Should I take official mocks or company mocks?

Question

Dear experts,

I want to give some mocks to see where I stand before I finally book a date for the real exam. I know the universal fact that official mocks are the best without a question. But the thing is I have been practicing a lot of questions from this forum, subject wise and not source wise. So there is a very high probability that I may have solved an official mock 3,4,5 or 6 question.

I already used the official mocks 1 and 2 long time ago. So now I can either buy the additional official mocks or Manhattan Prep/Veritas Prep. Buying both would not make sense as I'm planning to give the exam in December.

What should I do?

IanStewart ScottTargetTestPrep GMATinsight VeritasKarishma AndrewN BrentGMATPrepNow GMATNinja EMPOWERgmatRichC

Thank you

Posted from my mobile device

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Did you mark GMATprep in your field search when looking for questions?

Nups1324 · Answer

Hi,

No. You mean to ask whether or not I searched for similar questions?

If so then, yes, but I couldn't find any question which would answer my question.

Thank you.

Posted from my mobile device

BrentGMATPrepNow · Answer

My advice to all test takers using GMAT Club to prepare: 
When answering practice questions, be sure to pay attention to the SOURCE tag, and stay away from any questions tagged as "GMATPrep," since these questions are from the official practice tests. Otherwise your practice test scores (from the official GMATPrep software) will be inflated because you will have already seen several of the questions.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Nups1324 . For predictive purposes regarding the total score, you might have bungled matters by unwittingly practicing some GMAT Prep questions, but I would not let a potential question here or there get in the way of my attempting many other official questions in an exam format. You place stock in your question accuracy one way or the other. And for Verbal especially, practicing official questions is key to feeling prepared for the task on test day. This is not to say that Manhattan Prep or Veritas Prep do a poor job at mimicking official questions, just that such questions have a different feel to them. (I can usually tell when a question is from one of these sources just by laying eyes on it.) I would advocate purchasing the additional exams through mba.com. If you go through one and it is just ridiculous, and you remember having seen just about every question, then it might be time to pony up and go for one of the other options. Still, I think review for Verbal is way more important than practice once you have reached a certain point in your preparation. (There are diminishing returns from just practicing more questions.)

Good luck, and thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew

IanStewart · Answer

No one will be able to guess how useful the additional official tests will be for you, because no one will know how many questions will be familiar to you. If your goal is, as you say, to "see where you stand", the only tests you can reliably use for that purpose are official tests. You might glance over this thread:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/my-official- ... s#p2662076

to see how different official test scores can be from company test scores. I also link to that thread in case you decide to use the extra official tests; I explain there how you should treat familiar questions to most accurately assess yourself. A small number of familiar questions isn't an issue, if you're careful about how you respond to them.

It's possible the official tests 3-6 will be mostly unfamiliar to you, in which case they're your best option by far. It's possible you'll know most of the questions in them, in which case they won't be very useful. Unless the expense is enormously important to you, I'd probably give them a try, but you'd want to abandon them if you knew so many questions in advance that they were clearly pointless to complete.

If you did move on to a company test at that point, you'd want to treat any score you get as if it has a very large margin of error. I'm also not sure, if you've been studying a lot of questions from this forum, why you'd expect a company's test questions to be less familiar to you than official test questions? That seems to me another reason to try the official tests first. Good luck!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Nups1324,

If you have seen one or two questions from the official practice exams, I would not say it's that big of a deal. Thus, I would purchase and take the remaining 4 official GMAC practice exams.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Nups1324,

While the most realistic CATs available are the 6 from GMAC, 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). The 'pool' of questions that comes with each CAT is limited, meaning that if you retake either of the 2 free Official CATs, then there's a good chance that you will see some 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 can use any NEW CATs from any of those sources next.

That all having been said, each CAT is really a 'measuring device' - when used correctly, it will give you a realistic score and help define your strengths and weaknesses, but it will NOT help you to fix any of those weaknesses. To raise your scores, you have to learn the necessary Tactics and put in the proper practice and repetitions. The CAT will show you whether your studies are helping you to improve or not. In addition, the process of taking (and reviewing) a CAT requires a significant amount of energy and effort - and takes time to 'recover' from. This is one of the reasons why you typically shouldn't take more than 1 CAT per week - and your last CAT should be taken about 1 week before Test Day. Going forward, you really shouldn't take more than 1 FULL CAT per week.

With a Test Date in December, you only have a limited timeframe left to study, so we have to consider your timeline and goals when planning out your remaining study time:

1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks so far and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) 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

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