Hi everyone, I hope I can make this as short as possible
I started formally studying for the GMAT around early March and joined a coaching center at the same time, after 2 weeks, all in-person classes were cancelled due to the Coronavirus lockdown. So I didn't study much in March and April, apart from learning core concepts topic-wise in Quant and Verbal. Later on, online classes resumed around May and finished in late June.
I have been revising concepts and practicing questions from the
OG and GMATClub regularly since mid-May or so. So around late July or early August I decided do a practice test which was designed by the coaching center online (
the center has a fairly good reputation and explicitly states that they choose questions
close to the real GMAC questions). Most of these practice tests test Verbal and Quant.
My scores were roughly
Q45, V39 which is roughly
680-690 if I am not wrong. I was fairly happy as i felt this was a good start when it came to practice tests and was eager to build my score from there.
The following week, I did the 2nd practice test (coaching center) and scored only a
640 or so, i.e
Q49 and V29Unfortunately I felt I was distracted with the noisy environment in my house. My quant score was a little better, but I felt I got lucky with about 4-5 guesses. My verbal score was disappointing for sure, screwed a lot of SC questions, few CR and RC questions too.
I realized that these practice tests are ultimately not '
official' so I decided to give a shot on one of the official Practice Tests on MBA.com. I went thru the mistakes I made in the previous practice test and attempted to solve the weak areas by practicing a good mix of sub-600, 600-700 and 700+ questions on the GMATclub forum using the filters such as OG2020, 21,
Manhattan GMAT, Veritas, Kaplan etc.
I took the 1st MBA.com test last Thursday, and completely bombed it.
Q41, V27, which is a
horrible 570In Quant, I felt quite intimidated with the confusing word problems and spent time over-analyzing parts of a question. At least 5-6 questions I ended up guessing, maybe 2-3 I got lucky. I tend to find that I spend inordinate amounts of time on Ratios, Percentage, Equations questions as I am always scared I might screw up a calculation or miss some important piece of information.
In Verbal, as evident from my score, I got close to 1/2 the questions wrong. Comparatively, I did better in SC compared to the previous practice test with 4 wrong. Major issue in this test was I got
6 CR wrong and 5 RC questions wrong. I made 2 stupid mistakes in RC in a passage and in another passage, I completely missed out on all 3 questions as I couldn't understand anything and time was running out. In fact, timing was a big issue in the entire verbal section as I might have spent inordinate amounts of time on certain CR and SC questions. In CR, a few of them mind-**** me as I had no friggin clue on what the answer could be despite analyzing each choice and had to make a guess, which turned out to be wrong.
I intend to apply for MiM Programs in Europe and Australia, many of the Round 1 deadlines in EU are in mid-October. With a score of 570 on the official practice test, I am pretty scared about my applications. I want to take the GMAT in early October so that I can submit my scores accordingly in time. I want to achieve a score of around
740-760, but ideally nothing below 720, because my undergrad GPA isn't too good either. I'd love to hear any advice because I really want to increase my score by 160-180 points in the next 15-30 days. ANY quality advice is HIGHLY appreciated.