Second Mock attempt - 540 - hopeless

Question

First mock attempt on 17Sept22(official test) without any preparation and scored 550 (Q46 V20) Prepared from Magoosh for 3 months and gave second attempt today(magoosh) scored 540 (Q39 V25)

I took exam date for 1st Feb23 thinking I might prepare well if I have a test date in place, but now I'm lost

Any help or pointers please

sorry for the newbie post

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi aish7,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Have you used any other study materials besides the course that you mentioned?

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Contact Rich at: [email protected]

aish7 · Answer

Hi Rich, big thanks for helping me with this

1) How many hours do you typically study each week? Oct - average 4-5 hrs per week, some days I was putting in 2-3 hrs, some days I didn't study at all (full time job along with studies) Nov - average 10-12 hrs per week, more consistent Dec - average 14 hrs per week(no job) took in person classes for verbal(TexasReview) in India , and finished Magoosh 2) Have you used any other study materials besides the course that you mentioned? TexasReview - classes for verbal My instructor basically covered 3 books - Erica(SAT Grammar SAT Reading) and GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible It just helped me to form discipline to study verbal but I didn't understand much in those classes 3) What is your overall goal score? I hoped for 700+ but given my current level even 650+ would be a miracle

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to? Around end of 2023, no rush to apply but I want to finish my GMAT part as quick as I can, it's getting difficult to prepare along with job Few other details In 2017 I gave GRE 319(V155 Q164)

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi aish7.

According to your numbers, you've prepared for around 125 hours total so far. Typically, people take 400 hours or more to go from the mid 500's to the 700s. So, it makes sense that you would need more time to achieve your score goal.

Regarding your first and second practice tests, the first test was an official test, but the second was a third-party test. So, it's likely that the two scores are not actually comparable. So, while it appears that you made decent progress in verbal but didn't in quant, it could be that, in reality, you also are significantly stronger in quant that you were before you started preparing.

So, if you want to get a sense of where you truly stand at this point, you should probably take another official practice test and see how you score.

You could also consider your accuracy on practice questions.

To score 700, you need a score breakdown along the lines of Q48 and V38.

To score Q48, you need to be getting around 71% of medium and hard quant questions correct. So, in your practice sets, you should be getting over 80 percent of medium quant questions correct in each topic and at least around 60 percent of hard quant questions correct in each topic.

To score V38, you need to get around 75% of medium and hard verbal questions correct. So, you'll be ready to score V38 when you're getting around 90% of medium verbal questions and 70% of hard verbal questions correct when you're practicing.

To get to those accuracies, you could use the approaches outlined in the following posts.

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal

The Best GMAT Practice Methods

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Here's an idiom list for Sentence Correction . May help boost your Verbal a bit.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi aish7, I've sent you a PM with some notes and additional questions. GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made, Rich Contact Rich at: Rich.C@empowergmat.com

aish7 · Answer

MartyTargetTestPrep  - It's really detailed analysis, appreciate it 🙇
 GmatTutorKnight  - The idiom list is short and simple, thanks 🙌
 EMPOWERgmatRichC  - DM helps the most, I'm trying to put a list of which questions went wrong and probably why, but this is exactly the direction I guess might help me, you're a star 🌟

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi aish7,

In addition to the advice provided by Marty, here is also a helpful article:

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