My Knewton Prep experience
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09 Aug 2012, 08:49
So a couple months ago I decided to try the Knewton course because of the 50 point guarantee. I had not taken the GMAT, so I took their initial practice GMAT to provide a baseline for my 50 point improvement. I scored a 600 on the practice test, with horrible quant scores and good verbal scores. As I progressed through the course, I took the remaining practice tests, on which I scored:
Past exam reports Date completed Q V Total
Diagnostic GMAT 05/15/2012 at 12:56AM 33 41 600
Practice GMAT #1 06/03/2012 at 11:16AM 35 33 560
Practice GMAT #2 07/30/2012 at 10:06PM 30 46 610
Practice GMAT #3 08/01/2012 at 12:55PM 29 43 580
Practice GMAT #4 08/03/2012 at 03:02PM 30 38 560
Practice GMAT #5 08/04/2012 at 03:28PM 37 48 680
I took the actual GMAT on the 6th and scored a 700 (43Q, 42V). I don't think I did too well on the IR section (hadn't practiced it much), and I probably did fine on the essay but it will take 20 days to find out. Anyway I'm happy with the improvement, though Knewton didn't do much to build my confidence. As you can see from the widely varying practice GMAT scores, it appears their tests (particularly the quant sections) are much harder than the real thing. While this is great for practicing, Knewton acts as if these are very accurate indicators of how you will do on the GMAT, which only caused me to worry about how I would do on test day. I don't see how an accurate test can vary from 560 to 680 in a two day period. I still recommend the course, as it did help me to improve 100 points, but I wonder what I would have scored on an actual gmat for a baseline instead of their Diagnostic GMAT, which may have also been much harder than the real thing.
Chris