Toughest Official Practice Exam

Question

Friends - just a random/curious question.

What was the toughest set among 6 OG exams from your personal experience? easiest one?

Of course assuming all 6 were taken after you were in real exam-ready mode.

egmat · Answer

Hi  shyoo86 ,

I’m sure you’re aware that the Official Mocks are adaptive in nature. Now, it is true that the actual GMAT has a much larger pool of questions to choose from, as compared to the Official Mocks. But that does not mean that the Official Mocks are necessarily easier than the actual GMAT. Also,  there is no evidence to suggest that any single official mock is noticeably harder or easier than another . The perceived difficulty of an Official Mock depends solely on the test taker’s readiness for and performance at the test on the day of the mock.

There are several reasons why one might find one official mock easier than another:
 
  Number of familiar questions in the mock 
As you know, GMAT Prep questions discussed on GMAT Club are actual official mock questions, and many a times, students solve these questions indiscriminately or unknowingly. This leads to finding familiar questions during the mock and, as a result, inflated scores. 
 
  Frame of mind. 
A candidate who is well rested before the exam could find the exam seamless and could even end up scoring a lot higher. 
 
  Performance in the Mock.  
Owing to the adaptive nature of the exam, a student who answers most questions correctly early into the exam will face more difficult questions earlier in the exam. Such a student will likely end up with a higher score, but at the same time this candidate will find many of the questions challenging and hence might label the exam “tough”. 
 
  Test Readiness 
A candidate who is ill-prepared will naturally find even medium questions difficult; whereas someone who is well-prepared will find even hard questions easy. So, your test readiness also plays a role in your test experience.

So, to conclude, several factors go into determining whether an exam is tough, and, for an adaptive test, even more so.

I hope this helps improve your understanding.

Happy Learning!
Sundeep

Kushchokhani · Answer

Hi  egmat 
Can you please let me know whether GMAT Prep ques on GMAT Club are only from free Practice exam pack or also from paid ones?

rajtare · Answer

i think they are mostly from old prep packs, but i would like to know the same. it can definitely inflate your score if you have familiarity with the question types.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Also from the paid exams.

Kushchokhani · Answer

Hi  shyoo86

I agree with egmat. To add, each official exam pack consists of multiple pool of ques of varying difficulty levels and topics. Being adaptive in nature, the official practice exam may be difficult or easy depending on how we perform during that particular test.

egmat · Answer

Hi  Kushchokhani ,

The GMAT Prep question bank on GMAT Club most likely contains questions from the paid Official Mocks 3 to 6 as well.

I infer this from the number of questions available on the forum. For example, if we apply a filter in the SC forum with 700+ level difficulty and source: GMAT Prep, we get around 150 questions. It’s the same for CR as well.

150 hard-level questions (700+ level) cannot be from just two mocks. It has to be more than two mocks. So, it probably contains questions from the paid ones as well.

bb , can you please shed some light on this?

-Sundeep

Kushchokhani · Answer

Hi  ScottTargetTestPrep

Like  egmat , you have also inferred this or you have any concrete evidence about this; for instance have you come across any ques from the paid mock that is a part of GMAT Prep tag on GC Forum?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Here is a question from one of the paid exams: https://gmatclub.com/forum/a-total-of-3 ... 07421.html

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