ACCURACY OF ECONOMIST GMAT FREE PRACTICE TEST?

Hi delmoneyy,

The scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is far more complicated than most people realize. Since that algorithm is proprietary, no GMAT company has an exact match for it, thus CAT scores can vary a bit based on the 'biases' involved in their respective designs. The most realistic CATs available are the 6 from GMAC, but the CATs from Kaplan, MGMAT and Veritas are all 'close enough' to the real thing that they will provide you with a relatively realistic score assessment (assuming that you correctly take the CAT in a realistic fashion). As such, you might want to use CATs from any of those sources as you continue to study.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

I agree with AjiteshArun. Why don’t you take an official practice exam? Could you do so and report back with your score breakdown?

Hi I received a 710 on official CAT 1. Should I expect around there on test day?

Hi delmoneyy,

There are a variety of factors that can influence your performance on a CAT (and on Test Day), but if you took this CAT in a realistic fashion, then you appear to have the capacity to earn that type of Score on the Official GMAT. It's important to remember that the GMAT is really good at giving each Test Taker the Score that he/she EARNS, so you should always be thinking in those terms: what work are you willing to do to EARN that Score on Test Day? Will you take the proper notes, stay organized, make good decisions, etc? If you consistently commit to doing that work, then you'll find that most of the questions that appear on the GMAT are fairly straight-forward.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi delmoneyy,

First off, 710 is a great score! That said, there are many things to consider regarding whether you’ll be able to match that score on test day. Two key factors are HOW you have been preparing up to this point and HOW you took that practice test.

Let’s first discuss how you have been preparing. Although I do not have any information about your preparation routine, ideally your study plan allowed you to individually learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. By studying in such a way, you can be confident that you systematically improved your GMAT quant and verbal skills and filled most of your knowledge gaps. Thus, when taking practice exams (or the real GMAT), you can be confident that you have a limited number of weaknesses and can perform to your peak ability level on test day. On the other hand, if you haven’t systematically addressed your weaknesses and filled gaps in your knowledge, you may have lingering weaknesses that will show up when you take the actual GMAT.

Another aspect of how you have been preparing that could affect whether you will score as high on the actual GMAT as you did on that practice test is the degree to which your preparation involved using materials based on the questions that appeared in the official test you took. If you have seen many practice questions that are based on the patterns of the questions that appear in GMAT Prep 1, your score on that test might have been a little inflated, and you might score a little lower on the actual GMAT than you did on that test. In fact, people often score somewhat lower on verbal on the real GMAT than they scored on their practice tests because they learned patterns that they could use to answer the verbal questions on the GMAT Prep practice tests, but those patterns didn't get them to the correct answers on the actual GMAT. In other words, they learned enough to hit their goal scores on practice tests but hadn't really learned what they needed to in order to consistently arrive at correct answers to any tricky question the GMAT might present.

In addition to having a thorough study routine, it’s important that you took your practice exam under realistic testing conditions. Those conditions include:

1) Taking the test at a library or another quiet location rather than taking the GMAT at home.

2) Not skipping any sections of the test, i.e., completing the essay and Integrated Reasoning section. After all, by skipping those sections, you give your brain an artificial “rest” that you won’t have on test day.

3) Not taking any additional breaks or doing anything that you could not do on test day (such as pause the
exam and go for a walk).

4) Doing your scratch work with a wet-erase marker and pad similar to those provided at GMAT test centers.

Ultimately, if you followed a thorough study plan and took your practice exam under realistic testing conditions, there is no reason why you can’t hit 710 again on test day. That said, it wouldn’t hurt to get more data. So, when you have time, you should take a few more official practice exams to see how you score. Once you take another exam, feel free to report back here, and I can provide some further advice.

Just scored 750 on my second Economist Sim. I had never scored 720 prior to that, I also believe the accuracy is somewhat doubtful...