550 GMAT Mock Score with 13 incorrect in Q and 10 incorrect in V??

Hi ag1991 550 is the average score in gmat and a very good base score.Its only onwards and upwards from here.As explained by someone above me its die to the adaptive nature of the gmat exam that your score was all over the place.on the contrary you will realise that you will score high if you get the 700+ level questions correct.

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You might have had got easier question(just a likely scenario) overall. Another possibility is you made more errors in easier questions. The link might help you understand.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/new-format-g ... 69682.html

Thanks for sharing that link. Definitely helpful! I read all the combinations Bunuel tried. I don't think I have the confidence to randomly guess some questions and assume that I would know the ones I have to attempt correctly. I was thinking about how making mistakes in easier questions impacts one's score too. Would make sense and go back and review each question.

Hi Ananya,

To start, a 550 is a solid initial CAT score (the average score on the Official GMAT hovers around 550 most years). The scoring algorithm on the Official GMAT is far more complicated than most people realize - and it takes into account far more than just the number of correct and incorrect answers, so you have to consider more than just the number of incorrect answers in your performance.

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Are you using any other study materials besides the course you mentioned?

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
4) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
5) 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

Hi ag1991

Thanks for reaching out on the forum, it feels good to see you coming out and asking for advice.

Before we delve into strategies to improve Quant and Verbal, let me point out that 550 is a very good starting point and you can easily get to a 700+ score by preparing extensively. A very important step to reach at that score is to:

• Make a study plan to reach that target score

Doing this will make your preparation focused on the target which is the most efficient way to study. A study plan would also help you estimate the amount of time you would need to study and thereby when to plan the test.

To answer your question, the number of questions you mark wrong doesn't decide what your score will be, the deciding factor is the difficulty level of the questions and in which block you are marking them wrong.

Looking at your scores, I can say that you need significant improvement in both Verbal and Quant. Majority of students falter in their GMAT exam because they start their preparation with solving questions.

This is a major mistake because if you start your preparation by solving OG questions, you are skipping to practicing questions without learning the concepts. This is a trial-and-error based preparation methodology which cause a two-fold problem:

1. It increases your preparation time by up-to 5X.
2. You tend to miss out on concepts even after solving many questions.

We have helped more than 25,000 people in last 1 year in achieving their target of a good GMAT score. Maximum people attributed their success to the structured process which we suggested them. I suggest you break your preparation into 3 stages and follow the below plan:

Stage – 1 --> Learn the concepts
Stage – 2 --> Cement the concepts by practicing a sub-section in Isolation
Stage – 3 --> Become test ready (practicing all the sub-sections together)

Prawee (550 to 740) used all the books and local coaching classes but was unable to improve her GMAT score beyond a certain point. She changed her approach and finally scored 740 in her 5th attempt and got a $180,000 fellowship cumulatively from 3 top business schools. She is currently pursuing MBA from Kellogg. Kellogg was once not even on her radar.

7 Steps – How to score 700+ on the GMAT
You can start your preparation by giving a mock to test your current ability.

Hope the above strategy get you to your target score

e-GMAT strategy Expert

Thanks for your response Rich! Please see my responses in bold above

Really appreciate the detailed response Payal. Thank you for taking out the time.

I am, fortunately, following a strategy similar to the one you laid out so hopefully I will start seeing the pay off in my next mock which I plan on taking in 2 weeks.

Hi Ananya,

To start, since you are interested in some highly-competitive Schools, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement.

There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

Statistically-speaking, raising a 550 to the point that you can consistently score 700+ will likely require at least another 3 months of consistent, guided study - and you'll have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. That having been said, you might need to consider pushing back your planned Test Date.

"Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix'). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

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

Hi ag1991,

To reiterate, your GMAT score is based on not only the number of questions you answer correct/incorrect, but also the difficulty of those questions, among other things. Thus, it’s possible that your score was lower than you thought it should be because you got a number of “lower level” questions wrong. In any case, if you want some advice regarding your study plan moving forward, feel free to reach out. Lastly, you may find it helpful to read the following article:

How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT — A Mini Guide for Success