Anyone taken the 800 score CATs?

Hi Randude,

That Verbal Scaled Score DOES seem dubious. Are you sure that it's not a "percentile"?

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

Hi Rich,

I confirmed...its not the percentile. Here's the screenshot:

Hi Randude,

I suppose that it's mathematically possible (however unlikely) that you could get that many questions wrong and still score a Q47. IF....you were getting (mostly) the Experimental questions wrong and IF... you didn't make any silly mistakes on any 'gettable' questions. This is to say that you can't really get 17 random questions wrong and consistently score that high on the Official GMAT.

Have you taken any other CATs? What were your scores on those?

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

Yes, I did take practice (freely available one). I felt the quant was at a good level and was much harder than the actual GMAT quant. Verbal was comparable to the actual test level.

You absolutely cannot get 17 questions wrong in Verbal and get a V47 score. A V47 scorer will normally have two mistakes in Verbal. Even if you answered all your experimental questions incorrectly, there aren't enough experimental questions to get you to 17 mistakes. But experimental questions cover all difficulty levels, so most of them will be easy for a V47 test taker - a V47 test taker will almost never answer more than one of them incorrectly, and will most often answer all of the experimental questions correctly.

Note that the Quant section is different. You can have a lot of mistakes and still get very high Quant scores. The sections are different because the scaled scores translate differently to percentiles - a Q50 score is not the same thing as a V50 score. It is really the same, in percentile terms, as a V39 score. And just as the Q50 test taker can afford to make several mistakes on hard questions, so can the V39 test taker. The Verbal scoring scale really goes a lot higher than the Quant does, since the Verbal scale is capable of differentiating among test takers deep into the 99th percentile (any score between V45 and V51 is in the 99th percentile, while a Q51, the highest possible Quant score, is only in the 97th percentile). If the Quant scale instead went up to 60, so the test distinguished between test takers above the 97th percentile, then to get the Q58-Q60 scores, you would have almost no margin for error, just as you do now in Verbal if you're aiming for a V49-V51. But the Quant scale stops at 51, and to get a Q50, you can make a lot of mistakes, as long as those mistakes are mostly on the hardest questions.

Anyway, there is definitely a bug in the scoring of that test, and that graph they present you at the end is just not how the scoring algorithm works. Since they're not implementing the algorithm correctly, it's not surprising their scoring is off. If you want to get a good estimate of your Verbal level, there's no substitute for the official GMATPrep tests.

I have also taken a few of them and found the scoring to be inconsistent with other tests, so gave up and didnt try more!!

I got a 780 - q50 and v45. Is this even realistic? I can believe the quant because i have been scoring q50-49 in other test preps too, but verbal was a huge jump from my usual v35 to v45

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Hi ts30,

If one of your score results is an 'outlier' (meaning that you can't ever seem to score at that level except in that one example), then THAT score result is likely unrealistic for some reason. It could be that the CAT itself was unrealistic or it could be that you took the CAT in a way that was unrealistic. Regardless, if you can't repeat that result on a different 'brand' of CAT (or on the Official GMAT), then you're correct to question the accuracy of that outcome.

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

Thanks Rich,

I thought so too! Its way too good to be true

Hi ts30,

V45 means you have an amazing grasp of the Verbal section. The only way to bolster this would be by taking a GMAT prep CAT.
There are two free CATs and you can buy 4 more in the form of Exam Pack1 and 2.

I purchased the GMAT Option 1 (5 CATs) from 800 score last week and received no notification as to how to use the tests, no login details etc. I have sent 800score six emails and left a voicemail, no answer has been received. So ... a pretty crappy service.

In my opinion the 800 score tests are really off putting, specially verbal, and side track you from the actual GMAT aura. I'll break down my experience section wise.

Quant: Quant was not that much tricky but rather lengthy and calculative. If you keep getting questions correct, the test will offer you questions which are intensive in calculation or you may have to consider 'n' number of cases to get to the answer. I could never get a Q50 on 800 score tests even after getting 27 out of 31 correct, whereas I was consistently getting Q51 on Veritas Prep, GMAT club tests & GMAT preps.

Verbal: There was a time when Verbal CAT's of 800score tests shattered my dreams of scoring >740 in GMAT (imagine your test being just a week away) as I was getting a score in the range of V32-V36, but somewhere deep down inside me I had a feeling that something is wrong with the questions. So breaking down section wise:
CR: Unusually worded. The correct option was almost every time illogical and out of the blue. FYI CR was my strength (with an accuracy of 90%) and I would get only 40% CR questions correct on 800 score tests.
SC: Most of time tested meaning based approach rather than grammar rules.
RC: Too lengthy. in 2 out of 5 tests I got 5 RC's with 6-7 paragraphs in each. The questions were also sometimes not worded properly.

In short IMO if you want to improve on your time management skills then go for 800 score tests because after giving 5 tests I feel that the only purpose of the tests questions was to not let you finish the test on time.

They're too easy in my opinion. I took 5 tests from 800score towards the end of my preparation.
My scores:
Total V Q
690 38 46
700 39 46
770 49 48
710 47 40
690 38 46

My real test score: 680 (47 Quant, 37 Verbal)

About 800score quant, i can tell you that the questions seemed much easier than in the real test, but the scoring algorithm of 800score is a little conservative in scoring the quant section so the scores aren't that high and are close to my actual score. Also, the algorithm clearly messes up sometimes because it gave me the same score for two tests even though I could clearly see that I had performed better in one of those.

About the verbal, I can tell you with certainty that it's too easy and the algorithm tends to blow up the scores sometimes. The SC questions especially were much simpler than in the real test.

You can use it for practice considering it's cheap, but don't rely on the scores as an indicator of your real score. Preferably, get the official mocks or Manhattan's tests.