score that you posted was a linear test as well

Now, I did the practice test #5 (CAT-Test) and the experience was quite different.
The Questions were much harder. For the Quant section, I found them still quite manageable (but I feel like I'm already on a real good level for Quant).
This time I scored 50 / 94%
For the verbal part, I was really bad. I felt like I was only guessing every question and scored 29 / 53%.
Overall score 660.

I feel like the percentiles/scaled are quite representative of my performance. Also looking at the chart of bb, if this chart is valid, I would have score more like in the 620 region. So potentially, the Kaplan tests might be closer to the real score than I think

so if anyone already cracked the riddle how representative the RECENT kaplan scores are, it would be great to know it.

I guess, I should soon do the official gmatprep to get a good picture where I'm standing

Great thread! Thanks a lot, that was really helpful!!! Seems like you are a verbal expert Now I also have to attack the verbal part!!
Wish you all the best with your MBA apps!

720 Q48/V41 6.0AWA
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Kaplan CATs:
Diagnostic - 650
2: 600
3: 630
4: 670
5: 600
6: 630
GMATPrep: 680
I scored 30V on all of the Kaplan CATs and anywhere from 40-50Q.

Yesterday's actual GMAT (1st attempt): 750, 47/47. 98%

Keep working hard! I used the Kaplan book, did all the CATs online and all the "colored" quizzes as well. I also supplemented this with the OG 12. I found the Kaplan book to be very helpful. The tests taught me a lot about what I needed to work on and how I could make simple mistakes (solving for X when Y=2X and simply answering X). I, too, feared that I would not do well as indicated by my Kaplan CATs. However, the only thing that matters is your performance on test day. Be disciplined in your studies, learn from your correct answers as well as your mistakes. Dominate the actual test on game day.

Bon chance

Well done! This assuages my fears that the Kaplan CATs were not indicative of actual performance... Thanks for the post.
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i am in the process of creating a detailed study schedule and i was hoping that someone could clarify how many "real" kaplan cat's are included with kaplan 2010-2011 premier.

i think they advertise 6 tests:
-obviously the paper test (diagnostic) in the book is not a cat.
-someone else mentioned that the first online test is also not a cat.

does this mean that there are only 4 "real" cat's included with the book?