by StaceyKoprince Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:56 pm
These are the reasons I sometimes recommend that a student order the ESR:
- The practice data is all over the map: one time you're better at CR and SC sucks, the next time the reverse is true. In this case, I want to see what happened on the real test because there can be differences in performance based upon who's writing the questions, and of course you care most about your performance on the real test / those questions.
- The real test felt weird. You felt that you struggled with things that are normally a strength. In this case, the data can help you to see whether you really did do poorly on DS, or whether you were actually seeing quite hard DS (ie, doing well), and you just felt like the test was kicking your butt because those questions were really hard.
- The student has a history of mismanaging time between question types (eg, too much on PS, not enough on DS) and was trying to fix that on the real test, but isn't sure that s/he succeeded.
- A student says, "I don't know what went wrong! Everything felt fine but my score really dropped and I have no idea why." This usually goes along with a test score well below what the person was expecting. In that case, every little bit of data helps.
But if you feel that you have a pretty good handle on your strengths and weaknesses already, and if the test score and your test experience were not surprising relative to your practice tests, then you probably don't need the report.
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep