Are any of the practice tests and the scores that they spit out more reliable and accurate than others? I've noticed pretty large point swings - 30-60 points - between the ARCO tests and the 880Score tests for example. Is there any way to predict how accurate any of these will be, or if one is more accurate than the others? Thanks!

Based on my experience...

- GMAT Prep is the best performance predictor. Exactly predicted my test day score.
- 800Score.com tests lowball your quant and highball your verbal.
- ARCO tests highball both your quant and your verbal.
- VP tests in my opinion highball your quant slightly and lowball your verbal slightly.

Don't get too caught up with what your scores are on practice CATs. Channel your energy into analyzing your performance question by question and identifying areas for improvement.

It's annoying but no practice CAT has the same algorithm as the GMAT except for GMAT Prep.

If we could get some more review, thoughts from others who have done the Veritas CAT on how close the scores they had were to the actual GMAT - that would good. If Veritas were to work towards building up some statistics around this - it allows students to get a better idea on where they are at.

It would be great if we could have some more comment on this from Veritas as well as GMAT test takers who have done Veritas CAT.

I'm glad that I stumbled upon this thread because I have a similar concern/observation.

I've taken 8 practice CATs so far, and notice that the Veritas Prep CATs seem to be easier than the other brands of CATs that are available. For example, on the very first Veritas CAT that I took (over a month ago) I scored a 670. Since then, I took several more CATs after my first Veritas CAT, and scored all over the board - i.e. I scored a 590 each on an 800-Score and Arco CAT. Both the ARCO and 800-Score CATs seemed much more difficult.

My question is: Does Veritas purposefully make their CATs simpler, so as to make student's think the class is helping out more than it actually is? Not sure if I'll get an honest answer to this one, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Regards,

Upsilon4

For what it's worth, I took our free practice CAT and scored 10 points less than I did on the actual GMAT - so, I think they're pretty accurate. And we definitely don't purposefully make the tests easy! That might make students feel good during the course, but we wouldn't have very many satisfied customers come test day! :)

The fact of the matter is that no practice test can be perfectly accurate. The real GMAT has a margin of error of +/- 30 points, so practice exams - which are simply guesses as to how the real GMAT functions - are going to have even larger margins of error. I encourage my students to think of their practice tests as a 100 point range. So, if you scored a 550, your "real" score is somewhere between 500 and 600. I know that's a huge range, but it's really the best that anyone outside GMAC can do.

So, if you've scored all over the place between 590 and 670, you're within that 100 point range, and your true score is probably somewhere in between.

So the GMAC practice tests should be within that + or - 30 point margin of error that the GMAT claims to get? Does anyone out there know how large the question bank on the GMAC tests are?

I just took my first GMAC practice test, and it was pretty weird. I felt like the quant was extremely difficult and the verbal was extremely easy compared to the Veritas/Arco/800score tests. I still performed all right, but I felt the tests were significantly different than the practice tests.

I've taken two practice exams so far. I took the GMAC exam first and I scored a 590. That was about 2-3 weeks ago. Since then, I've been studying and I just scored a 650 on one of the Arco exams. I like to think that my studying helped but Arco seemed much easier than GMAC. Based on the replies to this thread, it looks like people have different opinions of Arco/GMAC/other practice tests compared to the actual GMAT. Can anyone else compare the Arco to the other practice tests and actual GMAT? Is it less difficult, more difficult?

Thomson - Peterson tests are the worst I have tried so far - the process of analysing your mistakes is more difficult than the actual test due to massively inconsistent methods of explanation. Often the solution will not indicate which is the correct answer and can after three reads still be difficult to identify.

If you are feeling at all stressed about the test - do the other practice tests!

Can Veritas also have its own Practise tests prepared by their own faculties which are in the 700+ range. It would help us a lot.