princeton 2005 tests: tougher than the earlier editions??

risque

cause i have seen ppl score really well on princeton,,

i scored pretty well on power prep ,, but the princeton test gave me a 590! and i havent got many questions wrong,, atleast none in the first 17-20 qs in both sections!!!! im rather shocked,, went in thinking ill hit 720 sorts,, and end up this bad!

any one tried them??

Crash_test_dummy · 18-09-2005, 11:36 PM

thank godd someone else felt the same...i was starting to lose sleep over this!!

well are the tests tougher?....i dont know coz i havnt tried any of their earlier editions. in the absolute sense, they werent VERY tough...just a few tricky ones here and there....and if u are alert, u can easily spot the catches in most "tough" ones with some conventional wisdom.

but i`m myself foxed by the scoring! i got most of the starting questions (1-15) right on the first test, and a few wrong towards the end...i was expecting a 700+ but got 660.
i then tried out the next test. i did even better on that than the first test, got very few wrong...and guess what, my score was 610!!! in the first test my first error was on the 11th question and in the second test my first error was on the 9th question....apart from that, my error pattern had in fact, improved in the second test...and still a lower score! i dont think such a huge penalty was warranted for getting the NINTH question wrong!

anyways, i couldn`t really find any logic as to why my first test should get a 660....and for that matter, why should a test i did even better than the first should get a 610!! there seems to be no correlation or pattern between the two answer sets and my scores.

there seem to be lots of other bugs on the cd apart from this. after answering a question, when u press "next" button, does the next question appear immediately? in my case...it took ages to see the next question after i pressed "next"...i once thought my comp had hanged!! the 75 minutes section ended up taking 90 mins coz of the time gap between questions!! i got plenty of time to relax between each question....which isn`t good! the interface sucks bigtime...what with the tacky blue and yellow design! the interface is created using flash which makes it sooo bad....the buttons hide under ur windows toolbar!! if u exceed ur time limit on the first section....the test gets over alltogether, assigning u a zero on the second section! (is this the case in the actual gmat too? hope not!)

i am yet to try out the 3rd and the fourth tests...and if something appears fishy on these too....i'll just revise my wrong ones and forget i ever took these tests! i agree...they`re pretty damaging to ur confidence.

Psychodementia · 19-09-2005, 01:30 AM

Would really like to know the answer to this one. I have 4tests loaded and ready to be taken (albeit a little later

). I always been hearing that PR is crap for GMAT as the scores don't extrapolate well enough to the "real thing"

Arun

Catalytic · 19-09-2005, 10:54 AM

to be very frank nothing comes close to the real thing apart from the 4 tests .. 2 PPs and 2 Gmatprep tests. During my prep i found that the scaling logic followed by Princeton or Kaplan is different as they give the same weightage to last questions as they give it to initial questions. Also the scaled scores do not match the gmat scaled scores .. there is a scaled score doc doing the rounds of the net. get hold of it , give both the exams kaplan as well as princeton and using the scaled score of individual sections find ur correct overall score.

as far as the level goes found princeton little better off then kaplan

pankaj1211 · 19-09-2005, 12:06 PM

Hi can anyone of u post yhe princeton cd here on PG

..

regards
PAnkaj

drunk jerk · 19-09-2005, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pankaj1211

Hi can anyone of u post yhe princeton cd here on PG

..

regards
PAnkaj

thats..so bright of you pankaj..no prbs man, i will do it for you.

keep waiting.

SNAX · 19-09-2005, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychodementia

Would really like to know the answer to this one. I have 4tests loaded and ready to be taken (albeit a little later

). I always been hearing that PR is crap for GMAT as the scores don't extrapolate well enough to the "real thing"

Arun

Well, apart from powerpreps, nothing comes close. I never managed more than 660 in those tests (Kaplan and PR). Dont get worked up by those scores. Just use them for practice, and note the mistakes you make/time you take to solve a particular type of question.

Yeah, powerprep scores are somewhat indicative of where you stand.

risque · 19-09-2005, 09:33 PM

Hmm some solace!!!

i have 20 odd days to go, and i sincerely hope my next attempt at any of these tests is better than the last one

!

and yeah,, in PR ,the time lag between questions happened to me too,,, but wasnt so bad,, a few seconds gap,, thats it.

btw, when are you taking the exam crash_test_dummy???

and ppl who've taken gmat already:
i fear the grammar study for SC in verbal has only let me down. my gut feeling fetched me better scores!! for one more try at understanding SC, does doing the SC questions in OG by brute-force method ( say some 5 times) help???

deepblu · 24-09-2005, 09:27 PM

I am so glad i found this thread !!

What about the Kaplan 2005 tests ? Can those scores also be scaled upwards ?

Psychodementia · 29-09-2005, 03:25 PM

I have already posted this on my GMAT prep thread. Posting it again just because it looks appropriate for any one searching for the specific topic.

Am into my second week of prep and took the test. Here is the split:

(a) Quant
------------
Did reasonably well. Got the first wrong in question number 15. Just 2 mistakes in first 20 questions. Then due to lack of speed (was distracted by calls etc.) had to rush through the last 10 questions, where I have 4 mistakes

Hence my score is 37 attempts - 28 right and 9 wrong. PR gives me a 48. This is tad on the lower side considering some of the questions that I got wrong were extremely difficult. So I presumed maybe the scoring does fluctuate a lot if you get questions later in the set wrong.

(b) Verbal
-------------
Thought it was not of the same standard as OG or Kaplan. Need to review still, but got a uniform distribution of wrongs........2 in the first 10 and 2 between 11-20. Ended up with 12 wrongs (decent I would say) and 29 rights. PR gave me a 33

Got a total of 650, which needless to say is not very encouraging

Arun