710 in gmat prep , 630 in actual gmat

630 is a good starting point. Scoring 700+ in the mocks shows that you have potential to score 700+ in the real test. In my opinion, the quant section on the mocks is way easier than what you will encounter on the real test so you have to prepare accordingly. It looks like GMAC has upped the difficulty level of the quant section and prep companies are yet to catch up. The only way you can overcome this is to make sure that your concepts are clear so that the little tricks that GMAC employs willl not throw up off.

If you feel like your concepts are clear, then I suggest that you continue to practice and appear for the test again when you feel comfortable.

Please let me know if you have further queries.

Best wishes!

I saw a similar drop in my score in actual GMAT when compared with 4 official GMATPrep exams. What i did was buy the Enhanced Score Report for the exam to figure out what went wrong. After analyzing, i got some idea. Maybe you can try that avenue. There are lot of helpful members who can analyze your ESR for you.

Good news is you can still buy the 4 official GMATPrep exams for your next attempt. But i would advise to not waste them, rather first pinpoint on what went wrong on your exam day. There can be lot of factors that may have derailed your performance, including stress, pressure etc.

Hi tejasvkalra,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. 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) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Did you use any other study materials besides the ones you listed?
3) Did you take any other practice CATs besides the 2 that you listed? How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
6) 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 tejasvkalra,

630 is not a bad start. To improve your score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. 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. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

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.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

If you find that you need some new materials, take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses.

You also may find it helpful to read this article about
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

Oh sorry about the your test day experience. It's like that for a lot of people but it's good that some experts have shown up here so you can just flow with their recommendation. All the best.

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Oh sorry about the bad test day experience.

Was your real test conducted at the same hours (of course on different days) as your gmatprep mocks?

Did you have enough sleep the night before and enough food?

Make sure that you prepare very well for your next attempt. GMAC policy states that we can only take another gmat real test 16 days after the last exam date, 5x GMAT tests during 365 days, and 8x GMAT tests for a lifetime.

Best wishes

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