Study and Strategy questions relating to the GMAT.
xudanye
Students
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 8:00 pm
 

Plz help assess my CAT exams 2,3,4 for 700 performance

by xudanye Tue Sep 20, 2011 12:26 am

Hi, I've done 3 MGMAT CAT exams under official conditions, and got 670, 710, 690 respectively, now I'm preparing to take the second real GMAT by the end of this month, can I secure a 700+ performance? I've done some assessment with one of Stacy's article as following:

http://cn.fotoalbum.eu/images1/201109/2 ... 6492516828

http://cn.fotoalbum.eu/images1/201109/2 ... 6492517851


First, I scan down the "correct / incorrect" column to see whether the student had any strings of 4 or more answers wrong.

Yes. In two of three CATs, I had 5 successive wrong answers, respectively from question 9 to 14 and from 30 to 34.
Looks like I spent too less time on RC problems.


http://cn.fotoalbum.eu/images1/201109/2 ... 6492519557


I also look at the timing for the last five to ten problems in the section to see whether the person was rushing or had a lot of time left (meaning she rushed earlier in the section).

Yes I had to guess about 2 questions in the last five to finish on time by the last 2 questions.

Next, I count the number of questions that fall into the "way too slow" category.

I don’t have CR questions fall into that category, but roughly 3 or 4 questions of SC and RC do.

Next, I count how many "way too fast" incorrect questions there are.

Seems no, since I have to catch up by the end of the test.

Please if any instructor can give me some advice?
StaceyKoprince
ManhattanGMAT Staff
 
Posts: 9360
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
Location: Montreal
 

Re: Plz help assess my CAT exams 2,3,4 for 700 performance

by StaceyKoprince Tue Sep 27, 2011 11:10 am

FYI - we're not permitted to download files (for security reasons).

If we look at the average of the three tests, it looks like you're in the range to hit 700, but it's also reasonable for you to score in the high 600s given the data. Did you take those tests under 100% official conditions, including essays, length of breaks, etc? If you gave yourself any advantage that you won't have on the real test, then it's possible that your scores are inflated.

For the strings of 5 wrong in a row, what happened there? Were you rushing? Did you make some careless mistakes? Did you just happen to get 5 questions in a row that were too hard for you or that covered things you didn't know?

It sounds as though you do have some timing problems. Timing problems are tricky - you can still sometimes perform decently well, but there's also an increased chance that you could have a big problem on test day and have a significant score drop. If you do not have a specific deadline, you may want to take some additional time to normalize your timing more so that you reduce the chances that you have a "bad day" on official test day.

This article will help with timing:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... anagement/

The "how to analyze your practice test" article discusses a lot more analysis that you can do. If you'd like to do that analysis and share it with us, then we can help you with more specific suggestions (for example, specific question sub-types or content areas that are giving you trouble, etc).

Note that you do have to do the analysis - don't just give us the raw data - and also note that we can't download any files. I did click on what you posted, but I have to save the file in order to view it, and I'm not permitted to do that. So I'm not sure whether those files contain your actual analysis or whether they just contain the raw data from your score reports. If they contain your analysis, copy and paste it into a regular forum post. If they contain screen shots of the score reports, that's just the raw data - we need to know what you think the raw data means, similar to what you did in your last post.
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep