590 after a journey that took too long. What to do now?

Yes, a little test-day anxiety is expected, and it can even be somewhat advantageous. If you go into the test too relaxed, you will likely make careless mistakes. However, you want to mitigate the chances of hitting the panic button, at which point your brain undergoes physiological processes that cloud your reasoning ability, just when you need it the most. That can take several minutes to come back down from, and that, in turn, can affect the way in which you tackle questions that maybe 3/4 of the time you could do in your sleep (so to speak). This is where preparedness can kick in. Grow comfortable with the foundational topics that are covered on the test, and practice questions to the point you feel confident approaching any given topic at least 9/10 times. Be organized with the way you approach the questions. Write down what you know, and make sure you are working toward solving the question that is being asked. I know it sounds silly or as though it would be a waste of time, but organizing your thoughts by transferring them to note board can often break the inertia of laying eyes on the whole problem at once, and you will also be less likely to fall into the traps the question-writers love to put into the questions, especially in the responses to PS questions. Some test-takers practice breathing exercises or other ways of keeping themselves primed but calm enough to focus. You just have to see what works for you. And above all, take the time to learn about the incorrect answers. If you are just focusing on getting the questions correct all the time, you will miss out on the finer points of what makes the incorrect answers incorrect, and you will be more likely to fall into the same sorts of trouble areas again and again. And in Quant in particular, see if you can spot a different way to work a problem--easy numbers, solving from the answers first, or using some other method instead of the one that might be suggested--to develop stronger on-the-spot reasoning habits and give yourself a better chance of finding such a correct line of reasoning on test day.

As I said before, good luck. A month is enough time to fine-tune, but you have to go into the process with clear expectations and an idea of what it may take to reach your goals. (Posting here was probably a good idea.)

- Andrew

Hi crmarschner,

While you have been working hard since you started your prep in July, since your practice test scores have been most hovering around 650 and you scored 590 on the GMAT, it’s clear that you have numerous weak areas that must be strengthened in order for you to hit your 700+ score goal. Thus, moving forward you need to follow a more structured, gradual and linear study plan, In other words follow a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills.
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.

This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.

There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.

As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.

To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses. You also may find it helpful to read the following article about The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

Hi crmarschner,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. Your practice CAT scores clearly show that you're capable of scoring at a much higher level. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day.

Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) What specific study materials have you used so far?
2) What is your overall goal score?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
4) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

Hi Scott,

Thank you a lot for the amazing in-depth explanation of how to make effective use of my study time going ahead. I'll be sure to follow every detail to the letter!

Hi Rich,

Thanks a lot for reaching out! Anxiety definitely played a role during test day as it was stronger than I had predicted.

As for the questions asked, I'm happy to contextualize it to you:

1) I've purchased the OG 2019 online and used around 30% of the questions in it (Mostly "Hard" questions). I've also used some Manhattan and Veritas questions available here at GMAT Club as well as some questions from Crack the GMAT;

2) I plan on getting a 700+ until late February. My next scheduled seat is at December 20th and I'm expecting to improve to a 640-680 this time.

3) I plan to apply during R1 of 2020.

4) LBS, Cornell Johnson, Ross, UCLA Anderson and Tuck.

I've purchased the ESR and these are the key takeaways from it:

Verbal

CR: 66th percentile

Analysis/Critique - 75%
Construction/Plan - 25%

SC: 72nd percentile

Grammar - 66%
Communication - 66%

RC: 55th percentile (Should be taken with a pinch of salt as I had to guess a full passage at the end)

Identify inferred idea: 80%
Identify stated idea: 40%

Percent Correct by quarter:

Q1: 100% - Mostly medium
Q2: 43% - Mostly medium-high
Q3: 71% - Mostly medium (guessed 1 SC here)
Q4: 25% - Mostly medium (had to guess 3 RC + 1 CR here)

Quant

Problem Solving: 25th percentile
Data Sufficiency: 36th percentile

Percent correct by fundamentals

GEOMETRY - 66%
RATES/RATIO/PERCENT - 80%
VALUE/ORDER/FACTORS - 50%
EQUAL./INEQUAL./ALG. - 40%
COUNTING/SETS/SERIES - 57%

Percent Correct by quarter:

Q1: 86% - Mostly medium (Missed questions 1)
Q2: 29% - Mostly medium-high
Q3: 86% - Mostly medium
Q4: 29% - Mostly medium (had guess 5 out of last 7)

I'd appreciate your view on these results, thanks a lot!

Hi crmarschner,

Studying for the GMAT now - far in advance of when you will actually 'need' your Score - is a smart choice. That having been said, raising a 590 to the point that you can consistently score 700+ will likely require at least another 2 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. Your next attempt is less than 6 weeks away though - so you might want to consider pushing back that Test Date.

While I appreciate the information that you've provided about your ESR, I would actually like to see the Full ESR. If you would rather not post it publicly, then you can feel free to PM it to me directly.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

Hi Rich, thanks for all the help,

Ansswering your question, I'll have around 16-18 hours a week to study*, split into:

1) 8-10 hours during the course of the week (2 hours/day but twice a month I take a Friday off to relax);
20 ~8.5 hours on weekends (5 hours on SAT + Mock Test on SUN);

*My work weeks have been pretty intense lately, so these 2 hours/day are the absolute best I can do, but I can make up a couple more hours available on weekends (Just haven't done it before because I felt it to be a little counter productive);

** From 12/20 untill 12/30 (test day) I'll be home for holidays and will have free 10 free days before the test, so I believe I can put in some 5-6 quality study hours a day during this period.

Here are my ESR scans:

Hi crmarschner,

I've sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional questions/notes.

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

I'm happy to help!