I gave my first CAT practice exam yesterday (Cambridge CAT), just to see what my score level was. This exam does not provide an exact score but gives a range. I've been having crazy work days and its difficult for me to give an exam at 8am, last night I sat down for it at 10:30 pm. I believe this made me a little lazy.
I did everything wrong from the strategy point of view, especially in areas where I felt I was good. Some things I noticed:-
1. Did not run through the standard error checks for sentence corrections. I've noticed that when the sentence is short, I tend to do it all too quickly, possibly because of overconfidence. I got some really simple SCs incorrect, and some more difficult ones correct.
2. I did best on CR, and this is because I know that CR takes a lot of concentration.
3. For RC, I actually got lazy while looking for answers.....messed up a few simple ones.
4. For math, I got complacent (yes we engineers are an egoistic bunch when it comes to math skills
), and blazed through the section, ended up with 6-7 incorrect, which I had no business getting wrong. To add to this, the math on the Cambridge test is simple compared to what we've been hearing about the real exam. Certainly a lot of work needed here. I need to have solved something similar to what I see on the exam, and this means I am rusty. Need to start thinking of different ways of solving problems and also practicing a lot more than I am right now. This is going to be fun.
The score indicated 40-46 in verbal and 44-46 in math. Placed me at 670-690.
I have a lot to learn from this, the first is, don't get complacent, or the GMAT will make you pay. The second is, time of day one takes the exam is important. Definitely don't take it when you know you're slower than usual. For me the most productive times are morning, just a couple hours after I've woken up, and evening.
Yes, I know all my friends here on the forum have been saying all of the above, but you know what they say "you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink"
I will post a debriefing of all my practice tests, hopefully it will help some of you.
I had planned on taking the GMAT end of August, but most likely will postpone by 2 weeks.