GMAT Practice Tests

People studying for the GMAT are often completely thrown by a correct answer on a sentence correction question that just “doesn’t sound good.” In their minds they think, “there is no way that can be the correct answer – that just sounds bad.” Even if that thinking is true that does not mean that the correct answer won’t sound just downright bad! Making right answers sound bad is a deliberate tactic on the part of the GMAT writers and in this piece I will explain why the do it, how I know they do it, and what you can do about it!

I often ask people, “What do you think is a defining characteristic of hard questions?” Most people often respond with some of the things that tend to happen on harder questions but the simple answer is that from the point of view of the GMAT writers the single defining characteristic common to all hard questions (Quant and Verbal) is that hard questions are ones that most people get wrong! If most people get a particular question right (even if the writers predicted that most would get it wrong), it is, by definition, not a hard question. However, because of the scoring algorithm and the way the GMAT is scored, there need to be very hard questions (in other words, questions that most people would get wrong). But how do the GMAT writers write a sentence correction question that most people will get wrong? Well, they obviously have a variety of tactics, but one of the most common and fundamental is that to make a question hard the correct answer can’t be obviously correct – if it were then most people would recognize it as correct and pick it. So the writers often deliberately write the correct answer on a sentence correction question to make it unfamiliar, awkward, even unpalatable.

Recently, while tutoring someone, I came across a sentence that really proved for me that this is a deliberate act on the part of the test writers. I pretty much knew it already, but I thought it was really interesting to see this deliberate tinkering in action. The sentence in question comes from the GMAT Prep exams. I had seen the sentence many times before, but this time I noticed that the correct answer was a little different from the one I had seen before – it was worse! So I looked into it and discovered that the sentence was in fact different in previous versions of the GMAT Prep software. After digging a little deeper I found what appears to be the original version of the sentence (from the New York Times). Low and behold we have pretty clear evidence of how the GMAT writers take a sentence, tweak it to make it less familiar and appealing, and then, when that isn’t enough, tweak it even further to make it borderline terrible (albeit correct), thereby increasing the level of difficulty even further.

So let’s start with what I believe to be the original sentence (again, from the New York Times):

“Also, unlike many other frogs that metamorphose from tadpoles to adults in one year, the high-elevation frogs take three to four years to reach adulthood, so they are restricted to deeper bodies of water that do not dry up in summer or freeze solid in winter.”

Ok, so standard comparison sentence and one that sounds pretty good in my opinion. Now let’s see how the GMAT writers changed the correct version of this sentence to make it less appealing and therefore harder:

Unlike frogs that metamorphose from tadpoles into adults within a one-year period, mountain yellow-legged frogs of the Sierra Nevada take three to four years to reach adulthood, and so they are restricted to deeper bodies of water that do not dry up in summer or freeze solid in winter.

Now, that sentence may not look that different to you, and it isn’t that different. But there are some subtle changes that make it more likely to be passed over by a test taker. The “mountain yellow-legged frogs” bit is just there because without it we don’t have the context to know what the sentence is talking about. But the less obvious and more important change is from the “so they are restricted” to the “and so they are restricted” version. Having done this question with many people I know that some people do not pick the correct answer because they believe that you can’t have two conjunctions (the “and” and the “so”) right next to each other. Indeed that usage is not that common and is therefore unfamiliar to many people, but it is acceptable and is not wrong. And since it is not wrong, it must be right!

To me that usage is not that unappealing, but what caught my eye with this sentence recently is how it was changed again to make it obviously less appealing and therefore more difficult. The most recent version on the GMAT Prep software changes the underlined part (in the correct answer) to:

“mountain yellow-legged frogs of the Sierra Nevada take three to four years to reach adulthood, with the result that they are”

Wow. I mean, maybe you readers don’t get as excited about this as I do, but my reaction is wow!!! That “with the result that they are” is pretty bad. That type of construction would typically be part of the wrong answer on most GMAT sentence correction questions. It is just not good! Here’s the thing. As unappealing as that construction is, it is not wrong! So I might initially disfavor that answer choice when I see it but I would not outright eliminate it. And on this particular question it is the right answer because the other answer choices just have other things that are definitely wrong with them.

Anyway, this is about as clear an indication as I have ever seen of how the GMAT writers try to ramp up the level of difficulty on Sentence Correction by purposely tweaking correct answers to make them unfamiliar, awkward, or even downright unappealing. So what can you do with this newfound knowledge?

