Actual score lower than expected

Hi

First off, a 680/Q47 is a strong Score, so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

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

There's certainly no harm in retesting though - and you have the potential to pick up some significantly points in both the Quant and Verbal sections. GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +/- 30 points of actual ability. Assuming a similar 'swing' in how your CATs function, your 3 CAT score results - along with your Official Score show that you essentially performed the same each time (about 700 +/- a few points); the 760 is an 'outlier', so we cannot be sure that that was a truly representative performance. You handle certain aspects of the GMAT consistently well, but you also make certain consistent mistakes.

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (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, I would suggest you order your ESR from MBA.COM, It will help you in analyzing your weaknesses and will be able to answer a lot of questions for you.

Hi Ajay,

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

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

HI Ajay,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

The good news is that in quant you scored only a point or two below your official practice exams. That said, I understand that you are not satisfied with your verbal score, so the question we need to ask is why you scored so high on your practice exams but lower on the real GMAT.

Assuming that you took your official practice exams under realistic testing conditions, the results show that, on a good day, you are capable of scoring higher than V35. Thus, it’s quite possible that nerves, stress, tiredness, or a combination of all three negatively affected your test-day performance. However, it’s also possible that you have some lingering weaknesses that were exposed on test day. Although I’m unsure of how you prepared, it’s possible that, in your preparation, particularly in verbal, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on the actual GMAT. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, for you to hit your score goal, your preparation, particularly for verbal, probably needs to be more complete, meaning that you have to go through the various types of GMAT questions 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. 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.

For verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, you will get stuck guessing between two choices or be surprised to find that you incorrectly answered questions that you thought you answered correctly. Becoming more skilled in this way takes carefully analyzing all of the answer choices to lots of verbal questions to develop an eye for the logical differences between the choices. In other words, you have to go beyond answering practice questions and reading explanations to doing deep analysis of questions to learn to see everything that is going on in them.

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 my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out.

Good luck!

Thanks for you reply.
GMAT Prep 1- 01 March- Q49 V34
GMAT Prep 2- 05 May - Q49 V40
GMAT Prep 3- 12 May - Q49 V38
GMAT prep 4- 18 May - Q48 V47

Then due to some personal reasons, I had to postpone my actual GMAT test till 04 August. However, I kept on preparing. Before actual test I gave a few 800Score mock tests and a free Veritas Prep mock wherein I score between 650-680

I did my best to create actual test conditions at home. I even wore the same cloths which I planned to wear on final day

Thanks for your reply. I have already shared a few more details. I took BYJUs GMAT course (Tablet/webinar based), and solved OG and GMAT CLUB questions. Studied 6-10 hours a week for 5 months (with a few short breaks in between due to work). My overall goal is to score 700+(more of an ego issue now than an actual requirement ) and I plan to apply in round 1 this year. I will post my ESR as soon as GMAT CLUB allows me to.

The ESR is attached. Kindly provide your expert opinion.