GMAT CAT 3 and 4 Q 49, Q50 Real GMAT Q33

Question

Hi

I was wondering if GMAT Cat 3 and 4 are easier than the real test, I was achieving Q49 and Q50 in real test conditions.
Today my official GMAT gave me a Q33.

I had never been under Q40-42. and had never got to Q49 and Q50 in real test conditions till GMAT CAT 3 and 4.

Is the question bank of the quantative section in this cats easier?

Best Regards

roch1991 · Answer

I took CAT 4 a couple of weeks ago. It was weird. I felt it was way easier compared to the default test pack(CAT 1 and CAT 2), paid CATs(3,5,6), and other mock CATs. I finished CAT 4 quant in 40-45 min and that has never happened before.

IanStewart · Answer

Yes, those extra tests don't seem to have as many hard questions as the free tests, but that actually doesn't affect your score. The scoring algorithm is taking the difficulty level into account, so when a test has easier questions, you need to get a lot more of them right to get a high score. There is, however, one caveat: when the difficulty level of the questions on a test doesn't match your ability level, there's a bigger margin of error. So if you take a test that feels pretty challenging for you, then you saw a lot of questions around your level, and you can treat the score as if it's quite precise. If you got a Q49 on that kind of test, you might think of the score as a Q48-Q50. But if the test felt easy to you, it would be better to think of that Q49 as a Q45-Q50. Of course if the scores on several tests agree, then that margin of error gets a lot smaller.

Either way, it sounds like you're at least at a Q45 level now, and a Q45 level test taker will essentially never get a Q33 on an official test only because of variance or bad luck. It's almost always true, when a test day score is that different from diagnostic scores, that you performed differently on test day, whether because you were tired, or stressed, or distracted, or because you used a different pacing strategy than normal. For some reason on this test, you answered easier questions incorrectly that you were consistently answering correctly on all of your other tests. If you can work out why that might have happened, you'll be able to take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again, and then your next real test score should be more in line with your practice test scores.

And before every prep company on the forum tries to persuade you that you have some gap in your foundation that their course will resolve, it would be, probabilistically speaking, exceedingly unusual if you had such a gap, that gap was not exposed even once on your practice tests, but was exposed on test day. There is some chance that's true, and you should reflect on the Quant content and ask if there might be a topic where you might be getting easy questions wrong, and work to improve on that topic. But the explanation is almost certainly something else. If you can figure it out, you should do just fine -- good luck!

ruma2008 · Answer

The only explanation i can come up with, is that i rushed to not get behind in time. I finished the test with about 2 min on the clock, and i was never behind.

I replicated the strategy used for cat 3 and 4, where i saved time on the first 10-15 questions and had some spare for the following questions. Maybe my score reflects this poor strategy, i had never scored under Q42. So Q33 was a bummer, thought i had aced it.

I do not think I have a gap on my Q section, the following scores reflect it , this scores are Q42-Q44 in 4 manhattan cats, Q42-Q47 in GMAT CAT pack 1 and 2 (repeated some cats), Q49 in cat 3(the last question was not counted, would have had Q51), Q50 in Cat 4. 
In the last two Cats, I also experienced that i could finish the first questions correct and fast as Roch1991 posted, this may have maked me use a fast solving strategy for the official GMAT, after all i was scoring Q49-50.

In relation to official scores, Official GMAT 2017 Q44 and official GMAT october 2021 Q42. By the ESR in both i can say i used to much time in the first questions and had to rush at the end.
Something that may add some information is that in october my IR was 7.

From october till now, i focused entirely on verbal, my goal was to increase that score. The only quant questions i did were the ones in the cats. 
I improved in SC a lot, a bit in CR and nothing in RC. In the official gmat, i was a bit distracted and rushed in some RC and CR (i was in knowledge of this, this was not the case of quant section)

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

I improved in SC a lot, a bit in CR and nothing in RC. In the official gmat, i was a bit distracted and rushed in some RC and CR (i was in knowledge of this, this was not the case of quant section)

Absorption reading can be helpful for RC.