The first thing is that you cannot eliminate answers because you think they sound “bad.” Wrong answers are wrong because there is something concrete wrong with them (either grammatically or on more of a logic/meaning level). So you might want to “disfavor” an answer that sounds awkward or unfamiliar, but I would not outright eliminate it. Answers are not usually wrong just because they are awkward. If an answer is absolutely hopelessly awkward to the point that it is flat out incorrect English grammar than that may be enough but usually there will be other things wrong beyond that.

It may also help you to EXPECT that the correct answer may sound a little bit off. That will be especially true on harder questions. Again there is a difference between unfamiliar or a little awkward on the one hand and hopelessly awkward or completely unidiomatic on the other. As you practice GMAT Sentence Correction questions try to learn where that dividing line sits. And again, worse case scenario, just leave the answer in play and come back to it at the end. If 2 answers are exactly the same and one is much wordier and awkward then it will be wrong. But if one answer is a little awkward but more logical and the other answer sounds better but has a concrete grammatical error that you can identify or even a logic/meaning issue, the more awkward answer will be correct.

In my years as a GMAT tutor I have had many students come to me complaining that although they have done a lot of prep for the test, their scores just are not increasing. There are many reasons that this could be the case, but in this post I would like to discuss what, in my experience, is by far the most common cause and also the easiest one to solve: a reliance on non-official resources!

This may seem over-simplistic, but I really can’t even begin to count the number of times that I have been contacted by someone who BELIEVES that they have not been improving when in fact they have. In fact, I just began tutoring someone who came to me by googling the exact title of this blog post (she was the motivation for this blog post). When I found out what she had been doing (essentially using third party resources without using the official questions and tests released by GMAC) I said what I say to all the people in this situation: “you don’t even know if you have been improving or not because you are not using official questions or taking official practice tests.” And so I had her do what I have all people in this situation do: take an official practice test.

What was the result? The apparent lack progress after months of studying and 6 “non-official” practice tests was revealed to be actual progress. She believed that she had gone from a 530 to a 540 (not a very impressive increase after all of the work that she had put in) when in fact she had improved to a 670!!! The truth is that it’s not even clear how much of that was actual “improvement” since her initial diagnostic was from the same prep company that all her subsequent tests were from (I don’t want to name the company but it is one of the major players). It’s quite possible that her initial GMAT diagnostic score might have been a 600 had she taken an official test!

I have written other posts about the need to use official GMAT resources, but I thought that it would be worthwhile to write one devoted specifically to how harmful it can be to rely on 3rd party resources, especially in trying to measure one’s own progress. Let me enumerate the reasons why it can be so detrimental to gauging one’s improvement…

The most obvious and most damaging issue is that 3rd party practice tests do not use the actual scoring algorithm used on the GMAT. Test prep companies certainly aim to approximate the algorithm but they do it with varying degrees of success ranging from ok to not even close! Seriously, not even close!!! So when you rely on these tests you really may have absolutely no idea where you are actually scoring. The tests may be telling you that you are at a 550 when you are really closer to 700 or even the other way around. The aforementioned girl who I just began tutoring received Verbal scores no higher than 34 on the non-official tests she was taking but got a 44 on her first official GMAT Prep test! 44! That is a ridiculous Verbal score (almost 99th percentile) whereas the 34 Verbal was just ok.

Furthermore, the questions themselves are not that accurate. When I do official GMAT practice tests, I usually get 1 Verbal question wrong on the whole section. On 3rd party practice tests, however, I may get 6 or 7 Verbal questions wrong. Why would that be the case? It is not that the questions are just harder – it’s that they are ambiguous or just not well-vetted, well-written questions and so the kind of reasoning than can and should be applied on real GMAT verbal questions often can’t be applied. So not only does one risk having an inaccurate representation of their score when using 3rd party practice tests, one also risks not learning how, exactly, to approach real GMAT questions.

So if your GMAT score SEEMS to not be increasing, the first thing that you need to do is get an accurate understanding of where your GMAT score actually is. It might be that your score IS quite a bit higher than you think (this is often the case for people who come to me complaining that their score is not increasing). Using 3rd party resources is not necessarily bad, but as you get deeper into your GMAT journey you must turn increasingly if not entirely to official resources and of course to get an accurate gauge of where your score really is you need to do an official GMAT Prep test.

If indeed you determine that your score really is not increasing then of course there are reasons why this might be the case. In my next post I will examine some of the other factors that can contribute to the lack of progress and will discuss what can can be done about it.

GMAC recently announced new policies regarding both the cancellation of scores and how often one can take the GMAT. These new changes taken together are pretty significant, offer some big advantages to test-takers, and really affect how one can approach the test.

