580->700. What test strategy should I use?

Hi DrakXXX,

Some part of the information about your Scaled Scores is incorrect (a Q40/V22 would NOT be a 580; a Q40/V32 could be though). As such, I suggest that you log into your account at www.mba.com and double-check that information. Assuming you scored a Q40/V32, then you missed out on significant points in BOTH sections and there's some question as to how well you know the 'content' of the GMAT. While a V32 is actually a pretty good performance, the way you describe SCs makes me think that you don't know the major grammar/idiom/style rules very well. With a Q40, you would have gotten a number of 'math questions' wrong, made a number of little mistakes throughout the section and missed out on lots of 'strategy-based' points. This is all meant to say that raising a 580 to a 700+ will require some significant work on your part. Giving yourself 2 months of study time would be a good idea.

I have a few questions about how you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections) or did you just do the Quant and Verbal 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, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE?

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

I have canceled score so it is not possible to review it in mba.com. But I think you are right it was something like Q40/V32.

Answering your questions:

1) Yep I have made FULL CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)
2) Nope I have done them at work
3) No, last CAT was 2 days earlier than Official exam
4) I don't think so.
5) No, each CAT was from scratch

Best regards Alexey

Hi Alexey ,

The extra information you've provided points out a couple of potential 'red flags' that could have impacted your performance on Test Date. Before we talk about those details though, I have a few more questions about the lead-up to Test Day and Test-Day itself:

1) What did you do in the 3 days before your GMAT?
2) How did you sleep the night before your Test?
3) How long was the ride to the Test Center from your home?
4) Were there any distractions at the facility or during the Test?
5) What did you do during the two 8-minute breaks?
6) Did you finish any sections early?
7) Did you have to rush to finish any sections (and guess on questions just to finish on time)?

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

Answers are following:

1) I have repeated tasks from Official Gmat Guide ( mostly it was SC). I worked for about two hours per day
2) Quite good, I did not feel nervous tension
3) About 1 hour
4) I don't think so
5) I drinked water and went to the toilet
6) Yep I have finished Verbal Part before 5 minutes to completion.
7) I was a bit rush on Quant Part, and guess on 1-2 question

Hi DrakXXX,

In order to achieve 700 or above, the best combination is Q49 and V35. Although your current mock test score for quant is 48, we highly recommend for you to keep focusing on DS as mock test scores tend to be higher than actual GMAT. Since we are specialised in math, we can give you advice on math only. If you improve your verbal score up to 35, hitting 49 is sufficient enough for you to hit 700 in total.

In order to hit 49, you should be strong in PS. For DS, if you do well on CMT(Common Mistake Types), you can easily hit 49. ​In fact, ​these hard 4-5 CMT ​questions are given on actual GMAT. If you get 1-2 questions ​wrong, you can definitely hit 49. Or, if you get ​0​-​1​ questions wrong, you can hit 50​-51. ​So, you should​ get 3-4 right out of hardest 4-5 questions. ​This is a big pressure because you have to solve 37 questions in 75 minutes.

However, with our unique approaches of Variable approach for DS and IVY approach for PS, you can significantly save time, and will have 10 minutes to spare on exam. For instance, with our approaches, you can solve questions that normally take 4 minutes in 1 minutes and 30 seconds, and 2-minute question in 30 seconds.
You can solve DS questions 100% with Variable approach and 30-40% of PS questions with IVY approach.

If you would like to try our approaches, Please try Trial Pack (4 hour lesson) that reveal our secret approaches of DS+PS core theory that you have never seen. You can test whether you like them or not before you enroll.

Come visit our website for further information!
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Happy Studying!

Jin
Math Revolution

Hi Alexey,

Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your practice scores can become. Based on the information that you've provided, there's some question as to how realistically you were taking your CATs (and how different Test Day actually was by comparison. It's unclear what time of day you took your CATs, but I have to assume that it was probably at a different time of day from when you took the Official GMAT. The process of taking (and reviewing) a CAT requires a significant amount of energy and effort - and takes time to 'recover' from. This is one of the reasons why you typically shouldn't take more than 1 CAT per week. By taking a FULL CAT 2 days before your Official GMAT, you likely experienced some 'burn out' and didn't even realize it. From a physical standpoint, it also sounds like you did not take proper advantage of your two 8-minute breaks either.

Thankfully, this is a relatively easy set of problems to fix. However, you were not scoring at the 700+ level during practice, so 'your way' of approaching this process wasn't enough to get you to your score goal. Thus, you'll likely need to invest in some new GMAT training materials and learn/practice some new Tactics.

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 well under 2 months, so it should fit your schedule nicely. 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 DrakXXX,

With an expected test date in October, here is a customized one month study plan that can help boost your score: https://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... study-plan

Use this as a guideline. You don’t have to follow it exactly but the structure of the study plan should be the same structure that you take in your approach. This helps to optimize your retention and learning.

As you study, we recommend that you focus on one particular subsection for multiple consecutive days before moving onto the next. You can see this in our study plan where we recommend 5 days on nothing but SC -- before moving onto CR and then RC.

Here is a sample SC video to help you start your journey: https://www.gmatpill.com/sentencecorrect ... ythons.mp4

Best of luck - we are here to help.