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Re: Big delta between actual and official mock. What's going on? [#permalink]
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2022MBAhopeful wrote:
Hi,

Long time lurker here, I took my first GMAT exam this year in early June after 2 month of prep and got a 610 on actual test day. But I was not very surprised as I understood the scores from the last 2 mock exam I took were inflated. However, I took my 2nd exam late June and was shocked to find out that I only got 610 (V30, Q44) despite a 720 on on mock #5 just a few days before the actual exam. This hit me very hard and I almost wanted to quit GMAT all together. But part of me want to know why and part of me telling me that I am so close to my goal that I shouldn't quit all together yet. I was a bit nervous walking to test center and had 6-7 hours of sleep the night before and was feeling ok. Overall, I still felt pretty calm throughout the exam. What's going on? Is this just bad luck or am I just bad at testing the real thing? Should I get profession help or even test anxiety help? Or is my fundamental still just lacking by a lot?

My official mock exam scores are as follow (the mocks are about 5-7 days apart):
March 2022 Mock Exam 1 (610, V34, Q40)
May 2022 Mock Exam 2 (640, V35, Q43)
May Mock Exam 1 reset (670, V36, Q48)
May 2022 Mock Exam 2 reset (690, V38, Q45)
June 2022 Mock Exam 3 (660, V35, Q47)
June 2022 Mock Exam 4 (660, V33, Q48)
June 2022 Mock Exam 3 reset (720, V42, Q46)
June 2022 Mock Exam 4 reset (660, V39, Q43)
June 2022 Mock exam 5 (720, V44, Q45)

I think there could be two reasons why my Quant declined while verbal improved towards end of June.
1) From March to May, my prep was leaning more towards quant (80% time on quant and 20% on Verbal) which I think explained the higher quant scores on mock in May and earlier June. I switched the focus from Quant to Verbal (90% of my time) in last 3 weeks in June which probably led to the decline of quant.
2) I was frustrated with my lack of progress on verbal so I switched the order of exam by taking Verbal first rather than Quant in 2nd half of June and saw a big jump in my verbal score. I think this might be that I lack the mental stamina as I find it difficult to concentrate on verbal especially on CR and RC (where attention to details matters) after completing quant first. I noticed significant improvement in CR and RC (on average, I only miss 1-2 questions from each of these two question types).

I have been using TTP and OG for primary prep materials. TTP has helped me a lot on quant and SC. I do keep an error log and review them each week.



This is because Mock questions are available online and most people have done them during their preparation. So they do it easily while giving mocks. More so when you are giving repeat test. However real GMAT has all new questions that you have not seen before. So if you can get them only if you have conceptual clarity. So, if you dont know how to solve majority questions you will end up getting lesser score.

I believe you lack conceptual clarity and it owuld be better if you give 1-2 month preparation before giving another attempt. You must improve on your weak areas.

Best of luck
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Re: Big delta between actual and official mock. What's going on? [#permalink]
Expert Reply
Hi 2022MBAhopeful,

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 610. 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, 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.

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?
GMAT Club Bot
Re: Big delta between actual and official mock. What's going on? [#permalink]

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