hi i'm erika one of the senior curriculum managers here at magoosh and a gmat expert in this video
i'm going to talk about the best practice test to take when you're prepping for your gmat exam
now taking a practice test takes a lot of time and effort so stay tuned to find out which test
will help you maximize your precious study time now this probably doesn't come as a surprise but
the absolute gold standard for gmat practice tests are official practice tests and that's
because they're the real deal they've got real questions they've got the real layout they've
got the real scoring algorithm they've got the real question delivery algorithm all of that now
there are six of these official practice tests from gmac available through your mba.com account
but the really cool thing is that the first two of them are totally free now while these are the best
practice tests that you can possibly take they do have their issues the primary one being that they
don't come with answer explanations however these practice tests are so popular that you can find
answer explanations on the internet if you do a little bit of searching so i recommend finding
some of the most specific words from the question given them a quick google and you should see
results from all sorts of popular gmat forums now once you're in there look specifically for replies
from gmat experts those are usually going to be branded with some sort of test prep company logo
or that test prep company name now you can also read responses from other gmat students but take
those with a grain of salt while it can be nice to get multiple perspectives know that they aren't
experts and they might have bad and even fully incorrect takes on the problem now while these
tests don't come with answer explanations they do come with 90 extra official practice questions
which you can practice divided up by question type by difficulty etc now these are really
awesome as a free resource to practice the sorts of things that you struggled with in your practice
test so i really recommend taking advantage of them in fact i like them so much that they get a
special shout out in my new video about gmat books uh even though they aren't actually in a book
now once you burn through those two practice tests two roads diverge you can either pay more for
s-tier gmac official content or go down the road of hunting for free but potentially questionable
practice tests from non-official sources so if you can get a little spendy with it your best option
is gonna be those official practice tests three through six again from mba.com now these are gonna
be the exact same experience as tests one and two just with new questions and you pay for them so if
you want to buy all four at once it's going to be 90 at least that's the current price if you want
to buy just a set of two that's going to be 50 so you get a slightly better deal if you buy all four
at once but only do that if it makes sense for you and your timeline now if you're not looking to
spend any additional money on your test prep which is understandable there are plenty of free options
from test prep companies that you can look through a lot of test prep companies will release one
full practice test kind of as a promotional item um and then have the rest of their practice tests
behind a paywall um now when you're looking for some of these free practice tests i really
recommend doing your due diligence to make sure that they're going to be high enough quality to
be beneficial to you so look for practice tests that are going to be full length as well as
adaptive to mirror the actual experience on test day you can also use those forums i mentioned
earlier to read reviews from other students as well as other experts now even with the best
of these practice tests they aren't official so that means that sometimes the difficulty
the algorithm the scoring is going to be just a little bit off so make sure that you're taking
your results with a grain of salt i recommend that if you are going the route of using some of these
other practice tests to take them kind of in the middle of your study experience so use the first
free official practice test to kick-start your study to get a really good idea of your baseline
and then use that second free official practice test at the end as a really clear view of where
you are and a great way to kind of get ready to go before your actual testing now another free option
is to retake the official practice tests either the first two that were free originally or the
four that you may have bought later but are then free to retake now this is an option and it is one
that i recommend on occasion but it is a dangerous game because on your retake it is totally possible
and in fact likely that you're going to get repeat questions from the first time you took the test
and if you remember those questions that can be trouble because it can totally change your
experience taking the exam help you get through sections faster artificially inflate your score
etc etc so i don't recommend this if you can avoid it but if you absolutely can't um
it can be useful but i'm gonna recommend trying to spread your initial taking of one exam and
your retake as far apart as possible one because it raises the chance that you're going to forget
about the problems between the first time you take it and the retake and because it raises the
chances that you're going to be performing at a much higher difficulty level which will mean that
you will be fed different questions because again they're at a higher level so again that raises
the chances that the test you get is going to be significantly distinct from the original time you
took it now if you've got a really long gmat study timeline it's distinctly possible that you'll run
through all of these practice tests and still need more in which case you're probably looking at paid
options from test prep companies so like before when you're dealing with unofficial materials make
sure that you're really doing your due diligence making sure that they're full length that they're
adaptive and that they have good reviews from other students from other test prep experts
to make sure that they're actually going to work for you now as an example of this magush's online
gmat program comes with the option to take two or more gmat practice tests to help support you in
your study so a final piece of advice there aren't that many good gmat practice tests out there so
make sure that you're not wasting them i recommend not taking more than one gmat practice test every
two to four weeks and when you do take a practice test make sure that you have a really clear
mission for that practice test check out my video on how to never make the same gmat mistake twice
for tips on how to get the most out of your study including your gmat practice tests let
us know if this video helped you by liking and subscribe to our channel for more videos from me
and the other experts at magoosh and if you're looking for more resources on the gmat check
out the links for magoosh down below thanks for watching and i'll talk to you in the next video