EMPOWERgmatRichC wrote:
Hi viper1991,
I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as hoped. Since some of your practice CAT scores were so much higher than your Official Score, it's likely that either something about your practice was unrealistic or something about Test Day was so "off" that your performance suffered.
If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:
When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, listen to music, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once?
On Test Day:
1) How long was the ride to the Test Center from your home?
2) Were there any distractions at the facility or during the Test?
3) What did you do during the two 8-minute breaks?
4) Did you finish any sections early?
5) Did you have to rush to finish any sections (and guess on questions just to finish on time)?
It's possible that you just had a "bad day"; but we really need to nit-pick these details and fix whatever issues need to be fixed before you go in to retest.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Hi Rich,
1. Yes i always took full length CATs.
2. Yes i always took them at home.
3. Yes the last few ones at the same time as the real one but the cats the beginning were of different timings.
4. Yes i had paused the CATs once or twice.
5. Yes i took GMAT prep 1 to 4 twice.
On the test day.
1. Ride to the test center was less than 15 mins.
2. There were not many distractions during the test but i dont know why i was sweating during the verbal section. May be because of the AC not being so effective or i was worrying too much.
3. During the breaks I used the washroom and grabbed few energy bars which i use during the practice CATs.
4. No unfortunately i was lagging in both the sections. I had to guess a bunch of questions in Quant and Verbal.
I would also like to give you my analysis and inputs regarding this failure.
I feel i did not approach in a structured way. i did not have a detailed study plan and guidance to review and analyze the CATs. And during the PREP i had seen lot of questions here and there which were very familar in the CATs and the real GMAT was something different. Also , i feel i should have realized where exactly i stand. for the Retest i feel i should hit the GOAL score constantly with the CATs having no repeat questions. Though i scored a 660 in EXAM PACK 2 which had no repeats but may be that was an outliner.
So , this time it should be a structured and a detailed approach.
I would also like to hear from you the things i need seriously fix this time to score above 650 in the next attempt.
Please let me know if you want to know anything more ?