Does this Kaplan CAT score seem right to you?

Question

Hi all,

I took my second Kaplan Cat just now. My first was a disaster, I had no time to finish each section and completely bombed. I ended up getting a 510. Today, I felt a lot better during the test. I even finished every section with time to spare (last time it was only the essays that I finished on time). I felt pretty good like I got over 600. I turn it on and see a 710. I'm ecstatic, I know that the Kaplan test is difficult and this beat my previous high of 660. I've actually been getting relatively low scores lately. The 510 was the low. So I look at what I got right and wrong and see that I only got 73% of Quant right and even less, 71% of of verbal. Yet I somehow get a 79th percentile in Quant (ok I'll buy it), but a 98th percentile in verbal (with less right). I mean math the first question that I got wrong was #9 and verbal was #12. So I got a bunch right in a row. But still 98th percentile in verbal with 71% right? Is there a glitch? This doesn't seem right. Thanks.

GmatNY86 · Answer

Compare it to the pencil and paper diag where I got 83% right but got 81st percentile. There's something awfully fishy. Did getting the first 11 right have that much of an effect? 98th percentile?!

GmatNY86 · Answer

One more thing. I actually got a higher Quant score 47 to Verbal's 45. Something seems screwy. Or are graded on different scales where 45 is better than 47? So weird.

andrewmitchell · Answer

Thanks for your message.

I work for the GMAT business at Kaplan and I'm a Kaplan GMAT Elite teacher. Your situation sounds very unusual. Send me a message with your name. Or send it to Kaplan GMAT's facebook or Twitter pages. I'd be more than happy to look into it for you and reply to you personally. :-)

Best regards,
Andrew

Best regards, Andrew

GmatNY86 · Answer

Thanks Andrew. It sort of bothers me. Also last time I took it for some reason it only registered as if I took 33 Quant and 36 verbal. So that's twice that something's wrong. Anyway, I'll send you the information via PM.

optiquezt · Answer

GMATNY, any update on what your situation is? It would be helpful to add your experential data point to the pool.

GmatNY86 · Answer

Well I asked my instructor the next day in class (it was only a one day wait, but I was so perplexed I wanted to ask here the day it happened!). Basically it was what I suspected, I got a bunch right in a row. Especially in verbal. He basically said that if you get a bunch right in a row to start, you can get every other one wrong afterwards and the score won't really change. That was actually the sub, my regular instructor looked at it also. I didn't ask him, if it seemed right or not, but I did say that I don't know what to make of my ridiculous 200 point jump in 2 weeks (yes that's right, the previous CAT, I got a 510 in). He didn't say that it seemed off. So it seems correct.

I'm not sure how much I like this emphasis on the first 10 questions, it can clearly be a positive, but a silly mistake, or a difficult question throws everything out of whack. I went back to my math, where I got the first 8 correct. The 9th question was very easy. I don't know why I didn't get it, it was a silly mistake. I wonder how much that lowered my grade. The next question that I got wrong, was difficult, but I knew how to solve it, because I've seen almost the exact same question before. But I made a silly arithmetic error (also would've gotten it right, if I recognized that it was a Pythagorean triplet multiplied by 2. Still, I shouldn't be making mistakes when doing a simple computation like 26^2 - 10^2. Especially since the hard part was out of the way. If I got the first right and got this one later on in the test (everything else being right), who knows what I would've gotten. But I digress...

bb · Answer

I believe you were planning to take GMATprep this weekend - is that still happening?

GmatNY86 · Answer

Not the GMATprep. Another Kaplan CAT. And I'm incredibly disappointed with the result. I got a 610. Which is actually perfect symmetry. I got a 510 for my first test and a 710 for last test. But since last week, I finished reading my Manhattan GMat word translation book and thought I could at least keep pace. Well, one of the questions (that I actually had on my previous test, and got right when I went over it, without looking at explanation), I completely choked on. It was a question about averages. I just completely choked with experience of having the exact same question before too. The math was MUCH MUCH harder this time and the passages were tougher too (and verbal overall). But then I got ridiculously easy questions a couple of times for math (which worried me). One was something like how much -5-(-7) larger than 5-7. The second one, I don't quite remember, but it was "-2". What a joke of a question. I guess, I answered a bunch wrong before that.

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Does this Kaplan CAT score seem right to you?

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