Sigma-X mock score reliability

My bad i assumed you had all 6 .
Good luck with your preparations!

Hi gautkart,

The scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is far more complicated than most people realize. Since that 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 most realistic CATs available are the 6 from GMAC (the 2 free CATs, and each of the 2 that come with Exam Pack 1 and Exam Pack 2), but retaking a CAT that you've already taken is NOT a realistic way to assess your skills - since you will likely see some 'repeat' questions that you have already faced. Unfortunately, seeing even a couple of repeats can 'throw off' the Scoring Algorithm and impact your pacing, energy levels, fatigue, etc. (meaning that they would likely all appear to be better than they actually are). Thankfully, the CATs from Kaplan, MGMAT and Veritas are all 'close enough' to the real thing that they will provide you with a relatively realistic score assessment (assuming that you correctly take the CAT in a realistic fashion) - so you would be fine using CATs from any of those four sources.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) What type of study routine have you been following so far? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Did you take this recent CAT in the same 'format' as the At-home GMAT (Quant, then Verbal - with no break in-between, then an optional 5-minute break, then IR)?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Once you take the official practice exam, feel free to reach back out with your score breakdown, and I can provide some further advice.

From what I've read, Manhattan mocks are the toughest. I haven't taken a Manhattan mock test yet but I have tried Veritas and I can tell you that I didn't find it very unusual (my 4 Veritas scores were 700,710,710,710 and that's approximately what I expected)

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Hi Scott,
I took the official GMAT test 3 today (because I've used up the first 2 twice) and scored a 700(Q49, V36) on it. So I'm a bit relieved now that the e-gmat mock test was kind of very close to the official one(Well, atleast in my case!). I looked at my errors in verbal. RC was quite smooth i.e. I got 13/15 correct. CR and SC I got 4-4 incorrect. SC I felt I could've avoided the silly mistakes in atleast 2 out of 4.

So, all in all, I'm looking to improve this score to around 720-730 in mocks. What can I do to improve this?

Thankyou

Posted from my mobile device

Hey there:

I had used both SigmaX and Official Mocks, and the scores were fairly comparable. So, I think SigmaX scores are quite reliable, but please make sure to get your hands around official mocks as well.

Thanks!

Posted from my mobile device

700 is a great start! To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

I took all 5 Sigma-X mocks offered by e-GMAT. My scores were in the range of 730-770 and my final score on the GMAT Online was a 750. Even in the Quant and Verbal breakdown, the Sigma-X mocks accurately reflected my ability. The questions are of the same difficulty level as what you would expect in the official GMAT.

Thanks for recommendations, very useful.

So I gave the free e-GMAT Sigma-X mock recently. I score a unbelievably low 520 in the test. But 3 days later, I was scheduled to give my actual GMAT exam, and I scored a 670 on the GMAT. Here are my takeaways

I felt depressed and super confused with the 520 score I got, literally 3 days before my actual exam

For some reason they asked me my target score before I began the test. I put 700, not sure if based on that, I was given questions. Just seemed little shady.

The Quants seemed way too tough to solve, when compared to the OG mocks or OG question. 2 min was definitely not enough to solve those questions

Verbal section seemed relatively okay

The only good thing about it was the analysis after the paper. I chose to ignore the Quant totally coz it was not representative, and just analyzed the Verbal section.

If you need to practice mocks, do the Official ones, then maybe the free Expert Global (gave this mock, seems alright) or Veritas (haven't given, but reviews are good I guess).

Incase you do give the Sigma mock, and get a lower score than you want, don't worry too much, take ONLY the positives and analyze your mistakes. Don’t make it a reference to what you will actually get on exam day!

Hope this helps