720 (49Q, 38V)

[devedge]

Hi everyone,

Like some of the other people that have posted here, I am one of those silent readers of TestMagic's forums. I am happy to report that I took my GMAT test today and scored a 720!

I began my test day as a nervous wreck. I had been studying the GMATs for over 4 weeks. I took a total of 15 full tests and every one of them reported scores lower than 720. Don't be discouraged if your practice test scores are not hitting your desired goal!

Here are my test results:

Real GMAT: 720 (49Q, 38V)
PowerPrep 1: 660
PowerPrep 2: 680
ETS Paper 28: 700 (47Q, 38V)
ETS Paper 42: 700 (47Q, 38V)
ETS Paper 52: 710 (48Q, 39V)
Kaplan Diag: 640 (42Q, 36V)
Kaplan 1: 560 (37Q, 32V)
Kaplan 2: 620 (37Q, 32V)
Kaplan 3: 540 (32Q, 31V)
Kaplan 4: 610 (41Q, 33V)
Arco 1: 660-680
Arco 2: 660-680
Princeton Review 1: 680
Princeton Review 2: 680
Princeton Review 3: 700

As you can see, the ETS paper tests were the most accurate to my actual scores. I think the PowerPrep scores would have been accurate as well but I remember having a bad day when I took both of them. The Princeton Review scores may be close to what you would actually get, but I found the math problems much easier. The verbal was pretty much the same. As for Kaplan, the math was MUCH harder than on the actual GMAT. I've always been strong with math, but when I took the Kaplan tests, I was never able to actually finish the math sections. The Arco scores seem to be the same regardless how well you do. Don't use them to gauge how well you will do. The Arco tests are good to just get your timing down and practicing more tests.

As I mentioned earlier, I was a nervous wreck when I arrived at the test center. Do yourself a favor, spend a couple of minutes waiting in the lounge to calm your nerves down. I even spent 10 minutes reading through the instructions just to calm myself down. I also used that extra time during the "select schools to report to" to write out my templates for the AWA. I have to admit, the templates made the AWA MUCH easier. I never actually practiced the AWA sections because I heard they weren't as important. Do yourself another favor, practice at least one of them.

The actual test went pretty smoothly. Math was a breeze except for one problem which I had to guess on. All I could do was guess and hope it was an experimental question. For your info, the question was:

if 3^(6x) = 81000, then (3^x-1)^3 = ?

I'm still boggled by it.

On the verbal section, the reading comprehension was easy. I received 4 passages, 3 of which were short (50-60 lines). Only one was long (90 lines) but luckily, the material in the long passage was fairly easy. critical reasoning was pretty easy too. For me, SC problems were always the biggest problem. I ended up guessing on the majority of them. From my score of 38V, I'd have to say I probably guessed most of them wrong

Overall, when I finished the test, I felt good about myself. I knew I aced the AWA and the Quant sections. Verbal I knew I didn't do so great, but I wasn't ready to fork up more $$ to take the test again. Clicked on "show scores" - POW - 720. Considering I never scored higher than 710, I was extremely happy. I wish I could have done better than 38V, but considering most of my test scores showed my verbal to be at 38V, I wasn't too disappointed.

Tips for people taking the test. Don't get too nervous when you take the test. It will only make things harder. I kept telling myself I could always retake the test if I did poorly. Spend the extra time at the test center to calm your nerves down. Write out your AWA templates during the "administrative" sections. Use your breaks wisely and prepare what you are going to need appropriately.

As for the actualy studying, all I can say is practice practice practice. The more questions you do, the more familiar you will become with how ETS writes questions (and how they try to trick you). Official Guide questions are the best but practicing on them first will take away the accuracy of the two PowerPrep tests (I took the PP tests first before I studied the OG). Use Kaplan books as a good guide for math problems, but don't be discouraged if you are doing poorly in them. Take the Princeton Review and Arco tests if you need more practice. Both have questions that aren't like the real test questions, but still good to practice on. In particular, the Princeton Review math may be easier than the real thing, but they are certainly closer to the real thing than Kaplan math questions.

Good luck to everyone else taking there tests soon! Thank you Erin for providing this forum for everyone. It was a godsend for all the times I scored horribly on a practice test - reading this forum made me I was not alone.

Thanks,
Ted

[hellogmat]

Congratulations Ted. I agree that the attitude makes a big difference in the scores.

[devedge]

Thanks hellogmat, I have to say your posts on this messageboard made all the difference. There were many times that I thought I would just give up because of my poor practice tests. Hearing how you tackled the GMATs and brought your score up to 760 showed me that it WAS possible to do better and that the GMAT scored not on intellect but on how well you could take the test. Practice, practice, practice is the best advice I could give anyone... with exception to "don't give up, you can do it!".

Thanks!

[sundarc]

To answer your question, I think you might have missed a zero in the condition.

If the question was
if 3^6x = 810000, then (3^x-1)^3 = ?

3^6x = (3^3x)^2 = 900^2
==> 3^3x = 900 or -900

(3^x-1)^3 = 3^(3x-3) = (3^3x)/(3^3)
==> 900/27 or -900/27

[dig12us]

Devedge

You mentioned in your post that you took lot of practice tests. Where do you get this practice tests from. Official Guide does not have them. Kaplan/Princeton just has 1 test and the end of their books.

I want to take atleast 15 practice tests before I attempt the actual test

Please advise

[devedge]

Hi Dig12us,

The tests came on the CDs that accompanied the books. Kaplan, Arco, Princeton Review each come with a CD that contains 4 full tests. I also downloaded the PowerPrep software from ETS which contains 4 REAL practice tests. If you have extra money to spare, I highly suggest you also purchase the ETS paper tests from www.gmac.com.

