Hey there,
I took the first 3 CATs of Manhattan Prep and I think these test were quite valuable for my progress. But somehow I wonder why there were so many 700-800 questions in all of these tests, even though my overall score was around 600.
While reviewing all CATs, which I have taken so far, I still had the impression that some questions especially in the verbal part were incredible difficult; even more than the most difficult questions I encountered in the OG15.
So are the questions marked as 700-800 really such difficult questions, or is this still prevailing low level of my verbal skills, or both?
best regards,
Tim
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- TimE876
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- Sage Pearce-Higgins
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Re: Difficulty of the CATs
I agree that the way we rank the problems in terms of difficulty in the CATs isn't as clear as it could be. Remember that your score out of 800 is a combination of both your quant and your verbal scores, so that perhaps you're in the 700-800 range for verbal, but your quant score is lower, so that the average is below 700.
I encourage you to treat the bands (300-500, 500-600, 600-700, 700-800) simply as markers of relative difficulty, something akin to easy, medium, difficult, tough. They might help you with your review work: it's more important to be consistent on the lower level questions than spend time on the harder ones.
As for the difficulty of our practice tests, we've tried to make them realistic. It may be not that our tests are more difficult than the real thing, but that OG2015 is easier than the real thing. Remember that the Official Guides contain problems of a range of difficulties, ordered roughly by problem number. So if you started your studies at the beginning of a section, then the first 50 or so problems you see will be on the easier side (with a few noted exceptions, bizarrely). Also, it's my opinion that the Official Guides contain very few really tough problems (perhaps only a dozen in each section), so that if you score above 700 in your GMAT test you can expect to see many problems of a level harder than most of those in the Official Guide.
I encourage you to treat the bands (300-500, 500-600, 600-700, 700-800) simply as markers of relative difficulty, something akin to easy, medium, difficult, tough. They might help you with your review work: it's more important to be consistent on the lower level questions than spend time on the harder ones.
As for the difficulty of our practice tests, we've tried to make them realistic. It may be not that our tests are more difficult than the real thing, but that OG2015 is easier than the real thing. Remember that the Official Guides contain problems of a range of difficulties, ordered roughly by problem number. So if you started your studies at the beginning of a section, then the first 50 or so problems you see will be on the easier side (with a few noted exceptions, bizarrely). Also, it's my opinion that the Official Guides contain very few really tough problems (perhaps only a dozen in each section), so that if you score above 700 in your GMAT test you can expect to see many problems of a level harder than most of those in the Official Guide.
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