princeton 2005 tests: tougher than the earlier editions??

[kack]

hi,

can somebody tell me the diff between Kaplan Higher Score and Kaplan 800 ?

Is the level of difficulty the same or is one much better than the other ?

i have the Higher score Cd and cant get the 800 on a CD...

Is it imperative to study from the 800, esp since for ppl who want to push their scores up considerable!!.. or will teh higher score sufice (though higher score is quite tough anywyas )

cheers
kack

[Crash_test_dummy]

Originally Posted by kack

hi,

can somebody tell me the diff between Kaplan Higher Score and Kaplan 800 ?

Is the level of difficulty the same or is one much better than the other ?

i have the Higher score Cd and cant get the 800 on a CD...

Is it imperative to study from the 800, esp since for ppl who want to push their scores up considerable!!.. or will teh higher score sufice (though higher score is quite tough anywyas )

cheers
kack

the difficulty level of KAPLAN800 is higher than that of kaplan higher score. as u mentioned, higher score itself is considerably tough. kaplan800 takes it one step further. while kaplanHS focuses on starting from basics and then increasing the difficulty level upto a morderate level, kap800 starts with tough questions from the first page! it is definitely good for ppl who want to practice tough questions and aim at very high scores, but it doesn`t teach any basics or concepts. since it is one of the very few GMAT books with really tough questions (princeton is nothing compared to it!) and catering exclusively to high-scorers, i think one should devote some time to it. take it as the next step to kaplanHS! however, if you are uncomfortable even with medium-difficulty questions, you'd rather come to this book only when you`re much more confident and well-prepared. K800 doesnt come with a CD.

[Psychodementia]

Took PR Test 2 yesterday. Had a huge shock in Quanty Aunty. I was ravaged by - not 1 not 2 but 5 questions on P&C and probability at a stretch. And ALL of them were equally difficult. Ended up with 8 mistakes and a raw score of 40 in Quant !!!

Quant :
Rights/Wrong - 29/8
Ques Wrong - 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 28, 36
Accuracy -
PS – 17/22 = 77%
DS – 12/15 = 80%

Dunno if actual GMAT penalizes for getting errors sequentially. As you can see I have 6 wrongs in a string of 7 questions. But still find 40 raw hard to believe.

Arun

[Crash_test_dummy]

Originally Posted by Psychodementia

Took PR Test 2 yesterday. Had a huge shock in Quanty Aunty. I was ravaged by - not 1 not 2 but 5 questions on P&C and probability at a stretch. And ALL of them were equally difficult. Ended up with 8 mistakes and a raw score of 40 in Quant !!!


Dunno if actual GMAT penalizes for getting errors sequentially. As you can see I have 6 wrongs in a string of 7 questions. But still find 40 raw hard to believe.

Arun

i think it is highly unlikely that one would face 5-6 questions of the SAME TYPE (say, probability) successively in the real GMAT. The princeton CD throws questions at you randomly from its pool of questions. i retook a test on princeton CD, and some new questions, which did not appear the first time i took the test, turned up in the re-test. i guess you getting those 5 successive questions on probability was a result of this random sampling. for the same reason, the list of questions you got wrong may not be relevant coz others (and you yourself, for that matter, if you retook the test!) would get different questions at those points.

but then, the real GMAT also throws questions randomly from its difficulty "bins" doesn`t it? does anyone have more info on this?

and yes, getting a string of successive wrong answers can be disastrous, especially in the beginning. this is because the GMAT algorithm continuously downgrades your final score estimate with each wrong answer. you would probably not reach 700 if you mess up in the beginning with a string of errors, coz the estimate swings wildly in the beginning and then less and less; a bad string towards the end is forgivable though!

[zero_in_on_me]

PRINCETON has the simplest tests that i hv ever come across. I always scored abt 730-750 in them and my actual GMAT score was 700. So, its surprising to see ppl loosing their sleep over it. May be Princeton ppl hv realised that their books n softwares were useless and they hv pulled their socks. May be they are also trying to compete with the KAplan ppl. But its good that they hv become all the more diffclt and students now hv more options and can look beyond PP and kaplan.

[SNAX]

Originally Posted by Crash_test_dummy

i think it is highly unlikely that one would face 5-6 questions of the SAME TYPE (say, probability) successively in the real GMAT.

I beg to differ. In my actual GMAT, my question #2, 3, 4, 5 were on probability and P&C. #2 was tough, and probably that screwed my quant performance (I got 49). But I managed 730 somehow. So, dont think that you wont get sequential qns on prob/pc.

[Psychodementia]

Originally Posted by zero_in_on_me

PRINCETON has the simplest tests that i hv ever come across. I always scored abt 730-750 in them and my actual GMAT score was 700. So, its surprising to see ppl loosing their sleep over it. May be Princeton ppl hv realised that their books n softwares were useless and they hv pulled their socks. May be they are also trying to compete with the KAplan ppl. But its good that they hv become all the more diffclt and students now hv more options and can look beyond PP and kaplan.

I know that PR tests have been easier in the past but surely not the ones that I have been taking. To give you a sample of my scores I have 710, 700 in the kaplan tests and a 730 in powerprep. I ended up with a 650 and a 640 in PR. I agree that I made some really stupid mistakes here and there AND I know anomalies are possible. But still I think the scores are on the lower side. So im gearing up myself for a challenge of cracking a 700 on PR the coming weekend. Let us see.

Arun

[Crash_test_dummy]

Originally Posted by SNAX

I beg to differ. In my actual GMAT, my question #2, 3, 4, 5 were on probability and P&C. #2 was tough, and probably that screwed my quant performance (I got 49). But I managed 730 somehow. So, dont think that you wont get sequential qns on prob/pc.

okay...when someone who`s actually seen this phenomenon in the real GMAT says it, we agree! it is a little surprising, and disturbing. i dont wanna see 4 straight probability questions for sure!

[chandler]

I made 700 in PR test#1 with a bunch of stupid mistakes in verbals as well as quants. I got an email saying my score is uploaded on the website, but actually it isn't.

[Time]

Hey everybody,

I have purchased PR 2006 edition recently and have taken the first full test on the CD. From what I remember from the info read from various forums, I expected 'good' scores. But to my shock, I ended up with a meagre 590 ( V26, M46) !!

Yes, this is my first full test, but this score was an absolute shocker. Expectedly I messed up on Verbal with 16 answers wrong. Break up of verbal section is as follows.
CR ( 75% correct) ; SC ( 60%) ; RC ( 57%)
To top this 4 out of first 10 Qs in verbal were wrong. On the contrary, that probably explains the low score.

I am begining to recoup now. I intend focussing on verbal for couple of weeks now. I intend working with PR verbal and then with OG. Guess sentence correction lessons could be useful. Any suggestions on this approach ?
Any suggestions on how can I work on RC. My reading spead is also very slow ( guess < 200 wpm).

On Quant, I had 7 mistakes and 4 were silly ones. Hence guess need to get focus through out the test. I finished quant with 10 min to spare and verbal with 3 min to spare. hence timing issues are there as well.

Another question, how do we get to know the AWA scores. There is no mention of it on the PR score report.

Cheers!
Time