Ted

[devedge]

I thought I'd add some more tips for potential test takers.

Arco: Mostly questions, no real strategies discussed that I didn't already know about. Use the tests for just practice. The scores you get are not real indicitive of the scores you will get on the GMAT. Although the questions don't have the same "feel" as real GMAT questions, they still test you on basic concepts that you should know about.

Barrons: Pure questions, no real strategies discussed. Useless as a scoring guide (because it doesnt give scores). Verbal RCs don't even look the same in terms of passage length and paragraph structure. Math, on the other hand, was slightly tougher than the real GMAT. It wasn't that the Math on Barron's was conceptually harder, but the questions involved more than one or two steps that GMAT math problems normally require. It's also good practice to just make sure you learn the basic concepts right.

Princeton Review: Didn't go through the book so I can't say much about the strategies. Math questions on here were completely off in terms of difficulty (most required only one step). While they may be closer in difficulty to real GMAT math problems than the Kaplan math problems were, I would feel safer practicing on harder questions than easier questions. The verbal questions were pretty close in structure and length to the real GMAT. The critical reasoning & SC questions were a bit easer than the real thing though. As for scoring, even though Princeton Review gave me scores close to my actual GMAT, I don't think they are very indicitive because of the relative lack of difficulty in math questions. Also, I had a problem with the Princeton Review CD giving me multiple reading comprehension passages with 1 or 2 questions each... skipping to a couple of critical reasoning/SC questions.. then going back to the same reading comprehension passage. This is NOT how the real GMAT works and if your weakness is in reading comprehension, then the Princeton Review tests will punish you more than the real GMAT. On the flipside, if you are doing well on Princeton Review math, you can be sure that the real GMAT will punish you more with slightly harder questions.

Kaplan: Of the strategies discussed in this book, I would recommend following Kaplan's reading comprehension approach. Think about why the author is writing each paragraph, not what the explicit detail is about. How does one passage relate to the previous passage? Answering these questions will help you figure out the author's purpose. if you need to go back for details later, you will know how to find them. Unless you are a math whizz (which I am not), I would suggest using the backsolving/plugging in strategies talked about in the Kaplan book. These strategies WILL help you answer questions if you have no idea where to begin (particularly on those hard algebra questions). In most cases, these strategies will also help you answer questions quicker. Finally, backsolving/plugging in help you avoid making silly mistakes (which was my big problem). As for the Kaplan tests, don't take the score with anything more than a grain of salt. Most people say you can add about 100points to your Kaplan score. While this is true in most cases, I would prefer to point out that how your Kaplan score correlates to your real GMAT depends on 2 things: your verbal and math ability. If you are very good at math and poor on verbal, Kaplan punishes you more than if you are very good at verbal and poor on math. This is because the relative difficulty of kaplan math problems to real GMAT math problems is higher than the relative difficulty of kaplan verbal problems to GMAT verbal problems. Given my Kaplan test results, I would say add 10 scaled points to your Kaplan math score, then add 5 points to your kaplan verbal score, then use those new scaled scores to figure out what your real GMAT scores would be (I compared my adjusted my scaled scores to scores posted in this forum to see what I was closest to).

Kaplan 800: I used this guide for practice with critical reasoning, reading comprehension and SC problems. This book was most useful for me in practicing critical reasoning problems because it discussed the typical types of problems ETS tries to ask you. If you practice and try to recognize these types of problems, critical reasoning will be a breeze for you on the real GMAT.

Finally, someone mentioned on this forum to write a template out for the AWA section. I didn't not take even 1 AWA practice test (which I DO NOT suggest) but found that the template approach made the whole AWA section a breeze. Memorize a template, and write it out when you are going through the instructions (when you aren't being timed). I even went so far as to come up with actual sentences where I could just plug in the appropriate arguments in (saved me time thinking up how I was going to say certain things). Kaplan also has a very useful strategy for tackling AWA. It's short but useful. Oh, and in case I haven't mentioned it already, TAKE AT LEAST ONE FULL TEST WITH THE AWA SECTION!!! If you don't even take one, you will find yourself having timing problems (like I did).

I thought it might be useful for people to see my progress so I listed out my test scores again in the order I took them.

Princeton Review 1: 680
Princeton Review 2: 680
Kaplan Diag: 640 (42Q, 36V)
PowerPrep 1: 660
Barron's tests 1-4: No Score given
Arco 1: 660-680
Arco 2: 660-680
Kaplan 1: 560 (37Q, 32V) - (how this and Kaplan 2 differ boggles me)
Kaplan 2: 620 (37Q, 32V)
ETS Paper 28: 700 (47Q, 38V)
Kaplan 3: 540 (32Q, 31V)
Kaplan 4: 610 (41Q, 33V)
Princeton Review 3: 700
PowerPrep 2: 680
ETS Paper 42: 700 (47Q, 38V)
ETS Paper 52: 710 (48Q, 39V)
Real GMAT: 720 (49Q, 38V)

As you can see, many times I scored below my goals and felt like giving up... don't lose hope, you can do it!

I hope this helps everyone,
good luck all!

[manish2003]

Originally posted by devedge

Hi Dig12us,

The tests came on the CDs that accompanied the books. Kaplan, Arco, Princeton Review each come with a CD that contains 4 full tests. I also downloaded the PowerPrep software from ETS which contains 4 REAL practice tests. If you have extra money to spare, I highly suggest you also purchase the ETS paper tests from www.gmac.com.

Ted

I think PowerPrep has two test papers, not four.

- Manish

[devedge]

oops.. that's right.. the powerprep has 2 tests

[Hal]

Congrats on the great GMAT result! Out of interest, what percentiles do your actual GMAT results put you into? I'd be interested to know why the practice tests appear to be so much harder. That's probably a good thing.

Regards, Hal