ARE THE GMAT PAPER TESTS ANY GOOD?

Question

Hi Christine,

I used them – and IMHO, they are very good for verbal: the level and ‘feeling’ of questions were very similar to what I got on real GMAT. Perhaps, you will get some repeats, but not many. Math is very easy there, so it can be used only for ‘building stamina’-purpose. The score results from that tests are also not quite real - I found them to be very optimistic.

Good luck!

bb · Answer

Also see this discussion: has-anybody-practiced-retired-gmat-paper-tests-from-mba-com-45891.html

I think the value is that these are real GMAT questions, but the weakness is that there only a few hard questions. I have a set as well and did not find much different from the Official Guide.

May be a better investment to get the Verbal OG or Math OG in addition to the OG 12.

phoenix09 · Answer

I thought the paper exam questions were some of the old questions in the OGs? No?

bigoyal · Answer

Hi Guys,

I attempted a GMAT Paper test 14 yesterday night. Here are my observations:

Quant and Verbal divided into three sections each, with different time duration allocated:

Sec 1 (CR) 16 questions - 25 mins
Sec 2 (PS) 16 questions - 25 mins
Sec 3 (RC) 23 questions - 30 mins
Sec 4 (DS) 20 questions - 25 mins
Sec 5 (SC) 22 questions - 25 mins
Sec 6 (PS) 16 questions - 25 mins

What I noticed is that:
1. The paper test starts with easier questions and level of difficulty increases as you reach the end (This is applicable to each section separately) .

2. For PS, there were two sections (with 16 questions in each). One was little difficult as compared to the other, with focusing more on word problems.

3. Quant was easy as compared to CAT tests (except for the last few questions in each section). Verbal was comparatively similar to CAT tests.
Note: My observations here can be flawed, because I'm quite good at Quant, but not very good at verbal. So its possible that in CAT I would have never came across the toughest verbal questions.

4. Negative marking of 0.25 points for each incorrectly attempted question. For each correct one, you get 1 point. No -ve or +ve marking for un-attempted question.

5. It seems, paper format stresses more on Time, rather then difficulty (As in verbal we have 80 mins for 61 questions and Quant 75 mins for 52 questions)

6. Although answer key has been provided, but explanation for answers is not available

.

7. Few questions overlapping with OG11, though number of overlapping questions is very less.

Overall a good practice, specially for timing each section. I'm planning to practice on other test papers as well.

. 7. Few questions overlapping with OG11, though number of overlapping questions is very less. Overall a good practice, specially for timing each section. I'm planning to practice on other test papers as well.

rsaraiya · Answer

Lot of questions are repeat but I think the paper GMAT grading is bit tougher... I feel!!!

greatps24 · Answer

Hi Experts,

Can anyone advice on relevance of paper test?
I am planning to take them to improve my timing and stamina before the CATs.

Will this help?

Regards

GMATNinja · Answer

Well, doing official questions is never bad for you. If somebody buys you the paper tests as a gift, thank them, and do all of the questions. They can't hurt.

On the other hand, the paper tests are from the early-to-mid 1990s, so you're looking at some pretty old questions here. They're still useful, since the main quant and verbal question types haven't changed all that much since the 1990s, but these questions aren't necessarily as fresh as, say, the GMATPrep Question Pack.

Each paper test contains roughly 110 questions, and just over half of those questions are verbal. Since the paper tests aren't adaptive, the questions give you a broad range of difficulty levels; if you're a relatively advanced GMAT student, plenty of the questions will seem painfully easy to you, especially on the quant side. A relatively small proportion of the questions are tougher, so if you're already in the 650+ range, you'll be challenged by a minority of the questions.

The biggest issue is that plenty of the GMAT Paper Test questions appear in other resources (various editions of the GMAT Official Guide, the official GMAT quant/verbal supplements, GMAT Focus, the GMATPrep tests, and the old PowerPrep tests). How many questions overlap, exactly? I'm not certain, since a lot of the questions appeared in really old OG editions or the obsolete PowerPrep tests, and my memory of those is getting foggy as time goes by. But my guesstimate is that 40-50% of the questions appear in another resource. You won't recognize nearly that many, though--unless, of course, you're a connoisseur of obsolete OGs and practice tests. The overlap with the newest editions of the GMATPrep, OG, and quant/verbal supplements is probably in the 15-25% range if I had to guess.

So are they worth it? I guess it depends on the size of your wallet and the size of your appetite for new questions. A set of three tests costs $29.99 on GMAC's website, so you're paying about $10 per test. That's not insanely expensive, but it's not necessarily cheap, considering that relatively few of the questions are both A) challenging, and B) don't appear elsewhere.

If you have the money and the time to do them, go for it. But they're not a great substitute for the Official Guide or the quant/verbal supplements or the GMATPrep Question Pack.

GyMrAT · Answer

GMATNinja  is it a good idea to use these paper tests before i take any of the Official GMAT prep tests? I have a bunch of these & want to use them for Verbal practice, however i am not sure how many questions overlap in the 2018 version of GMAT prep. I got them in the study material provided by an older friend, i suppose he bought them almost 10 years ago.
 I am yet to give any of the official practice tests & am afraid my score might not be true if i encounter familiar questions from the paper tests. I have exhausted the Verbal(only CR & SC) from OG's 2010 till 2018, including the supplements & looking for some additional official practice for VR.

Will appreciate your guidance on this.

GMATNinja · Answer

The paper tests will definitely overlap with the first two GMATPrep exams (the free ones, which have had the same question banks for a really long time). I'm not sure exactly how much overlap there is, though -- enough to be unfortunate, but I don't think that it's enough to totally invalidate the results or anything like that. And the paper tests massively pre-date the four newer GMATPrep tests (Exam Pack 1 & 2), so those shouldn't be harmed at all by the GMATPrep tests. So at the very least, you'll still have four full GMATPrep tests that are unharmed by the paper tests.

The other thing you could consider is the LSAT for CR and RC, since you've already gone through all of the old OG editions. More on the pros and cons of LSATs in  this article .

I hope this helps!

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