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09 Jun 2021, 08:26
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I am a recent graduate from one of India's premier engineering colleges. I aspire to study at top B-schools 2-3 years from now and therefore, decided to take the GMAT as a senior in college. However, after two failed attempts, I'm in a very uncertain position and would be extremely glad to receive some valuable advice from the renowned GMAT experts on the forum. Here's my journey so far:
A. Attempt 1: 24th February 2021 (Exam rescheduled because of ill health)
I was very erratic in my approach when I started preparing for my GMAT in December 2020. I already knew that my quant skills were good, and so I started off by doing all the quant problems in the Official and completed it within 6-7 days. I scored consistently and didn't face many difficulties.
After some days of miscellaneous involvement, I started doing the GMAT Verbal questions from the Official Guide, but without timers, analysis and approach. Gradually, I realized that it wasn't a great method and so I started focusing more on the approach. I completed all the material in the guides and took mock tests with the following scores. As you'll notice, I felt that taking mocks will make me more able to tackle the situation during the exams as I often falter during tense situations:
1. 08/02/2021: GMAT Prep #1 - 720 (Q50, V36, IR7)
2. 09/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #1 - 660 (Q50, V31)
3. 11/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #2 - 650 (Q50, V30)
4. 13/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #3 - 660 (Q50, V31)
5. 15/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #4 - 680 (Q51, V33)
6. 17/02/2021: GMAT Prep #2 - 720 (Q51, V36, IR8)
7. 19/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #5 - 690 (Q51, V34)
8. 20/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #6 - 670 (Q51, V31)
9. 21/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #7 - 660 (Q51, V30)
10. 22/02/2021: GMAT Club Free Mock Test - 690 (Q51, V34)
However, I fell ill before the exam and had to unfortunately reschedule it to 9th April 2021 to conform it around my university exam schedule. Through these mocks, I realized I needed to study the concepts deeply in order to raise my verbal score. I took the Magoosh Online course and found the videos and questions very helpful. For the next attempt, I solved all the questions with decent accuracy (I was still unable to manage the time properly in CR and RC), but didn't revise those to be honest. I was still struggling a lot in RC and CR, but decided to give it a shot anyways.
B. Attempt 2: 9th April 2021 - 640 (Q50, V27, IR8, AWA5)
Here's my ESR analysis in brief (Percentile):
CR:
Analysis/Critique - 0
Construction/Plan - 75%
RC:
Inferred Idea - 50%
Stated Idea - 50%
SC:
Grammar - 88%
Communication - 66%
The debacle seemed to be a mixed effect of panic and improper preparation. I decided to focus on CR and RC for my next attempt and started to prepare for my second actual attempt.
I realized that I need to focus on identifying and fixing my weak areas first. Therefore, I followed the strategy mentioned below:
Retake Strategy
1. Analysis of ESR
2. Retake of GMAT Prep tests
a) 16/04/2021: GMAT Prep #1 - 770 (Q51, V42, IR8)
b) 05/05/2021: GMAT Prep #2 - 700 (Q51, V31, IR8)
3. Revision of all concepts in SC, CR, RC
4. Preparation of revision notes, containing important concepts, to be studied daily
5. Redoing all questions attempted previously
a) All questions from Magoosh (Verbal Only)
- I made sure that I took my time for each question attempted and revisited the questions I got wrong.
- I also saw the awesome video explanations for each question I got wrong, or I took more time than average.
b) OG (all three)
- I especially focused on the Hard Level CR, SC and RC problems and took my time to look at their solutions from GMAT Club Forum.
- I'll admit that even though I completed all again, I didn't go through those questions again before my retake.
6. LAST Passages, Economist for RC: I solved 5-6 LSAT passages and looked at 20-25 articles from Economist for improving my RC.
7. Mocks
Here's the part where I genuinely got motivated. The scores are as follows:
a) 16/05/2021: Veritas Prep #1 (Round 2) - 710 (Q51, V37)
b) 18/05/2021: Veritas Prep #2 (Round 2) - 720 (Q51, V38)
c) 19/05/2021: Magoosh Test #1 - 730 (Q51, V39)
d) 21/05/2021: GMAT Prep #3 - 760 (Q51, V41)
e) 23/05/2021: Veritas Prep #3 (Round 2) - 740 (Q51, V40)
f) 24/05/2021: GMAT Prep #4 - 750 (Q51, V40)
g) 27/05/2021: Veritas Prep #4 (Round 2) - 740 (Q51, V40)
h) 28/05/2021: GMAT Prep #5 - 680 (Q49, V36)
i) 28/05/2021: Experts Global Mock Test #1 - 760 (Q50, V43)
j) 06/06/2021: GMAT Prep #6 - 750 (Q51, V40)
k) 07/06/2021: Veritas Prep #6 - 740 (Q51, V40)
8. Solid revision of all mocks: I made sure that I was thorough with every mock that I took.
C. Attempt 3: 8th June 2021 - 680 (Q50, V31, IR6)
The moment I got half-way through of the verbal test, I knew I had messed up. But after more focused study, I had hoped for a better outcome.
Now, I am at a loss about what to do. The situation is a bit depressing, but I want to make things right. I will welcome any structured/experienced advice. My target score is 760+ and I'm willing to put in more determined efforts.
A. Attempt 1: 24th February 2021 (Exam rescheduled because of ill health)
I was very erratic in my approach when I started preparing for my GMAT in December 2020. I already knew that my quant skills were good, and so I started off by doing all the quant problems in the Official and completed it within 6-7 days. I scored consistently and didn't face many difficulties.
