Gmat test Results

[DLALL2001]

Dear Team,

I took my GMAT last week and was very disappointed with my results. I was averaging around 630"”640 in the MGMAT tests and on the final day of the exam got a 530 slapped on my face!!! In verbal, which I believed was my strong point (I was getting a 33-34 in the Manhattan Tests) I was able to score a meager 23 in the final test.
I really am not able to pinpoint where exactly I went wrong. I did the OG twice, took all the MGMAT tests and did the Manhattan verbal and Maths books.
Kindly advise team what should be my strategy going forward as I would like to give the test once again in two months.
thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Please contact the Student Services team (800.576.GMAT or studentservices@manhattangmat.com) and request a Post-Exam Assessment. You will be able to schedule a free phone call with one of our experts to debrief from your first exam and set up a study plan for taking the test again. The Student Services team will explain the details, but basically you'll have to fill out and email a form that asks lots of questions about your prep and test experience and then you will get an email back about scheduling the call.

[tkkishore]

There are couple of forums that are discussing actual GMAT test questions. This is totally unethical and I am extremely frustrated that GMAC doesn't do much about it. It costs only an intern or two at 10$/hr to browse different GMAT study forums to figure out which forums are legit and which aren't, and take legal action on those illegitimate forums. I believe that such forum users skew the results a great deal. Because they wait until they have gathered enough test questions, and then lots of them go and take the test. This causes the CAT system to become unreasonable. All the leaked 700-800 level questions are now suddenly marked as 500-600 level questions because so many illegitimate forum users have answered them correctly. This catches honest guys like you and me totally off-guard, and undermines our hard work. I cant seem to explain any other way why sometimes all the questions on the test appear to be 700+ level.

If GMAC is turning a blind eye towards this, and MBA schools are too happy to push their average GMAT scores up each year, I hope hard working people like us will get together to prod GMAC to take action against forums where actual GMAT test questions are being discussed.

I have been in GMAT-land for almost 2 years now and i find MGMAT the best of all GMAT study groups. I hope the nice folks at MGMAT will facilitate a way for us to petition GMAC to actively go after websites that discuss real GMAT test questions. If GMAC cannot shut down illegal GMAT forums, then they should get rid of CAT and use a standard test administered few times a year, with everyone getting the same questions.

[StaceyKoprince]

GMAC is definitely going after those sites already, and has already sued some sites.

At a conference in October, they said they are starting to go after these sites aggressively and they said they reserve the right to ban people from the GMAT permanently and cancel official scores retroactively if they can show that people viewed and/or posted "live" questions. So, if anyone runs across something online and is tempted to peek, don't. <hint--GMAC specifically called scoretop "defendants" at that conference--/hint> Without a GMAT score, you can't go to b-school.

The difficulty levels of the questions are determined during the experimental phase - after that, the difficulty levels are set and, if GMAC notices an unusual uptick in the percentage of people getting a question right (compared to its expected difficulty level), they will pull the question, not just reset the difficulty level. So it isn't the case that a lot of people suddenly getting a hard question right will cause it to be reset as an easier question for the rest of us.

The reason why you sometimes think something is a 700+ question when it isn't? You have individual strengths and weaknesses. These are not the same as the strengths and weaknesses across the entire test-taking population. So you're going to think some questions are easier when they are officially rated harder and vice-versa.

I'll send an email to my contact at GMAC to ask how individuals can report offending sites, so you can tell them directly if you run across anything. I'll let you know what I hear.