Frustration with Peterson GMAT

Question

Before discovering GMAT Club and going thru some of the reviews here, I went out and purchased a copy of Peterson GMAT from B&N. I thought I did not have enough CAT from Manhattan GMAT and so it would be a good idea to try and get Peterson so that I'd have some more CATs to play with. Mistake.

Prior to the Peterson GMAT, my latest scores were 710 on the GMATPrep and 690 on ManhattanGMAT. So I was pretty happy with myself. With over a month left to prep, I thought I was in a good place.

My in-test experience with the Peterson CAT was pretty bad. The questions were often too obvious or downright difficult to figure out. I was already pretty upset until I got my score. 650. What the heck? I had had a tough week at work, which I thought would possibly impact my score, but 650? That was a HUGE set back.

I was pretty pissed off by the whole thing. I also needed validation. So later that night I stayed up taking another ManhattanGMAT CAT just to make sure that I wasn't losing my mind (and my points). After another 3 hours, I got a 680. I was validated, but annoyed at the craptitude of Peterson. Clearly the quality of the tests and the way Peterson calculates their scores is off.

I was very unhappy with my experience.

bakfed · Answer

Hi Optiquezt, I think a lot of people can relay to your feeling (doing well on some tests, then sort-of bombed the last few ones). I would say don't worry too much about your score. As long as you've been true to yourself when it comes to studying and taking the exams, GMATPrep should be able to let you narrow down your true score pretty accurately. Though GMATPrep does have some overlap with OG, seeing that you didn't mention studying with OG I'd say you did pretty well with your GMATPrep then. Look at the breakdown of your 650 and see if you can improve on any weaker subjects that you may be facing (650 is already a great score though).

bakfed · Answer

forgot to add; I've never used the Peterson GMAT books but I've seen them sitting their on the shelf in bookstores. I can't vouch or validate for Peterson, but from what I've been reading on this site, Peterson is not a popular book that one would recommend anyways.

bb · Answer

Yes, it is a terrible book and/or tests.

the main reason is that Peterson does not have its own Tutoring arm and only publishes books, thus its ability to develop new techniques or invest a ton of $$ into "R&D" or improvement of questions is much more limited than than that of Kaplan, Princeton Review, and Manhattan GMAT.

I would also second that you don't need to pay attention to the practice GMAT scores except to GMATprep. Kaplan, for example, has a 50-100 point difference... does not mean anything except that their scoring is off :wink:

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timetrader · Answer

Thank you, optiquezt for sharing your experience. I added your review to all-gmat-cat-practice-tests-links-prices-reviews-77460.html. Hope you don't mind.

vscid · Answer

Same experience.

I recently wrote their tests and found that the questions and explanations are pretty ambiguous. Moreover, the questions do not seem representative of the real GMAT.

Answering real tough questions is one thing, but figuring out stupid questions and unconvincing explanations is totally frustrating !

I would dissuade anyone who plans to use them.

rich895 · Answer

I agree. The test is pathetic. I did that as it was available from my local library and thought will be good to know where I stand. What a waste
How did you get the score. I see only %next to math and verbal section. How to convert that to GMAT 800 scaled score. Eager to know where I stand, even on a pathetic test like this

GMATNinja · Answer

Optiquezt, you deserve major kudos simply for your outstanding use of the word "craptitude." :-D

chamisool · Answer

i wanted to chime in with my brief experience with peterson’s master the gmat. I was reviewing a few topics at my local library and I noticed a collection of gmat prep books on the shelf. Most of them are dated 2008-2011 but peterson’s prep book caught my eye since it was the only prep book dated 2013. I grabbed the book and solved a few sc questions. I thought the questions were really difficult and i got 1/5 correct.

The result pretty much shattered my confidence and after attempting the questions again, I couldn’t confidently point out why my answer was wrong. So, I gave up and looked at the answer explanation and the explanation is like 1-2 sentences wrong. The book does not explain what is wrong in each answer choice, but explain in 1-2 sentence(s) that using the word “because” rather than “due to” is incorrect and therefore, B is the correct answer. Pretty much no help at all.

I also glanced over the quant section and the questions looked pretty difficult so I did not bother to solve them. I was curious on how well the book was rated and I think magoosh gave the book a D-. I will stick with my og and mgmt cat exams for practice questions.

nelson10 · Answer

It's unfortunate to have experienced it, but I'm glad to see that I am not the only one extremely frustrated by the Peterson's Master The GMAT questions. I have tried to prepare for the GMAT exam on multiple occassions and gave up just because I could not crack the questions/explanations in the Peterson's book. I never realized that I was always using Peterson's. By chance, I recently read through the Princeton prep book and, both the study material and practice questions, made so much sense. I'm now using the GMAT software itself to study.

The explanations in the Peterson's book don't make any sense. The explanations more often support my answer, which they are trying to explain is wrong! I just wish I had realized there are other authors I've never looked into for the GMAT prep!!

The explanations in the Peterson's book don't make any sense. The explanations more often support my answer, which they are trying to explain is wrong! I just wish I had realized there are other authors I've never looked into for the GMAT prep!!

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