Took the GMAT Prep Test - How Accurate is it?

Sweet! Thanks for sharing your experience dabots! I'll be studying my SC for the next 3 weeks (along with other questions, of course). If I can lower the amount of mistakes I made in SC, I should be all good.

Most of the math I misread the question or in the end I just ran out of time (I missed 3 questions in a row near the end of Quant)

Alright, more studying to come!

I am in the same boat as you. When I took a first practice test before ever studying and got a 720 I was shocked. I honestly haven't put a huge effort into studying. I look at all the people who have done two months of 3 or 4 hours a day and weekends and am intimidated and jealous. I work to much and have too many demands in my home life. I haven't even gotten through the OG book and I got it as a Christmas present...though I finally have started to make more time to study at the cost of spending anytime with the wife, hopefully she forgives me.

I have a few weeks to go and took a GMAT Prep two days ago and got a 770...If I get within 20 points of that I will be psyched. I am actually taking the next two weekends to focus on it...going away to the mountains (seriously) to remove distractions, like my house that is torn apart in the middle of a renovation.

Good luck, I look forward to hearing another success story.

riverripper, glad to hear others in the same boat. With work travel and friends visiting from out of town, I just haven't been able to put in the 2-3 hours a day, 10-16 hours on weekends, over 2-3 months that everyone else seems to have done. I've already cancelled a bunch of events that I was planning on attending (get togethers, etc...) for the Month of July to focus on Sentence Correction and do OG practice problems from all of the sections. If anything, this practice test score relieves some stress about not having enough time to study.

Hopefully I'll end up with something with 50pts of that score. My original target was 700+ anyways.

When is your test date? Mine is early August.

I actually set my date a couple days ago for July 23rd, it was the first date with a time that wasn't at 9am. I know that I will be much better off taking at 2pm and sleeping in before it than having more time to study and having to wake up at 5am to get ready, travel, and be at the center a half hour early. I figured I needed a date to force myself to cancel plans and make time to study. I dont feel that an extra week or two would do a whole lot for me and I wanted to get it over with before the schools I am looking at start releasing their apps in early august.

Like you I am focusing squarely on sentence correction. Its pretty much the only weak spot in my verbal at this point holding me back. That and making sure I read the quant questions carefully and not missing something like "NOT" in it...that seems to catch me at least once or twice every test.

true that riverripper!

Yeah, for Quant I *really* need to be careful of stupid mistakes. Not sure how to do that other than just seeing more questions and instinctively remembering to check all sorts of stuff. After looking at all the missed answers, I can pretty much answer all of them quickly, so it's not a concept error problem.

Just got my Manhattan SC book, looking forward to reading that the next week and practicing SC questions (with a few other Quant/Verbal thrown in just to mix it up). Will probably try to take the PR CAT this weekend and next weekend and see how that goes.

I set a date also to avoid having to deal with GMAT during app period. Though I'm already spending more time reading how to write essays, get good recommenders, differentiate, and all that stuff than I am on GMAT. Gotta start early!!!

shoot, I'd try to schedule the test for the next day!

gmatprep is very accurate. imho, i think the actual gmat is easier.

LOL, I'm tempted to move the test date earlier... but $50... hrm.

Gave my GMAT today..

Got Q45 V41 710

GMATPrep#1 Q49 V41 730
GMATPrep#2 Q50 V39 730

I feel that the Quant section on the real thing is harder than what you get in GMATPrep. However, I didn't expect quite dramatic a drop in that section tho... sigh.. retake or not ..

not retake. thing bigger picture. retaking a 700+ score is silly.

Well, I somewhat disagree. I got a 710 my first try, but I had a 40 quant (62%), so I retook it. If the score is really unbalanced, I think its worth it to retake. However, bradcc's score seems fairly balanced.

I agree with bherronp that there are many situations in which a re-take makes sense. Unbalanced score is one. Being in an ultracompetitive demographic or significant underperformance in the 1st go are other situations in which it is important to consider a re-take.

While a 700+ score is generally sufficient, it is important to assess one's score in the context of the application demographic and the average scores of that demographic in one's target schools.

Quant seems to be the thing everyone has a score drop in the real thing. Maybe because the nerves affect your math skills more than verbal?

I always find that I'm much more calm when taking the Verbal than when I'm taking the Quant sections.

I actually screwed up the verbal on my first attempt. I believe it was a combination of fatigue and too much caffine & sugar. I didn't sleep well the night before the exam, so I thought some extra coke would give me the energy to get through. I got a 6 on the AWA, and pretty much got my expected score on the math section. But when I got to the verbal, I had a throbbing headache, a pain in my neck (literally), and couldn't focus. As I got towards the end of the section, the only thing I could think about was finishing and getting my result - I couldn't concentrate at all. The result was a verbal score 6-7 points lower than any practice results.

My second time around, I slept well the night before, had a good plan for food/drink, and felt relaxed and energized throughout. I breezed through the verbal section and went from 41 to 51. In many of the reports I have read, people have taken hits on their verbal scores because of fatique and lack of concentration towards the end of a long, tough exam. With the math section, it seems to be more about nerves.

Regarding bradcc's question, if you are in the 60s for quant percentile and you hope to get into a top 15 score, you should retake to get as near the 80th percentile as possible. Many admissions offices have stated that lower math scores raise concerns about an applicants ability to handle the work load. You don't want them questioning that if at all possible.

That's precisely what happened to me in my first attempt. I totally psyched myself out.