Thoughts on the MGMAT CAT

[JAMGAJR]

Stancey,

Just to give you additional information, today I took more tests.

MGMAT 3- only quant q49 (90%)........26/37

MGMAT 4- only quant q41 (93%)........24/37 .this one was incredible.........how could I have a percnetile 93% and stay with 41?

MGMAT 5- 750 q51 v41
q- 28 correct /37 (19 700-800 and 18 600-700 level).
v- 26/41 (but 33 were 700-800 level)

Just to compare, last week i got 760 in GMATPrep1 q50 (31/37) v42 (34/41)

After i had finished MGMAT5, i knew thai i had got >700, but not 750. MGMAT5 is more difficult than Gmatprep1.

[StaceyKoprince]

Can you send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and ask them to forward it to me? (Don't want to post my email address on a public forum, sorry.)

I'm confused about your Q41 = 93 percentile. Those two numbers shouldn't be correlated. I'd like to take a look at the test.

[JAMGAJR]

Stacey,

I sent the information you required.

I sent the questions from the test in which i got q41 (93%) and from one in which I got q51 (99%).

I hope this help MGMAT to adjust the CAT (in case it is necessary, of course).

[Luci]

Hi JAMGAJR

I´m also a non-native English speaker (I´m from Spain) and I´m facing the same problem you are facing. My verbal part sucks. I usually get arround 47-48 (81% or so) in quant, wich is ok with most 700-800 level questions, but my average score in verbal is 33 (69%). This will yield to a 660, and I´m aiming at a 700.

Although I´m improving it a little bit right now getting scores arround 36(81%), I got a 40 once (91%), I would need some advice to improve this part, and I need it fast, because I´m doing the exam in a month.

What do you suggest, I dont have enough time to go for a course, I have check private tutoring but can´t afford it.
I´have read that you got bad results in verbal at the very begining, but your latests scores are quite good, what have you done? Do you have a special advice?
I can say that I usually perform better in SC because grammar is about rules that are easy to learn (by the way is where I have improved the most). It is not that I dont undestand the RC or CR passages, it is just that it is harder to me to improve in this sections maybe because thinking in English makes it even harder I guess...

Thanks

[christiancryan]

Hi JAMJAGR,

I’m very sorry about the problem. I’ve pulled up internal data on that particular exam and you should have received a subscore of 49 (specifically, 92%), not 41. I’m investigating with our programming team to discover the source of the glitch. Will keep you & other forum readers posted on the results.

Thanks,
Chris

[JAMGAJR]

Luci

I did all the questions of og11 an revised them twice. And I started to read some questions and discussions at scoretop.com

Besides this, I bought the mGMAT SC and the mGMAT CR books. To be honest, i haven´t read more than 2 chapters of each book............but i saw that they are really very well structured.

But I am still not confident about Verbal.

This is why i started a verbal tutoring. But the level of the classes are not good enough to improve my score. This is a great problem........the teacher says that a v37 is a fantastic score for a non-native..........but I disagree......i have at least to aim for a v42, not to give up! So i will continue to study by myself.

Next weekend (when I have time to study) i will start a new strategy:
200 questions from 1000 RC per week
read and do the mGMAT SC and CR twice until the end of august

After that, in september, my plan is to start the LSAT CR questions and 1000 SC. And do all the 6 mgmat tests again and again. And I am thinking about doing the next 10 lsat tests.

In October, my plan is to do the sets 1-31 and Gmatprep2. In the end of the October, I will "try" the official test. If I got a 730, I will be very happy. Otherwise, I will study more and try again in December.

[StaceyKoprince]

FYI guys - quality of study is much more important than quantity of study. I would rather see you do 1/4 of the problems but really spend the time to learn on each one.

Specifially with verbal, you're not done studying a problem until you can articulate exactly why each of the four wrong answers is wrong. Ideally, you can articulate this well enough to explain to someone else who doesn't understand. Verbal is all about process of elimination, especially CR and RC.

Also articulate why the tempting wrong answers are so tempting - what is the trap there? If you can identify what kinds of traps they use, you will be less likely to fall into them. For instance, on RC, they like to use what I call "true but not right" trap answers - that is, the answer choice is true according to the passage... but it doesn't answer the specific question that was asked. Another one is "plausible in the real world" - that is, the answer choice seems like it would make sense or be true in the real world... but it isn't actually mentioned in the passage.

Make sure you take the time to figure this kind of stuff out about the problems that you do. You won't learn nearly as much just by doing tons of problems.

[JAMGAJR]

Stacey,

Thanks for the advice. I need to analyze my mistakes in the tests more frequently than I have been doing.

But as I am a non-native, to do a lot of questions help not only to understand the patterns of Gmat, but also to improve my vocabulary and time management during the test.

I agree with you when you say that it is crucial to understand all the alternatives in each questions. But most of the materials available do not have great explanations. Besides this, the og11 (que official material) is not good enough , in my opinion, to help someone to cross the 700 barrier . This is why I bought the MGMAt materials.

What I have seen in many forums, such as scoretop, beat the gmat e testmagic is that almost all the people who got a 750+ (mainly people from India, who usually got fantastic scores) made a great effort and tried as many questions as possible.

[JAMGAJR]

Stacey,

You are absolutely right. The question bank of difficult quant questions is very limited.

I took the teste 1 again and it was easier than the first one I did 3 weeks ago.

Aniother interesting thing is that my first Verbal question was a bold-face CR. Is it normal? Have you ever heard about this pattern after good results in quant section?

I started the mGMAT CR book and it helped me a lot in this alst test. I only got 2 out of 14 wrong in CR.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sure it's possible to get almost anything as a first verbal question (in certain difficulty ranges) - it's not based on quant performance. They won't give you a super-hard (or super-easy) question first but it's not always just a mid-level question either. It can be a bit harder or easier.

And nice job on CR!