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24 Mar 2005, 03:03
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi all,
I stumbled accross this site just yesterday, after taking the GMAT. That's unfortunate for me, because I think I could have learned a great deal about the quantative section here! Anyway, I was looking for information about how to interpret my scores, and google led me your way. If anyone can predict an ad com's reaction to my relatively unbalanced score, I would appreciate it.
A little background: I decided in december that I wanted to change course in my career, and that an MBA would give me more flexibility and options. I cannot move my family right now, and the local business school (in Copenhagen, Denmark), only requires around a 600-625. I've always done well on standardized tests, so I didn't think the GMAT would be a big deal, even though I knew I would have to dust off some long dormant math skills. I did well in math and physics in high school, but haven't so much as factored a quadratic equation in the last 8 or 10 years.
I registered to take the test in Jan. I worked through the Princeton Review "Cracking" book a few days before my date, and did OK on the practice problem sets on the CD. The day before the test, I took a test from that silly little animated CD by Kaplan.
450!!
It put me in a tailspin. I panicked, didn't sleep, and walked into the testing centre the next morning with sweaty palms and a lump in my throat. I've never been so psyched out about a test before. 5 questions into the quantitative section, I exited and cancelled, determined to reschdule and take the whole thing a lot more seriously the next time.
So for the last two months I spent some time reviewing generic math from a large book of problem sets for high-schoolers. It seems like most of the people on this board have remained in touch with math more than I have, but next week I'll post the info for this book here. Someone may find it useful. Then I started on the Princeton Review math workout book. Lots of clear instructions and good tricks. It does a good job of describing the different kinds of problems you may meet on the test.
Last week I was confident enough to do another practice test (remember, I'm not going for Stanford - a 600 would have been adequate). I loaded up the Kaplan CD again and scored a 590. As I was reviewing the questions I got wrong in the Q section, I stearted to feel a little insecure again. But when I looked at the incorrect answers in the verbal section, I started to suspect that the problem wasn't with me, but with the questions!
English is my mother tounge. I have a BA in history. I was a writing tutor in college and do a significant amout of copy editing at work. It's obvious from my eventual score that I have a feel for this kind of thing. But when I looked at the explanations for the Kaplan answers, I felt that a lot of them were simply ambiguous. With PR or later with PP, I could look at explainations for questions I missed and see and understand where I went wrong. I missed a 'but', or a double negative, or simply didn't know which preposition to use. But with many of the Kaplan explainations, I thought "well, that's their opinion", or "sure, if you look at it that way". The answers seemed ambiguous or seemed to require a subjective opinion about the content.
I decided to quit doing the Kaplans and to download the PP software. Things immediately began to makemore sense and become more consistent. On the 20-question verbal practice sets, I missed one or two in each set. In the Q practice sets, I would miss 2 or three on each DS and 3 or 4 on each PS. When I read the correcions, I could clearly see how I could have done better. I took the PP CATs the day before the test - (36q 46v 680), (42q, 46v 710).
I am convinced that Kaplan has writers who make up questions closely based on ETS questions, but I don't think they test the questions adequately to see how others may interpret them. Real ETS questions may be many things: obscure, boring, convoluted, etc. But one thing they are not is ambiguous - they are tested on too many people as experimental questions.
I can't really speak about the quantitative, but I would advise all of you to take the Kaplan verbal with a grain of salt. It's not just that the questions are harder. I would go so far as to say they test a different skill than the real GMAT questions. They require you to pick the better of two possible correct answers. Real GMAT questions require you to eliminate the four clearly incorrect answers. Big difference.
Let me know if anyone is interested in a couple of my personal habits for the verbal.
To anyone who's read this far, thanks for your attention and good luck on your tests and MBAs. There's an impressive sense of community and purpose here.
Regards,
Josh
I stumbled accross this site just yesterday, after taking the GMAT. That's unfortunate for me, because I think I could have learned a great deal about the quantative section here! Anyway, I was looking for information about how to interpret my scores, and google led me your way. If anyone can predict an ad com's reaction to my relatively unbalanced score, I would appreciate it.
A little background: I decided in december that I wanted to change course in my career, and that an MBA would give me more flexibility and options. I cannot move my family right now, and the local business school (in Copenhagen, Denmark), only requires around a 600-625. I've always done well on standardized tests, so I didn't think the GMAT would be a big deal, even though I knew I would have to dust off some long dormant math skills. I did well in math and physics in high school, but haven't so much as factored a quadratic equation in the last 8 or 10 years.
