Powerprep Quant

[neuropsych76]

So I took a powerprep test a couple days before my real GRE and received a 610 in the quantitative section. I was happy with this since I'm awful at math and haven't had a lot of time to study.

Unfortunately, when I took the test I received a 520 on the quant. It seemed like a lot of the questions were different/harder than the powerprep test.

So I'm planning on retaking the test in a couple weeks to up my Q score. I just took another powerprep (the second test) and got a 630 in the quant. This made me very happy but kind of sad. Why did I do so bad on the real GRE? I was kind of nervous but a 100 point decrease seems a bit extreme. Especially because I've read how the quant part of the powerprep test is very accurate.

Any thoughts on this? Is there something I'm missing or was I just was unlucky and got questions I didn't know on the real GRE. It did really seem like the powerprep was much easier and some of the real GRE questions were esoteric but that is purely conjecture.

[jfsaunders]

I took the test last week and had a similar experience-- my test score was 90pts lower than the score I consistently received using powerprep. I've been practicing a bit more (I think in the end I focused too much on verbal prep) and I'm retaking it tomorrow in the hopes of scoring a bit higher.

[Bukharan]

I got the exact same score on the actual test as on PowerPrep but I do agree that the actual test seemed harder. I took the test two weeks ago.

[waddle]

Any thoughts on this? Is there something I'm missing or was I just was unlucky and got questions I didn't know on the real GRE. It did really seem like the powerprep was much easier and some of the real GRE questions were esoteric but that is purely conjecture.

Did you focus on answering the first ten or so questions correctly? Answering one of the first questions incorrectly (even if you answer most/all other questions correctly) may drop your score by ~20-50 points.

[neuropsych76]

Did you focus on answering the first ten or so questions correctly? Answering one of the first questions incorrectly (even if you answer most/all other questions correctly) may drop your score by ~20-50 points.

I think this was probably what happened (though I'll never know for sure). I was not confident in my answer for question 2 or 3 which means I might have missed one or both. But again the questions throughout the test seemed harder.

[TheDude]

My Quant score was pretty stable compared to powerprep, perhaps a little lower than most instances where I used powerprep. It did feel like most every question I came across was far different from what I had prepared for. For instance: No special triangles, sum of squares, systems of linear equations, very few geometry. All the "hallmarks" of the test didn't really seem to appear. My verbal score was way lower than what I had scored. I'm retaking in 10 days. I'm just hoping to get my quant score back up around 690-700. We'll see.