As of July 19th, 2015 there is 16 day waiting period between tests. This is a significant improvement upon the 31 day waiting period that test takers had to deal with for many years. GMAC is no doubt motivated by the GRE, the makers of which have gone out of their way to compete with and even one-up the GMAT. As of this writing, the waiting period between GRE tests is 21 days, though I would not be surprised if they eventually change that to something shorter (like 14 days) just to outdo the GMAT!

When the waiting period was 31 days, the following scenario would often play out with my students. A person would take the GMAT and would really have been ready, having scored at or above their target score on previous official GMAC practice tests. But on the actual test they would sometimes come in underneath their target and then be in the unfortunate position of having to wait a full month before taking the test again. If a person needs significant reprep, then waiting 31 days is not a big deal. But when you are genuinely ready and just underscore because of a bad test day performance, sometimes what you need is just to jump right back on the horse and take the test again. That 31 day was excruciating for people in that situation since they literally had to sit on their hands and just wait for 31 days to pass.

So 16 days is much more reasonable – people will be much less likely to slide backwards even if they do very little practice in that period. And so this is really a significant improvement over the previous policies and will be sure to make test-takers happy.

The other major change just announced is that test takers can now cancel their scores (right after they are shown them at the end of the test) and not worry about having a “C” on their score report. C’s will no longer be printed on score reports as of July 19th so even if you took the test before the 19th and cancelled it, if you send a score report to schools after the 19th then the C will no longer appear.

This may not seem like a big deal, but coupled with the news about the 16 day waiting period, it really does constitute a significant change for test-takers. You can now be much more aggressive about taking the test because if it does not go well you can essentially erase the score completely AND you can jump right back on the horse and take the test a little over 2 weeks later. In the past I would not have my students be so aggressive in part because if they did not do as well as hoped they would then be barred from taking it again for 31 days. But 16 days is such a short amount of time that even if you were pretty much ready when you took the exam you could just continue in stride, push for 2 more weeks, and then just get right back in there and do it again.

Essentially these policies almost translate into allowing people to go in and take the GMAT as a sort-of dress rehearsal for the real thing. It can be like taking an official practice test in real test conditions at the actual testing center. The only difference is that it costs $250 and that you can’t see which questions you got wrong! The only thing that I would caution people against is in being too cavalier in the use these GMAT tries. You still have only 5 attempts in any 12 month period. Now most people don’t end up taking the test more than 3 times, so most test-takers would be just fine burning one test a little prematurely. But I have known and tutored many people who end up taking the test 4 or more times, including a handful of people who have taken the GMAT over 5 times.

At the end of the day these new policies, if used appropriately, are really a boon for test-takers since they allow them to worry a little less about any single test day performance. If a particular test does not go well, a test-taker can erase the score completely and then retake the test very soon thereafter.

In a another post, I discussed the differences between the GMAT and GRE.  That background might be heIpful if you really want to understand the ins and outs of each test.  If, however, you are just looking for general guidance on how to decide which test to take (or which one to take first), read on!

How Certain Are You That You Want To Go To Business School?
This is the first and most important question to answer.  The GMAT is the traditional MBA admission test and is only accepted at business schools and a few other types of graduate programs.  The GRE, on the other hand, is accepted not only by business schools but also by virtually all other types of graduate programs from Masters and PhD programs to Veterinary school and even to many Law schools (you can basically use the GRE for everything but Medical school). So if you are not sure that you want to go to business school and are considering other types of graduate programs (such as public policy or psychology or something like that) then you are definitely better off taking the GRE. Doing so will give you the flexibility to apply to other types of programs if you decide that an MBA is not the right choice for you.

Take an Official Practice Test
Assuming that you are nearly certain that you want an MBA, the easiest way to gauge which test is best for you is to take an official GMAT and an official GRE and compare the results. DO NOT rely on third party practice tests for this since they are not as accurate. You need to take official versions from the test makers’ websites. Follow the above links to access the tests. Once you have taken the tests, use ETS’s GMAT/GRE Score Calculator to equate the scores and see which test you did better on.

A couple things to keep in mind here. First of all, many people score similarly on both tests. If you take my GRE score and convert it to a GMAT score, it is the exact same score. So this exercise alone might not be enough to choose which test to go with. More factors that deserve consideration will be explained below.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is not just the final score that matters in this initial comparison. You also want to think about which test you anticipate you would ultimately do better on. It might be that your GMAT score is initially higher than your GRE score, but there may be features about the tests that indicate that, with practice, you would be able to have a greater score increase on the GRE. For example, you may have run completely out of time on the GRE and not on the GMAT, but you may feel that with some practice you could easily have finished the sections on time.

Don’t Choose the GRE Just Because It Seems “Easier”

The most common misconception that I hear from people is, “I was told I should take the GRE because it’s easier than the GMAT.”   Well-meaning friends, colleagues, and even business school admissions consultants often give this advice.  But it is flawed for one main reason.  At the end of the day you are competing against the same cohort of people no matter which test you take, and if the test is easier for you it’s easier for everyone!!!  Remember, your final score means nothing out of context – it is only important in the way that it compares to other people’s scores, so you still have to outperform the very same people no matter which test you take!

Let’s take an example.  The GRE Quantitative section has a calculator whereas the GMAT Quant section does not.  If you are someone who can’t do ANY Math without a calculator, then yes, having the calculator will probably benefit you MORE than other test-takers, and that is what matters.  But what if you have pretty good mental Math ability?  I tutor many people who tell me they are “bad at Math” and who fear the GMAT.  But when I work with them it is clear that they have very good mental Math ability or at least better mental Math ability than most of the people they are up against.  For these people, having a calculator might be a disadvantage because many or possibly most of the people they are competing against would benefit from it much more than they would.  They might be better off taking the GMAT since they would be more likely to outperform their competition in an environment where there is no calculator.

Another point related to the above is that although the GRE Quantitative section is easier, you need to get far more questions right in order to have a high score.   This is just another consequence of the fact that you are competing against the same cohort of people and that you need to outperform them:  since most top performers don’t miss many questions on the GRE Quant section, you can’t either!

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that the GRE is not necessarily “easier” anyway.  Yes, the Quantitative section is easier, but most people find the Verbal section of the GRE to be harder than that of the GMAT.  At the end of the day, what determines which test you will do better on is really more about which test aligns more with your particular abilities.  Again, if you have very good mental Math ability and are better at grammar (which is on the GMAT) and don’t have as extensive a vocabulary (which is tested on the GRE), then the GMAT might be a better fit.  If the reverse is true, the GRE might be the better option.  But remember, some people end up with nearly identical scores on both tests – not everyone will perform considerably better on one than the other, so don’t stress the initial decision too much!  More on that below…

What About Taking Both Tests?
Not a bad idea!  Even if you don’t INTEND to take both tests, it’s not that big a deal to switch tests if at some point in the process you start to think that the other test would be a better fit.  Obviously it would be better to just choose a test and stick with it, but sometimes it’s just a tough call as to which test to start with, and I have had many students who have ended up taking both. The tests are similar enough that it is really not that hard to prepare for one and then take the other.  In fact, when I prepare people for the GRE, I often have them do a significant number of GMAT questions (for reasons that I won’t go into here), so ultimately the prep process for both tests is pretty similar.

If after thinking about all of the above considerations you still are on the fence and not sure which test to take, here is what I would suggest:  prepare for the GMAT and if after some time you are not happy with your progress or if after taking the GMAT a couple of times you are not pleased with your score, pivot to the GRE.  In my experience it is MUCH easier to go from the GMAT to the GRE than the other way around. Since the GMAT has a harder Quant section and since it does not provide a calculator, preparing for the GMAT puts you in a pretty good position to then turn around and take the GRE and I have had many students prepare for the GMAT and then take the GRE and get a great score, often without much additional prep.  There are some additional concepts that need to be learned, some vocabulary that needs to be studied, a second type of essay that warrants a little bit of attention, but the biggest thing is just getting used to the slightly different format of the test. In my experience even just a few weeks of additional prep is enough to go from the GMAT to the GRE.

Conclusions
Obviously it is preferable to try to decide which test would be better for you before embarking on a study regimen, but predicting which test you will do better on can be difficult, so don’t stress it too much.  Again, many people perform equally on both tests, so it’s really not helpful to believe that there is a right and wrong choice that you can make here.  And at the end of the day, studying for one test puts you in a good position to tackle the other, so if at any point you decide to switch tests it is not that big a deal.

Practice tests are a crucial component of GMAT preparation, but people often don’t understand how or when to use them or even which tests to use for which purpose. So which tests should you use and when should you use them? Well first you need to understand the differences between the tests that are out there and the fundamental purpose of doing a practice test.

I can’t even begin to count the number of times the following scenario has played out: A prospective GMATer contacts me for GMAT tutoring, often in a state of extreme distress because their “practice test scores” are not as high as the score they want to get on the test. When I ask them WHICH tests they have been taking the answer is often Princeton Review or Manhattan GMAT or one of the other 3rd party tests, yet in many of these cases the person never took an official practice test (a GMATPrep test from GMAC). When I point this out to them the usual response I get is, “you mean tests from Princeton Review or Manhattan GMAT are not real practice tests?”

