Stupid Kaplan test.....my experience
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23 Jun 2006, 11:12
So I went to the Kaplan free test event near my house and took it. Couple of initial observations
-Sort of shoddy class room, the first room was hot and uncomfortable. Thankfully we were shifted to another one.
-Only 3 people (me and 2 other women) were there taking the test. Had to write on a uncomfy small right hand writing board. One girl next to me answered only a couple in quant and left ...
-I had heard Kaplan tests were tough and scoring is even more skewed - I wanted to see how I did after about 21 days of prep. Quant was reasonably hard but I felt Verbal was harder.
-I got the test sheet graded immediately, and got a 590. I was like WTF?!! in Quant I had 22 correct and 15 wrong, was very disappointed. Verbal was better - said 88 percentile. whatever.
-Came home and looked at some board discussions where most people were doing badly on Kaplan compared to others, so I felt my 590 wasn't all that bad.
-Then I began to check the answer keys behind my test booklet (they let me bring it home) and cross corrected my answers (I had the graded computer result that also shows my answers and the right answers). And then, once more, WTF WTF?!!! the answer keys on the booklet weren't matching the one on the computer results. If I followed the answer key on the booklet, which I believe is the right one, I got 29 correct and 8 wrong. A rough calculation showed my score should have been around 630-640, not all that bad.
-I remembered then that they asked me to write the test code on the paper, and I guess the computer uses that to grade the answers. And it probably graded me using the wrong answer key.
- I then checked the first diagnostic paper test in the Kaplan premier book, and found that the answer key there matched exactly with the answer key the computer used, and the paper test in the book WASN'T the same test in my even booklet.
Go figure. Anyone had similar experiences? How did you do in the kaplan tests?