After some days of miscellaneous involvement, I started doing the GMAT Verbal questions from the Official Guide, but without timers, analysis and approach. Gradually, I realized that it wasn't a great method and so I started focusing more on the approach. I completed all the material in the guides and took mock tests with the following scores. As you'll notice, I felt that taking mocks will make me more able to tackle the situation during the exams as I often falter during tense situations:
1. 08/02/2021: GMAT Prep #1 - 720 (Q50, V36, IR7)
2. 09/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #1 - 660 (Q50, V31)
3. 11/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #2 - 650 (Q50, V30)
4. 13/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #3 - 660 (Q50, V31)
5. 15/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #4 - 680 (Q51, V33)
6. 17/02/2021: GMAT Prep #2 - 720 (Q51, V36, IR8)
7. 19/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #5 - 690 (Q51, V34)
8. 20/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #6 - 670 (Q51, V31)
9. 21/02/2021: Veritas Prep Test #7 - 660 (Q51, V30)
10. 22/02/2021: GMAT Club Free Mock Test - 690 (Q51, V34)
However, I fell ill before the exam and had to unfortunately reschedule it to 9th April 2021 to conform it around my university exam schedule. Through these mocks, I realized I needed to study the concepts deeply in order to raise my verbal score. I took the Magoosh Online course and found the videos and questions very helpful. For the next attempt, I solved all the questions with decent accuracy (I was still unable to manage the time properly in CR and RC), but didn't revise those to be honest. I was still struggling a lot in RC and CR, but decided to give it a shot anyways.
B. Attempt 2: 9th April 2021 - 640 (Q50, V27, IR8, AWA5)
Here's my ESR analysis in brief (Percentile):
CR:
Analysis/Critique - 0
Construction/Plan - 75%
RC:
Inferred Idea - 50%
Stated Idea - 50%
SC:
Grammar - 88%
Communication - 66%
The debacle seemed to be a mixed effect of panic and improper preparation. I decided to focus on CR and RC for my next attempt and started to prepare for my second actual attempt.
I realized that I need to focus on identifying and fixing my weak areas first. Therefore, I followed the strategy mentioned below:
Retake Strategy
1. Analysis of ESR
2. Retake of GMAT Prep tests
a) 16/04/2021: GMAT Prep #1 - 770 (Q51, V42, IR8)
b) 05/05/2021: GMAT Prep #2 - 700 (Q51, V31, IR8)
3. Revision of all concepts in SC, CR, RC
4. Preparation of revision notes, containing important concepts, to be studied daily
5. Redoing all questions attempted previously
a) All questions from Magoosh (Verbal Only)
- I made sure that I took my time for each question attempted and revisited the questions I got wrong.
- I also saw the awesome video explanations for each question I got wrong, or I took more time than average.
b) OG (all three)
- I especially focused on the Hard Level CR, SC and RC problems and took my time to look at their solutions from GMAT Club Forum.
- I'll admit that even though I completed all again, I didn't go through those questions again before my retake.
6. LAST Passages, Economist for RC: I solved 5-6 LSAT passages and looked at 20-25 articles from Economist for improving my RC.
7. Mocks
Here's the part where I genuinely got motivated. The scores are as follows:
a) 16/05/2021: Veritas Prep #1 (Round 2) - 710 (Q51, V37)
b) 18/05/2021: Veritas Prep #2 (Round 2) - 720 (Q51, V38)
c) 19/05/2021: Magoosh Test #1 - 730 (Q51, V39)
d) 21/05/2021: GMAT Prep #3 - 760 (Q51, V41)
e) 23/05/2021: Veritas Prep #3 (Round 2) - 740 (Q51, V40)
f) 24/05/2021: GMAT Prep #4 - 750 (Q51, V40)
g) 27/05/2021: Veritas Prep #4 (Round 2) - 740 (Q51, V40)
h) 28/05/2021: GMAT Prep #5 - 680 (Q49, V36)
i) 28/05/2021: Experts Global Mock Test #1 - 760 (Q50, V43)
j) 06/06/2021: GMAT Prep #6 - 750 (Q51, V40)
k) 07/06/2021: Veritas Prep #6 - 740 (Q51, V40)
8. Solid revision of all mocks: I made sure that I was thorough with every mock that I took.
C. Attempt 3: 8th June 2021 - 680 (Q50, V31, IR6)
The moment I got half-way through of the verbal test, I knew I had messed up. But after more focused study, I had hoped for a better outcome.
Now, I am at a loss about what to do. The situation is a bit depressing, but I want to make things right. I will welcome any structured/experienced advice. My target score is 760+ and I'm willing to put in more determined efforts.
09 Jun 2021, 19:50
Kudos
Bookmarks
I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. The good news is that you scored really well on quant, right? 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 V31. 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.
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 it helpful to read the following articles:
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT
Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?
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 V31. 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.
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 it helpful to read the following articles:
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT
Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?
sherxon
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Schools: Carlson (A$$$) Kenan-Flagler '25 (A$$$$) Goizueta '25 (A$$$) Olin '25 (A$$$$) Fuqua '25 (M$$$$) Marshall '25 (A$$$$)
GMAT 1: 740 Q50 V40
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11 Jun 2021, 09:09
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Things get worse before they get better. I think, ScottTargetTestPrep provided good advice. But I have a few things to add. I see your SC is not bad, and your problem is in RC and CR. I had similar difficulties. What I did was very fundamental to my success in GMAT. I read. I read articles from HBR and The Economist, searching for main idea, premises, counterarguments, shifts in the argument etc while reading. Furthermore, I read fiction books at times when my brain was already tired. My advice for you - Make reading a habit. Three or four small articles per day make a huge difference. Good luck!
