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24 Jul 2014, 23:25
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Dear Mike,
I am a working executive and have taken the GMAT second time around, yesterday, scoring 620 (Q41 V36). Although Quant has never been my forte, my scores in the verbal section were consistently above 40 in the mocks (GMAT prep and exam pack), due to which my scores were all above 670 in the mocks.
I was very surprised to see such a low score on the actual GMAT!
A few facts about the test which I took yesterday:
I got 4 RC passages- 2 long and 2 short : only 1 main idea question, and every other question was a detail question. Although I am not much of a skimmer, my accuracy on the detail questions is high, but I can't figure out what went wrong yesterday.
SC was fine!
CR: I got 2 BF questions, and only one weakener and strengthener each! Everything else was evaluate, fill in the blanks and zero assumption questions!
I wanted to know whether the scoring on the actual GMAT is different from the scoring which is followed in the GMAT prep software. Also, has the general content, as in the question mix in the actual test changed over the last one year?
I usually work with only official material during verbal practice, is there any other option I should look for?
I was paced correctly on the test yesterday! fell back a bit during the 1st 20 questions,but caught up since I am faster at solving SC.
Your guidance would be of great help! I retake the test in a month's time!
Thank you!
Regards
Soumya
I am a working executive and have taken the GMAT second time around, yesterday, scoring 620 (Q41 V36). Although Quant has never been my forte, my scores in the verbal section were consistently above 40 in the mocks (GMAT prep and exam pack), due to which my scores were all above 670 in the mocks.
I was very surprised to see such a low score on the actual GMAT!
A few facts about the test which I took yesterday:
I got 4 RC passages- 2 long and 2 short : only 1 main idea question, and every other question was a detail question. Although I am not much of a skimmer, my accuracy on the detail questions is high, but I can't figure out what went wrong yesterday.
SC was fine!
CR: I got 2 BF questions, and only one weakener and strengthener each! Everything else was evaluate, fill in the blanks and zero assumption questions!
I wanted to know whether the scoring on the actual GMAT is different from the scoring which is followed in the GMAT prep software. Also, has the general content, as in the question mix in the actual test changed over the last one year?
I usually work with only official material during verbal practice, is there any other option I should look for?
I was paced correctly on the test yesterday! fell back a bit during the 1st 20 questions,but caught up since I am faster at solving SC.
Your guidance would be of great help! I retake the test in a month's time!
Thank you!
Regards
Soumya
25 Jul 2014, 10:59
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Soumyasrinivas
Dear Soumya,
I'm happy to respond.
First of all, what you experienced is not uncommon. Here is a blog I just wrote about it:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/lower-on-t ... ice-tests/
In the next month, you have to develop mastery of the stress reduction techniques I discuss there.
Of course, the details of how GMAC actually grades the real GMAT and the GMAT Prep software --- that information is top secret and proprietary knowledge of GMAC. In other words, as an outsider, I would have no access to that information, and even if I did gain access to it, GMAC would be in a position to sue me if I made one iota of it public. Having said that, I will say: it is certainly our best guess that the GMAT Prep and the real GMAT are graded exactly the same. There is no compelling evidence that they are not. As I have written in that blog, this kind of drop, and even more significant drops, are remarkable common, for reasons entirely unrelated to the grading algorithm.
Similarly, there is no evidence that content has changed. It's just that, with small sample sizes, chance fluctuations are far more noticeable. If I flip a coin 1000 times, I will typically get something close to 500 Hs and 500 Ts. But, if I flip a coin, say, 12 times, sometimes I will get 8 or 9 Hs, or 3 of 4 Hs, instead the 6 one would expect. Think about it. On a GMAT Verbal section, you get 11-13 questions of each format, so of the 11-13 CR questions, you may be dealt a somewhat unlikely hand. That, by itself, is not evidence of a vast change of in the ratios they general give: it just means you happened to have, by chance, a somewhat unusual mix. One of the great flaws of human thinking is to assume, without realizing it, that all the idiosyncratic features of our own unique experience are normative for others.
Here's the Magoosh 1-month study plan:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/1-month-gm ... -schedule/
Because you already went through the OG, I would recommend the GMAT OG Verbal Review & Quantitative Review books for practice -- the 2015 editions come with online questions banks: there are 300 questions in each hard copy book, and 300 more in the online cache accompanying each book, for a total of 1200 new official questions to practice. The old released GMATs,
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/gmat-paper ... -practice/
are another good source of practice questions.
Finally, I will recommend joining Magoosh. You would qualify for our score guarantee:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/score-guarantee
We have 150+ video lessons, including a new revised SC lesson section. Here's a SC lesson:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/lessons/914-the ... rb-mistake
Here's a practice CR question:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3746
When you submit your answer, the following page will have a video explanation. Each one of Magoosh's 800+ GMAT practice questions has its own VE, for accelerated learning. That's precisely the kind of support you will need to get the extra edge.
I hope all this helps, my friend.
Mike
