Review of Kaplan Quiz Banks - 1001 questions

I am comparing it with gmatprep questions and higher level og questions. I think the questions are not bad or non-gmat like as such, but there is not enough versatility in questions. The quiz bank contains indiscriminately high percentage of ratio/proportion, profit loss, word problem type questions of 550 level. Almost no questions of solid geometry, venn diagrams, and higher level inequality. I usually struggle with inequality and co-ordinate geometry very much. Surprisingly the few questions of co-ordinate geometry I got I solved correctly. Good thing for me but I know the questions were very basic. Simple slope calculation type. I had got 48 and 49 on quant section of 2 gmatpreps I gave , so may be I am expecting harder questions. May be this will be good for people who are looking to move from q 35 to q 45.

But the verbal section is simply brilliant. Sc/RC/Cr all are of excellent quality and I am learning a lot from even the questions I get right ! I will strongly recommend this to anyone who is specifically looking at targeted practise for verbal section.

Hi BB,

Can you please advise who should practice these questions? For example, will this be recommended to those who are in their 600's but are targeting for 700+?
Moreover, are the hard questions 700+ level question?

Thank you in advance for you advise.

regards,
Jack

I think the quiz banks are designed to help you hone a very specific skill (for example CR inference questions or certain SC or PS questions). Especially helpful if you burned through all of the OG 12 or other question sources.

As to the difficulty, I am probably not a great measure. I felt the quant could have been harder (but of course I am used to gmat club tests ) though I have made a few mistakes in quant. Verbal seemed to be tough (i made many mistakes there).

If anyone wants to try these and share their thoughts, let me know via PM - i will throw in GMAT Club tests for free ($79 value).

Hi Jack,

As BB points out, the Quiz Banks are useful for anyone who wants to focus on a specific content area. However, they have another audience--those concerned about pacing.

Though CATs are vital practice, full-length tests are not the most efficient way to improve timing. After all, when student spend too much time on the first 5 questions of a practice exam, they don't get any feedback until an hour later when time finally runs out for the last few questions. By using Kaplan Quiz-Banks for a short, strictly-timed, test-like set of 5-15 questions in 10-30 minutes, Kaplan students can develop consistent pacing. Once they have learned manage time on these shorter quizzes, they should have a smooth transition into 37/41 questions in 75 minutes.

Anyway, that's our target--I'm confident in our product, but since bb is the reviewer, I'll defer to his judgment as to whether we've succeeded

Thanks Eli - please never hesitate to disagree with me. I am by no means perfect and my evaluation is somewhat different from somebody prepping for the actual GMAT. I know the things to look out for (both valuable and harmful) but my reviews are not perfect by themselves. Please raise questions and point out omissions - that works best for the collective. (Ayn Rand would have killed me but oh well.)

Eli just a few queries.

1. There are too many analysis dimension there in the Question bank module & that's great, just wanna know that is there any comparison of results of the user with the avg result of other users available too?? Like, if I got 70% correct in a bank, what was the avg correct % of other users??

2. Percentile function is also there or not??

Thanks in advance.

Hi Hussain,

Kaplan Quiz Banks are totally customizable. That means that every student takes a different quiz, some focusing on geometry, others on algebra, some focusing on 5-question quizzes and others on 25-question ones; as a result, we can't get statistically significant samples to give our students a percentile rating. That being said, that's not Q-banks' purpose; Kaplan offers the quizzes to help practice content and pacing. Our CATs (5 with our Premier book, 9 with our classroom course!), however, are available for students who want to evaluate their percentile performance and get a prediction for Test Day.

Hope this helps to answer your questions!

Eli

Thanks!

I bought the Kaplan Gmat Qbank subscription and found the questions quite good for the preparation.As of now I have attempted about 30-40% of the questions and am very satisfied with them.The price though is around $200 but using the coupon one has to pay about $100 so even that is not a big issue.

Pros
1. All the questions of the qbank are new i.e. not realted to questions from any of the kaplan's earlier books (got
confirmation from kaplan staff itself)
2. Around 1000 questions covering almost every aspect of GMAT test (dont know if anyother prep provider gives
such Qbank feature , though PR has a book that has around 1000+ question but going by the reviews it has
many errors and also the questions are not that hard)
3. An option to flag and review the question later , also timed and untimed mode feature is good..
4. The solutions provided for the problems are quite detailed.
5. Very good analysis ,giving info about which section one needs to work on.
6. One has an option to select what type of problem one wants to attempt (Each section rc ,sc ,ds etc is further
divided into subsections from where one can select the questions)

Cons
1.The quants looked somewhat easy than other quants questions of manhattan etc (specially the hard questions
of prob and P&C. )
2.Wish there were more hard questions in the Qbank( some subsections dont even have a single hard question)
specially in RC
3. Even though the Qbank is not adaptive ( for obvious reasons) still one cant delete any specific test (created
earlier),users only have the option to select questions either from all the questions or from the unattempted
questions.
4.Cant compare one's performance with the performance of other test takers such as how many test takers
attempted this problem correctly etc

In a nutshell I think the Qbank is quite a good option for someone looking for more questions to practice and with the $100 price tag they are definitely worth a shot.

regards
sason

I am having most of the kaplan books.
I am interested to register for these 1001 questions , quiz banks. However, I am curious to know whether some of these questions are repeats of kaplan books ?
BB or some pro , please suggest.
Thank you,
Prithvi.

No, the questions do not overlap (to the best of my knowledge) - I can't guarantee this but I have not seen repeats in tests or books.

after registrations, How long this quiz banks can be used ?\
can we reset the questions, if we would like to ?

I know, we are getting this course for 50% discount(99dollar) , do we have further discount on the course ?

You can re-use old questions, which is the equivalent of repeating them. I'm not to sure about the duration of your access, however; I'm looking into it and will get back to you ASAP!

Eli

is the 50% discount still valid? which code to use the GMATCLUBQB100 or the MARKETPLACE50 (the new gmatclub shop)?

Registration for the Quiz-Bank is 90 days. If for some reason this won't be enough time for you to prep fully, call 1-800-KAP-TEST to see what our customer care representatives can do for you; your satisfaction is important to us.

mainhoon, I'll see what I can find out about the discount codes.

Hello All,

I purchased Kaplan Question Bank and used it. Here is my take -

Quant : The problems that I found were relatively easier not only from gmat club standards but also from Manhanttan Gmat standard. Also, some problems did represent the OG style. Grockit, on the other hand, is cheaper and closer to Gmat style.

Verbal : I loved the Verbal section, which was very challenging. However, some times the explainations were not the easy to grasp, specially in CRs.

Overall:
Pros - This provides an online tool similar to test. If you want to do hard questions on verbal then this is not the best, I would suggest something like GMATClub.

Cons - I am having an issue with the access. The access is for 90 days and one has to call withing 2-3 weeks after the access has expired to extend it. I called them to extend my question bank (after more than a month) and Kaplan representative was not able to help me. So plan ahead and purchase it.

I would rate this 4.5/5.

Thank you for your inputs about Kaplan Question Bank.

I request few confirmations about the verbal questions.

1. Is verbal part has good number of hard questions ?
2. Is GmatClub verbal tough ? I liked gmatclub's quant and found verbal was not good enough(esp. SC).

Thank you,
Prithvi.