Practice GMAT scores, including Manhattan, vs. actual GMAT performance

Question

It sounds like there are a lot of questions about how practice GMAT scores correlate with actual performance on the test. I thought that it might be helpful to provide details about my performance on practice tests vs. the actual exam. See below -- if others could follow this format, this would be a very simple way of providing multiple data points for those getting ready to take the test. All dates are in September 2014.

Actual GMAT performance (taken on 9/29): 760/ Q- 49/ V-44

Kaplan CAT test 1 (taken on 9/8): 720/ Q- 50/ V-42

GMAC (free) CAT test 1 (taken on 9/8): 750/ Q- 50/ V- 41
GMAC (free) CAT test 2 (taken on 9/9): 760/ Q- 49/ V- 44
GMAC CAT test 3 (taken on 9/18): 750/ Q- 48/ V- 45
GMAC CAT test 4 (taken on 9/28): 770/ Q- 49/ V-47

MGMAT CAT test 1 (taken on 9/13): 680/ Q- 43/ V- 39
MGMAT CAT test 2 (taken on 9/26): 670/ Q- 44/ V- 37
MGMAT CAT test 3 (taken on 9/27): 710/ Q-45/ V-41

Takeaways:

+ Tests from the test maker (GMAC tests) are an excellent representation of the actual test content and difficulty. I would highly recommend using their software (especially as the interface matches that of the test) and starting with the 2 tests that they provide free. The average of my GMAC practice test scores (overall and breakdown) was just about my score on the actual exam.

+ Manhattan GMAT, while a great prep tool rife with several challenging GMAT questions that taught me how to manage time and use advanced strategies, was a poor predictor of my actual test performance. The quantitative questions were particularly hard, much harder than what I saw on the actual test (my actual quant score was 49 vs. an average of 44 on MGMAT tests).

+ Practice tests in general were much more effective as a study aid than reading a strategy book independently. I would take the test, study the explanations given and then repeat the question, keeping in mind the strategy that the explanation suggested (note- GMAC practice tests only show the correct answer but do not provide explanations, MGMAT was BY FAR the best for this "test and learn" strategy). I will say that this works particularly well for Quant, where there are certain tricks you can employ and not as well for Verbal, where I would recommend still studying strategies. I used Kaplan's GMAT strategies book, which was very helpful.

It would be great if everyone could share scores as I have above to help understand how representative practice test scores can be!

bb · Answer

Thank you for posting and congratulations on a fantastic score! Great job!

PS. The MGMAT Quant tests are notorious for having a low score estimation which is frustrating.

earnit · Answer

Hey,

Firstly tons of Congratulations for a stellar score.

It would be really helpful if you could take out some time to describe your EXAM Experience like how did you manage your time, the type of questions which put you off and also, did you take the 8 minutes break after IR and Quant respectively?

Look forward to your response.

Thank you.

megha_2709 · Answer

15 DAYS LEFT FOR GMAT PLS PLS PLS HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,

I am Meghna, I have been preparing for Gmat from past 4 months. I am well versed with the concepts both in verbal and quant and have preparing exhaustively. I have practiced all sorts of questions from all sorts of relevant material only stone I left unturned is to give lot of Mock Tests. I am now left with only 15 days and I am not scoring well in mock test, mainly its because I am not able to keep up with the time alloted to each question and not able to apply concept and solve the question in the limited time as a result of which I end up doing lot of reckless mistakes. I have been scoring well in without time frame CATs but with clock ticking on my head I am not able to perform well. pls pls pls help me how to improve accuracy and finish the test on time with good accuracy or should I reschedule ?

Thanks
your reply will be appreciated

AlwaysABridesmaid · Answer

Hi All-

Apologies for the late reply here -- let me try and answer both sets of questions. Hope this is still relevant and timely for you.

EARNIT: In terms of pacing and timing on the test, I would try to stick to the rule of 2 minutes per question. My strategy was to read through each question and at least attempt to answer it. Timing was more of an issue on the Quant section, where I would start to work through a question, realize that the timer had gone about 2 minutes for that question and would have to skip ahead. My goal was to push to at least an educated guess within the 2 minutes. I would say that 1 in every 7 questions or so were questions where I had to make an educated guess.

It also helps to understand the general "theme" of the question, as that can greatly save you time (again, very quant specific). For example, if you see a question that contains a calculation that would be impossible for anyone to calculate in two minutes, there's probably a trick (usually factoring) that you have to unlock. Search for these unlocks and patterns when hit with really hard questions, as opposed to doing very difficult math. The best way to master this is to do a practice exam and then READ THE EXPLANATION for questions that you find difficult. If the practice exam you are using does not have explanations, google the question. There will almost always be some type of explanation online.

