Manhattan GMAT CAT Tests

Hello Everyone,

Wanted to get everyone's opinion. I've heard the Manhattan GMAT CAT test's are a bit harder than the real thing, is this true? I'm doing a retake of the GMAT as I bombed the first shot (didn't respect my opponent enough [GMAT], among other things).

So test #1
Overall: 530
Q 28
V 35

Now that I got that embarrassing statistic out of the way I want to note that I've been away from academia for a little while (7yrs) and needed to brush up on Quant. Although I was doing MUCH better on my Kaplan practice quizzes and attribute the low score on test #1 to nerves and all the classical mistakes.

So I have two reasons why I ask about the difficulty of the MGMAT CAT and Quizzes as compared to the real thing;

REASON #1;
I'm taking an MGMAT course (9 session) and before starting you have to do a math diagnostic quiz to see if you need supplemental Quant studies, I scored 90% (18 out of 20), it wasn't luck as all of my solutions matched almost exactly to the MGMAT solutions. This was a timed quiz with exactly 2min allocated per problem (20 Q's in 40min), so just like the real thing. According to this quiz I don't need any supplemental Math studies outside the scheduled 9 session course, although my first GMAT experience would say otherwise (Q 28).

REASON #2;
The second exersise to prep for the 9 session course is to take a full CAT exam to see where you are (for benchmarking purposes, pretty standard practice). Well, I took it last night and although I skipped the AWA to get straight to Quant and Verbal problems, I did take the test right after a full day of work (and I mean FULL), so there was some mental exhaustion. I didn't do great but noticed a sizeable jump overall (except verbal). Overall: 590 Q37 V34. Although I'm far from pleased by this performance my Quant score jumped substantially, if I could realize an equal jump in my Quant score during the 9 week session (9pts -> 46) while shoring up Verbal I'd be extremely pleased.

Just wanted to get some opinions on this, everything I did was timed, quiz and CAT test. I've done some studying with MGMAT materials since my first GMAT but nothing overly intense.

What do you guys think?

Thanks!!!