GMAT Practice Tests

Undoubtedly, this was one of the most important components of my preparation, and anyone taking any standardized test should invest a significant amount of effort in practice tests. I took a couple of tests when I first started studying, and then realized that I would be making less mistakes if I took these tests after reviewing all study materials. Hence, I stopped doing full tests and concentrated on getting through the essays and the Manhattan GMAT books/problem sets.

As I said in my previous post, after I was through with reviewing everything, I booked the real test for three weeks down the road, and started doing one full 4-hour test each weekday for the next 3 weeks. It's very important to do the 4 hours, including essays - while you don't have to do it for 3 weeks (I was getting very annoyed by the final week and wished I booked the thing for earlier so I could get it over with already :p), I think it's a good idea to do this everyday for at least a week, so it becomes part of your daily routine (like eating and sleeping), and you get used to having to sit through the 4 hours. When I took the first couple of practices before the majority of my revision, I realized that I had a problem with the verbal component, simply because I was getting very tired towards the end and just could not absorb anything I read. Making the test part of my daily routine helped a lot with building the stamina I needed on test day.

The other thing about doing practice tests is that you should take into consideration the time of the day of your real test appointment. My test was at 12:15pm (did not want to do 8am or 6pm, this was the only other option), and I was to arrived 30 minutes prior. I saw a potential problem with the scheduling of my lunch - I needed to either take it at maybe 10:30, or postpone it until after the test. I decided to go with the latter, so for three weeks, I would get up and have a gigantic breakfast. I would then start my 4-hour test at around 12, and have a light meal after that. During my breaks, I would have a sip of water, a 2-minute snack, and use the washroom, just as what I would do on the real test. This is something else that's important to note - you should always try to duplicate real test conditions. Unplug your phones. Come back to the computer a couple of minutes earlier to make sure that you're not late.

A note about AWA: after a couple of practice tests, I stopped writing essays from Kaplan/Princeton Review/Manhattan GMAT/etc. The reason is simple: they're prohibited from using actual GMAT essay topics so they had to make up their own, but we have the real topics. I used a random number generator to randomly pick my topics from the list of real topics, and those would be my essay questions for whatever test I'm taking. I had the PDF file of topics on the top part of my screen, notepad at the bottom, and an online countdown clock on the side. This was a modest duplication of the real split screen for essay questions.

Here's a brief review of the tests that I've taken:

GMATPrep: of course this is a must-have. I took one at the beginning of my preparations and another one three days before the real test. There was a 40-point increase in scores, which gave me a boost of confidence. I would recommend using this software this way, so that you can see how much you've improved, and you have the most accurate estimate of your real score close to the test date.

GMAT past paper exams: these are probably neglected by most test takers, but they're an excellent source of real past GMAT questions. Some of the questions are duplicated in OG, but most are not (or I couldn't tell). They are from a decade ago and tend to be easier than current questions, but I used them mostly for the purpose of practicing more real questions, and building the stamina needed for the 4 hours. The format is also different, so I rearranged the sections so that it was 75 minutes of each of quant and verbal, instead of 6 little sections. I didn't pay much attention to the score, since the questions were easy and scoring mechanism was different (they deduct points for wrong answers, so you're not encouraged to guess).

Princeton Review: I really needed that boost of confidence from GMATPrep, because of other tests that had been giving me really low scores, including some from PR. Their quant sections seemed way too easy (I would finish 20+ minutes before time was up), and some of their verbal answers just didn't feel right, even after I read their explanations (this is where I lost most of my points).

Kaplan: unstable and unpredictable scoring. The quant and verbal questions were okay, with the exception of extremely hard-to-understand reading comprehension passages on one of my tests. They also had the weirdest essay topics - I even had trouble identifying whether one was an argument or an issue. (This was when I decided I wouldn't put up with these topics anymore.)

Manhattan GMAT: definitely has the best questions. The quant questions were MUCH more difficult than those on the real test, nevertheless they were very good practice. I also liked the verbal sections, and even the essay questions were very similar to real GMAT topics. If you do these tests within the time limit, you will get a fairly good prediction of your score. However, for me this required a slightly different strategy for the quant section. I never had issues with timing for any other practice test, and MGMAT were the only tests in which I had to hurry and guess answers at times when I knew I could do them if I had more time. I would recommend top scorers to go through all MGMAT tests - with time constraints if you want a more accurate score, and untimed (for quant) if you want to focus on the contents, which I think is worth doing.