Hi Instructors,

I took a manhattan gmat test today and I was amazed to see that in Quant out of 37 questions I got 32 ques in 700-800 range. Is this how it happens in GMAT? This looks quite unrealistic to me. I can assume if you are doing right you can be at this level but even when I did 5 questions wrong for 700-800 range I still got another one of 700-800 range. Is this normal and expected. I did not see this when taking GMAT prep test from mba.com. The issue is it tends to tire you at the end and does affect your verbal also. I understand that people who are targetting above 700 or more need to learn that and tire themselves, but does that mean if someone is not there they should not be giving these tests.

More than anything else it also leads to some disappointment and you start questioning your preparedness in unfortunately verbal also.

Please guide here.

Thanks

Hi Instructors,

I was hoping if you guys could shed some light since I have two more tests and I dont want to end up having bad performance on verbal test as well due to extremely tough quant.

Is there a reason behind making quant this tough?

Thanks

Please don't reply to your own post unless you have new info to add. We respond to all posts in order, oldest first, and the date of your post is based on the date of the last post in the thread, not the first. If you "bump" your own post, you will wait longer for a response.

Yes, the test really can work this way. While you see only a 700-800 label, we actually have difficulty levels calculated to the tens' digit (based upon how past students have done on the problem). So if you're scoring up in the 98th-99th percentile range on quant and start getting some wrong, you could have multiple questions down to the 89th-90th percentile range (all 700+) before you start dropping into 600-700 territory.

Also, we tend to update our more precise database (based on student performance) more often than we update the data point that you see. So it's possible that a question that used to be rated 700 is now rated 680 or 690. You still see 700-800, but the database knows that it's a little bit lower now and chooses accordingly.

Having said all that, most people do think our quant section is harder than the real thing. Better to be overprepared than underprepared. :)

_________________
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT