Score plateau - please HELP!

Hi gmatz22,

You've named a couple of really competitive Schools, so beyond having a competitive GMAT score, you need a strong OVERALL profile AND you need to 'market yourself' to each individual School. As such, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of them here:

ask-admission-consultants-124/

With the Round 2 application deadlines, you still have plenty of time to study and improve though, so it's not clear why you're trying to 'cram' all of this into 1 month.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Rich - thanks very much for the link to the Admissions Consultants. I will definitely have my profile evaluated.

The reason I gave myself one month, as opposed to longer, was to have an opportunity to retake the test, if needed. I am, however, more interested in trying to do this the right way and reach my target score the first time. How long do your students typically give themselves to get in the 720 range, if they are in the 630-640 range? Do you have any particular strategies or study plan suggestions to target this improvement?

Thank you again for your help - much appreciated!

Hi gmatz22,

It's smart (and forward-thinking) of you to want to have the necessary time to retake the GMAT if needed. However, 'compressing' the time until your next attempt at the GMAT will almost certainly mean that you'll end up retaking the GMAT AGAIN after this next attempt. As such, you can save yourself some money and aggravation, but planning for a longer study period now and taking the GMAT just once more.

Your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores show that you have a reasonably strong grasp of the over content, but you're missing out on lots of 'strategy-based' points - so an emphasis on Quant and Verbal Tactics is likely what you need now. I'm not just talking about 'tips' though - I'm talking about Tactics that you need to train to use in a consistent fashion. In that way, you won't even have to think about what to do when a GMAT question shows up - you'll just use the proper Tactic, do the necessary work and get the correct answer.

Based on everything that you’ve described, I think that you would find the EMPOWERgmat Total Score Booster to be quite helpful. Most of our clients complete that Study Plan in under 2 months, so the time commitment wouldn't be that bad. We have a variety of free resources on our site (www.empowergmat.com), so you can 'test out' the Course before setting up an Account.

If you have any additional questions, then you can feel free to contact me directly.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi Gmatz22,

Since your GMAT score has plateaued you probably have some lingering weaknesses that should be addressed in order to raise your score. I understand that you have completed a prep course as well as many questions in the OG; however, you must remember that GMAT is such a challenging exam because there are relatively few questions asked in a given exam, yet those questions come from a huge topic pool. Thus, the best way to get a great GMAT score is to have a thorough understanding of all of the topics that may be tested on the exam. To develop such mastery, you want to strive for linear and targeted learning, and follow that with focused practice. In other words, you want to master one topic before you move to the next. Have you been able to study in this way?

For example, when studying verbal, focus on learning one section at a time: reading comprehension, sentence correction, or critical reasoning. When learning about critical reasoning, for example, you want to be able to learn about all aspects of critical reasoning (strengthen and weaken the conclusion, resolve the paradox, find the conclusion, must be true, etc.). Follow up your learning with focused critical reasoning practice, so you can determine your specific weaknesses within that topic. You should do the same for sentence correction and reading comprehension.

Follow a similar routine for quant. If you are learning about Number Properties, you should learn everything possible about that topic: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. After that, be sure that you practice with at least 50 questions just on Number Properties. The results of that practice will help you to determine how well you have truly mastered that topic. Continue this process with every quant topic.

Also, you may consider using other study materials, besides the Official Guide, as your study resource. While the Official Guide is a great book because it has official questions from past GMATs, it has limited instruction and does not provide full exposure to all GMAT topics. For your retake, you may consider seeking out some robust prep materials that provide sufficient targeted practice for you to discover and fix your weak areas.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me directly.