I registered to take the test in Jan. I worked through the Princeton Review "Cracking" book a few days before my date, and did OK on the practice problem sets on the CD. The day before the test, I took a test from that silly little animated CD by Kaplan.
450!!
It put me in a tailspin. I panicked, didn't sleep, and walked into the testing centre the next morning with sweaty palms and a lump in my throat. I've never been so psyched out about a test before. 5 questions into the quantitative section, I exited and cancelled, determined to reschdule and take the whole thing a lot more seriously the next time.
So for the last two months I spent some time reviewing generic math from a large book of problem sets for high-schoolers. It seems like most of the people on this board have remained in touch with math more than I have, but next week I'll post the info for this book here. Someone may find it useful. Then I started on the Princeton Review math workout book. Lots of clear instructions and good tricks. It does a good job of describing the different kinds of problems you may meet on the test.
Last week I was confident enough to do another practice test (remember, I'm not going for Stanford - a 600 would have been adequate). I loaded up the Kaplan CD again and scored a 590. As I was reviewing the questions I got wrong in the Q section, I stearted to feel a little insecure again. But when I looked at the incorrect answers in the verbal section, I started to suspect that the problem wasn't with me, but with the questions!
English is my mother tounge. I have a BA in history. I was a writing tutor in college and do a significant amout of copy editing at work. It's obvious from my eventual score that I have a feel for this kind of thing. But when I looked at the explanations for the Kaplan answers, I felt that a lot of them were simply ambiguous. With PR or later with PP, I could look at explainations for questions I missed and see and understand where I went wrong. I missed a 'but', or a double negative, or simply didn't know which preposition to use. But with many of the Kaplan explainations, I thought "well, that's their opinion", or "sure, if you look at it that way". The answers seemed ambiguous or seemed to require a subjective opinion about the content.
I decided to quit doing the Kaplans and to download the PP software. Things immediately began to makemore sense and become more consistent. On the 20-question verbal practice sets, I missed one or two in each set. In the Q practice sets, I would miss 2 or three on each DS and 3 or 4 on each PS. When I read the correcions, I could clearly see how I could have done better. I took the PP CATs the day before the test - (36q 46v 680), (42q, 46v 710).
I am convinced that Kaplan has writers who make up questions closely based on ETS questions, but I don't think they test the questions adequately to see how others may interpret them. Real ETS questions may be many things: obscure, boring, convoluted, etc. But one thing they are not is ambiguous - they are tested on too many people as experimental questions.
I can't really speak about the quantitative, but I would advise all of you to take the Kaplan verbal with a grain of salt. It's not just that the questions are harder. I would go so far as to say they test a different skill than the real GMAT questions. They require you to pick the better of two possible correct answers. Real GMAT questions require you to eliminate the four clearly incorrect answers. Big difference.
Let me know if anyone is interested in a couple of my personal habits for the verbal.
To anyone who's read this far, thanks for your attention and good luck on your tests and MBAs. There's an impressive sense of community and purpose here.
Regards,
Josh
24 Mar 2005, 03:16
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on your score, Josh.
Regarding your question on how your split will be viewed by various ad coms, it depends on what schools you're targeting (a quant intensive school or a case focused one).
I'm sorry for not being able to give you further details now (due to time constraints, of course), but do visit a collection of MBA related blogs on https://mbaleague.blogspot.com/ - you'll have to mine through the blogs, but some of them are very informative.
Additionally, you might want to visit some of the admission consultants' blogs who sometimes give you a good idea with regards to how GMAT scores are evaluated by ad coms. Mind you, they vary a lot for each school. You'll find links to all these blogs on the abovementioned site.
You couldn't be more right about Kaplan's verbal section. I normally sleep walk through them after I'm done with their quant section.
Good luck with your applications!
Regarding your question on how your split will be viewed by various ad coms, it depends on what schools you're targeting (a quant intensive school or a case focused one).
I'm sorry for not being able to give you further details now (due to time constraints, of course), but do visit a collection of MBA related blogs on https://mbaleague.blogspot.com/ - you'll have to mine through the blogs, but some of them are very informative.
Additionally, you might want to visit some of the admission consultants' blogs who sometimes give you a good idea with regards to how GMAT scores are evaluated by ad coms. Mind you, they vary a lot for each school. You'll find links to all these blogs on the abovementioned site.
You couldn't be more right about Kaplan's verbal section. I normally sleep walk through them after I'm done with their quant section.
Good luck with your applications!