People who are not in test prep industry often don’t initially understand that non-official tests (those not created by GMAC) are not real tests. This is true for 2 important reasons: the questions are not real questions (they were written by employees of the test prep company) and the algorithm that the test uses is not the actual scoring algorithm that the real GMAT uses (both in terms of the way it spits out questions and the score that it calculates). This means that your score will not be extremely accurate since the questions themselves are not authentic questions, the way they are distributed on the test is not necessarily accurate, and the way the score is calculated does not necessarily reflect the way it is calculated on the actual GMAT.

This does not mean that there is no place for 3rd party practice tests, but the GMATPrep tests are pretty much exact reflections of the actual GMAT (they use retired questions and the actual GMAT scoring algorithm and are therefore clearly superior). Unfortunately there are only 4 GMATPrep tests available, so you have to use them sparingly and for the right purpose. This means that you probably have to use some 3rd party practice tests at some point, but when do you use which test and why?

Well to begin, you need to have an understanding of the different functions that a practice test can serve. I would argue that there are 4 main reasons to take a practice test:

1) To see what your score is
2) To work on time management
3) To get practice putting it all together and taking a full-length exam
4) To get a sense for what else you need to work on as you near your test date

Now, to work on time management or to get some practice putting the whole experience together on the computer in a full-length exam setting, 3rd party practice tests can be very useful. The problem is that you really need to limit them to those objectives and not try to go too far with them, because by and large they are not extremely accurate and are not even that great at indicating what you need to work on further. For example, sometimes the 3rd party tests spit out the wrong distribution of questions, so if you take a Kaplan test and it gives you 4 combinatorics and probability questions, you might get 3 of them wrong and then freak out, believing that you now need to work on those topics. But that may be misleading since the actual GMAT would be extremely unlikely to throw you 4 combinatorics and probability questions and your worries would therefore be misplaced.

It is not easy to take a practice test and then NOT read too much into the results, but for non-official practice tests you really need to try. All too often people freak out because they don’t like what they are seeing with their practice test scores, but if you scored a 680 on a GMATPrep exam and then a 620 on a Manhattan GMAT test, you can’t compare the scores and infer that you are going in the wrong direction. It is not an apples to apples comparison. The Manhattan GMAT tests have different questions and a different scoring algorithm so as difficult as it is you must keep this in mind!

Basically what I advise is this:

Start with a GMATPrep exam in the beginning of the process to get a baseline and see what your weaknesses are. Then spend some time preparing by just studying and doing practice questions but forego the tests for a while. Then, when you think you are around the midway point in the process and have done a lot of studying, it is time to take a practice test again. At this point, since time management might still be an issue, I would take a 3rd party practice test so that you get some practice putting it all together and working on time management, but you don’t burn one of the GMATPrep exams. If that goes reasonably well, you can then take a GMATPrep exam to see what your actual score is. If the experience did not go well, you may want to stick with 3rd party tests until you feel like you have a better handle on time management and the experience of taking a full test on the computer before turning to the GMATPrep tests.

3rd party practice tests generally give you a question-by-question breakdown of how much time you spent on each question, whereas the GMATPrep tests do not, so this is actually one advantage of using the non-official tests. When working on time management is your major objective, I would practice on the 3rd party tests so that you can really do them over and over without worrying about burning the GMATPrep tests.

Nevertheless, once you have ironed out the time issues and especially as you get closer to your test date, you need to turn more and more to the GMATPrep tests so that you have a realistic understanding of your score and of the kinds of questions that you are struggling with (again, remember that the non-official tests can sometimes be misleading in the weaknesses that they point to). And I personally believe really strongly that the very last practice test you do (if not the last 2) should be a GMATPrep test. You just don’t want to be using inauthentic questions on the very last practice test before your actual GMAT.

Again there is nothing wrong with using non-official tests, but you must understand the differences between the 3rd party tests and the ones released by GMAC. Furthermore, you need to have an understanding of what benefit the practice tests can provide and think about what specific purpose or purposes you are trying to achieve in order to determine which test you should use (given the unfortunate limit on official GMATPrep tests). To repeat, if your goal is to have an accurate understanding of what your score is or some realistic feedback about what your specific weaknesses are, you really need to use the GMATPrep tests. If it is really more about working on time management or just getting some additional practice putting it all together with full tests on the computer, then the non-official tests are great for that purpose and in some ways superior to the GMATPrep exams (because of the question-by-question timing breakdown that they offer). Nevertheless, resist the urge to read too much into the scores that they output since they will not necessarily be that accurate and may mislead you as to what your weaknesses are and what more you need to do to prepare for the exam.