MEGHA: First off, do not panic. If this is your first time taking the test, you should especially not panic. I've heard that most people do not do as well as anticipated the first time they take the exam. Secondly, focus on what I've said above in terms of timing and pacing. Do not push to answer every question right -- it's not possible with this type of test. Instead, know how to find the unlocks, recognize patterns and know where to guess. If you do these things, you can greatly enhance your ability to answer in the time frame and your score.

Which set of practice exams are you taking? The GMAC exams are the best -- I would lean towards taking the two free ones that they provide and consider purchasing the 2 additional ones that they offer. These are going to be most representative. I find most of the other exams much more challenging than the actual test.

Is this helpful? What other questions do you have (will try to be more timely in my next response!)?

All the best- crush the GMAT!!

megha_2709 · Answer

Thank you very much for replying

and emphasizing on importance of GMAC Tests. The tips for timing and pacing, recognizing patterns I will definitely keep in mind and implement the same. I gave GMAT on 2nd Nov and scored 580 (Q:42,V:27)

.As you can see strongly disappointed with my verbal score.I gave practice exams of GMAC and couple of manhattan test, I was not scoring well in quant section but verbal score was ok but in the actual test of gmat the situation just got reversed, verbal score sank low and Quant was still somewhat fine!(as compared to verbal). In practice test my scores were - MGMAT CAT Test 1 : 610 (q: 28 v :46) MGMAT CAT Test 2 : 590 (q:28, v:43) GMAT Prep Test 1 : 610 (q:28, v:46) GMAT Prep Test 2 : 650 (q:35, v:45) I feel I should have given more practice tests and should have made more efforts on verbal along with quant in last 3 weeks. I am thinking to reattempt after 2 or may be 3 months only when I will find myself in the right frame of 700 series score in Mock Tests. I would really appreciate if you can give me some tips on verbal. My concepts are clear as far as CR is concerned (all thanks to POWERSCORE GMAT Bible), its the application of concepts in 2 minutes time I suck at.Any advice for RC,SC and CR and also on what material should I refer now ( you see I have exhausted OG, manhattan and couple of other books I got from local coaching Center I joined). My Strategy now is to do hundreds of question on each topic of SC like modifiers,pronouns,comparison ,subject verb agreement.Same with CR and RC, Only this time I will make sure to time my practice. I hope I am going in the right direction now.

AlwaysABridesmaid · Answer

Thanks for the update Megha and I'm sorry to hear that the Verbal section did not go as well as you had hoped. A couple thoughts for you:

1. It is surprising to see such a high verbal score on practice exams and such a low performance on the test. While its not helpful, I think your performance on the test is likely (at least partially) an outlier and I'd expect to see improvement the next time you take the exam.

2. I unfortunately have a hard time giving constructive help on the Verbal. A couple sub-thoughts: 
+ I think you're on the right track of practicing to understand the patterns and recognizing common errors -- I think that's the best approach. I think verbal is all about pattern recognition, especially on the critical reasoning. 
+ SC: I used a very unscientific approach to SC -- I am a native English speaker (not sure if you are too, in which case, this may be very specific to me) and so with most sentence correction, I was able to just read the sentence and the answer choices and determine the right answer. One time-saving tip is to skip A every time. To develop the same skill, I would imagine its just practice, practice, practice (I'm sorry this isn't more helpful).
+ CR: I found that I often came down to two answer choices here and when I first started studying, I picked the wrong one as often as the right one. Over time, with practice, I began to notice patterns in wrong answer and right answers. Again, would stress -- practice is key. There may be strategies that Kaplan offers here -- I don't know that they're very helpful (they weren't for me -- but they may be for you so it might be worth getting your hands on a book from them -- I have one for 2014 if you'd like it).
+ RC: My strategy here was just to read the passage carefully from start to finish and then answer the questions. On average, these were the fastest questions for me. There are some strategies that say you should skim the passage, read the questions and refer back to the passage, but this process just didn't work for me. I was much more successful taking a "non-strategic approach" and just reading the full passage and then answering the questions (and double-checking the passage if needed, but not necessarily).

Again, I realize this may not be helpful -- I would just stress to keep practicing and I'm sure you'll even see your already good practice scores go up. The one place where being strategic may help, in my opinion (others, PLEASE chime in) is critical reasoning and again, I'd suggest looking at a Kaplan or Princeton Review resource.

Hope this is helpful -- best of luck as you continue to study and let me know if you have more questions!

megha_2709 · Answer

Thanks a lot .. this surely helps a lot and thank you so much for replying. I am going to practice as much as I can to understand the pattern better

. Hope it will work out this time

aakash1618 · Answer

My scores were like this-

GMAT prep test 1 - 690(Q-50 V-33)
MGMAT free test - 660(Q-46 V-34)
MGMAT 2 - 590(Q-44 V-28)
MGMAT 3 - 670(Q-45 V-36)
MGMAT 4 - 710(Q-50 V-36)

Actual GMAT- 660(Q-50 V-28)

The MGMATs had given me plenty of confidence and I was thinking of getting around 700 for sure(due to continued progress),but the actual result was disappointing. I have still not been able to decipher how I got such a low verbal score,as I had done SC and CR very well.
I was flabbergasted on seeing my scores,but have recovered from it and will be booking a date for next month. Still don`t know how I got such a low verbal score on the actual thing. Some of my friends said that because I didn`t take GMAT prep 2 was the reason. Can anyone throw some light into that claim?

tracymeomeo · Answer

Sorry you were not happy with your scores. However, I do not think a drop from V28-36 in the MGMAT to V28 in the real GMAT is too astonishing. While the MGMAT Quant section is really challenging (I think it's significantly more difficult than that of the real GMAT), I think MGMAT Verbal is a lot easier than the real GMAT. Moreover, the curve on the verbal section is not as lenient as that on the quant, so getting a few questions wrong can severely damage your verbal score (much more so in verbal than in quant)

I'd suggest you take some of the GMATPrep tests (consider buying the 2 extra ones if necessary). Those will give you a more accurate idea of how you are doing (and what kind of questions to expect on the real thing)

Hope that helps!

aakash1618 · Answer

I had an RC around 8th question mark of which all 4 questions were very challenging and I wasn`t sure on all of them. I guess if I missed all 4 then I would have severely damaged my score there itself,as I found the SC and CR questions to be way too easy.
I am considering buying the additional tests,maybe that will help.

rafgimenes · Answer

Actually I found the Verbal in the real GMAT much much harder than in the GMAC CAT. 
I scored 710 in the GMAC #1, 750 in #2 and 710 in #3. Today I wrote the real GMAT and scored 660. 
There were many questions completely different from what I faced in the moch exams, especially regarding SC. I am extremely disappointed right now and do not know how to enhance my score, since I thought I was on track =/

dontquixote · Answer

Congrats! Thanks for the analysis

Posted from my mobile device

jewelthomson · Answer

I'm looking for some feedback on my practice tests. I'm taking the real test in 5 days! :-/ Here are my practice test scores, in date order:

MGMAT CAT 1 29Q, 31V - 510
MGMAT CAT 2 30Q, 35V - 540
MGMAT CAT3 37Q, 37V - 620
MGMAT CAT4 40Q, 35V - 620
MGMAT CAT 5 45Q, 30V - 610

GMAC - 47Q, 42V - 720

MGMAT CAT 6 - 44Q, 32V - 630

I was shocked by my high GMAC score. The Manhattan tests seem to be much harder than the GMAC tests, especially the quant section. Since my MGMAT tests are consistently in the 610 - 630 range, any idea if I will score >680 on the actual test?

Thanks!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi jewelthomson,

Since the GMAC scoring algorithm is proprietary, no GMAT company has an exact match for it, thus CAT scores can vary a bit based on the 'biases' involved in their respective designs. The MGMAT CATs are considered a bit more difficult in spots, but assuming that you took the ENTIRE CAT each time and did so under realistic 'test-like' conditions, then these scores serve as a reasonably accurate assessment of your abilities.

Now, it could be that you're starting to hit your 'stride' in regards to your Test Taking skills, so that 720 COULD be accurate. Remember that the GMAT will give you the score that you EARN, so you have to do all of the necessary work to earn those points on Test Day.

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

Panavee · Answer

can others please chime in with their MGMAT CAT scores AND their actual score????

I have found some scores already but most of them are just questions regarding predictions for actual scores or are just too old.

Thanks!!

Many thanks to the op.Your post was very informative.

ENGRTOMBA2018 · Answer

Gave 2 before my 1st attempt though I wont read too much into it (more details in my debrief, link in my signatures!)

MGMAT CAT1: 660 
MGMAT CAT 2: 680
Actual GMAT 1: 650

MGMAT CAT 3: 680
Actual GMAT 2: 690

Panavee · Answer

thank you very much for your reply!!! It is much appreciated

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