Official V31 to V40  - Might bring some insight. I helped this Verbal student this quarter (6 hours) with solving approach tutoring - but the main point is to consider also working on THAT aspect in your prep going forward.

Creative Quant (and what go-to methods to consider depending on the question type) can also be helpful. There's a lot of stuff out there one can learn.

IanStewart · Answer

I suspect that might be the issue -- you're probably good most of the time working quickly, but if on this test you made a couple of careless mistakes on easy questions because you were rushing, then that would explain a low score. Getting easier questions wrong hurts your score a lot. I suppose if you look at your ESR, you'd be able to tell if this was the case just looking at your hit rate early in the test -- if it seems low, then this is very likely what happened, but if you did well early on, then there's a different explanation.

In general, for higher level test takers it's better to be a bit careful early on, when questions are more likely to be below your level, just to be sure you don't make any careless errors on questions you know how to solve (though you should still be willing to move on from hard questions no matter where you are in the test if you don't see a path to a solution). Later in the test, the questions are more likely to be hard if you're a higher-level test taker, and an error on one of those questions is not going to hurt you nearly as much. The easier diagnostic tests you took may have given you an unfair impression about how to best pace yourself, but if you find a better balance between speed and accuracy (don't overcorrect, because you've been doing well on all your other tests), your scores should return to normal.

ruma2008 · Answer

Thankyou  IanStewart , my plan is to buy the ESR and check what went wrong, i need to evaluate what went wrong and fix it.
I would really aprecciate if i can share my ESR with you, if you can give me your opinion.

ruma2008 · Answer

HI,

I got my ESR and found it even stranger, cant find any answers about the result.

I´m even doubting if the GMAT app may had a problem, have you heard something like this happen before, im not looking for excuses.
But yesterday before going to sleep, I remembered that before putting next in the last Q question, the app fell for some seconds, and started reloading.

What surprises me even more is that in problem solving, data sufficiency, arithmetic, algebra/geometry, everything is in the 2th percentile.

In both previous official gmat i scored in the 42-50% or in the 35-44% percentile.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi ruma2008,

I would not say the quant sections on those tests are that much easier than the quant section on the actual GMAT. Would you say that you were pretty nervous on the day of your exam?

ruma2008 · Answer

@ScottTargetPrep I would not consider i was nervous in Quant section.
Sincerly i do not have an answer for my performance in the last Gmat quant section.

IanStewart · Answer

The Quant sections in the extra tests definitely do not contain many hard questions, unlike the free tests and, for higher level test takers, unlike the real test most of the time.

Your ESR looks to me like it should have produced a higher score than what you received, but there are two reasons you didn't score as well on this test as normal. It's always hard to know just from an ESR exact question difficulty levels, because you're only seeing an average, but you might notice your two wrong answers in the first quarter were not on hard questions (your right answers there were, on average, to harder questions than your wrong answers). It's possible, because it's an average, that you had one wrong answer to a hard question (which wouldn't have mattered much) and one wrong answer to a very easy question (which would have mattered a lot). And considering the overall difficulty level of your questions, your hit rate throughout the test must have been lower than normal. Since your diagnostic performances have been so strong, I wouldn't suggest making any major adjustments, but I would suggest slowing down just enough early on so you can be sure not to make any careless errors, since it's possible you did make a careless mistake on an easy question. It does seem like an unusual performance for you, and it's not likely to happen again, so if you don't think something like stress contributed, I'd just do a bit of work to maintain your level, practice a slightly more relaxed pacing strategy a couple of times, and take the test again.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Honestly, you could have just had a bad day. I mean these things do happen. So, I think if you do some light preparation leading into your next exam, and make sure that you walk into test day feeling confident, there is no reason why you can't achieve a score closer to the scores of your practice exams. Do you agree?

ruma2008 · Answer

@ScottTargetPrep I agree, the problem is time now. Time is busy at work so i could take another shot at the test mid - end of jannuary.
I have planned to go for the EA, special tests and waivers for som universities and use my 2017 score for others.
Doing the test is to have a plan B if i do not get accepted this year.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Got it. Well, let me know how things turn out. I'm here if you need me.

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GMAT CAT 3 and 4 Q 49, Q50 Real GMAT Q33

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