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sidoknowia
Joined: 18 Jun 2016
Last visit: 02 Jun 2017
Posts: 71
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 74
Location: India
Concentration: Technology, Entrepreneurship
Schools: ISB '18 Arizona State"19 (II)
GMAT 1: 700 Q49 V36
WE:Business Development (Computer Software)
Products:
19 Oct 2016, 06:22
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Hello,
I gave GMAT today. To my utter shock I scored a mere 590 (Q47 V24). I've no idea how my verbal scores can dropped so much.
My gmatprep scores were 660(Q48 V32) and 670(Q48 V34).
Infact when I took a mock on my first day of prep, I had scored 22 in verbal.
During my exam the difficulty level during was indeed gradually increasing (or so I thought - what do I know). I was getting evaluate, explain and flawed reasoning questions. RC question were not simple main point or primary purpose, rather inference and suggestion based questions.
I have no idea what went wrong, during my exam.
I want to retake, but where do I start from and what should be my plan?
I gave GMAT today. To my utter shock I scored a mere 590 (Q47 V24). I've no idea how my verbal scores can dropped so much.
My gmatprep scores were 660(Q48 V32) and 670(Q48 V34).
Infact when I took a mock on my first day of prep, I had scored 22 in verbal.
During my exam the difficulty level during was indeed gradually increasing (or so I thought - what do I know). I was getting evaluate, explain and flawed reasoning questions. RC question were not simple main point or primary purpose, rather inference and suggestion based questions.
I have no idea what went wrong, during my exam.
I want to retake, but where do I start from and what should be my plan?
austinlm
Joined: 23 May 2016
Last visit: 10 Feb 2019
Posts: 24
Location: United States (WA)
Schools: Foster '20 (M$)
GMAT 1: 710 Q49 V38
GPA: 3.5
WE:Engineering (Energy)
19 Oct 2016, 13:07
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I don't have a ton of experience with the GMAT, but I took it recently and did fairly well (710 Q49 V38). I scored 620 (August) and 680 (October) on two practice exams. I don't recommend only taking two, and I surely don't recommend taking them that far apart.
It sounds like you felt pretty good about much of the test with the exception of the reading comprehension and critical reasoning questions. In the weeks before I took the test I wasn't completely confident in these section either. What I did to get better was a combination of working through as many example problems as I could and reading things having nothing to do with the GMAT.
Reading in general helped with my confidence in being able to read a passage and have some sort of semblance of what the author is trying to get across. The one thing I really focused on while reading was being as active a reader as possible. Why is the author telling me this? What is the purpose of the passage? Why is the passage organized this way? And so on.
While working through example questions I knew that being an active reader was the only way to be able to efficiently answer the succeeding questions. I took a little more time to better read the passage and answer questions in my head, then when working through the questions I generally didn't have to do a whole lot of rereading any portion of the passage.
The questions that appear to have been difficult for you are questions about inference and purpose. This is understandable given most people's instinct is to read for content rather than content and motivation. Again this is where actively reading helps.
What I've written above is mostly focused on reading comprehension, but it is 100% applicable to critical reasoning. Ask yourself the same questions and take it a step further and ask yourself: What are the flaws in their reasoning? What would hurt or strengthen the argument? Being able to think of questions while reading will help a great deal.
Lastly, at one point I did some reading about the purpose of the GMAT. The one thing that sticks with me is that the whole purpose of the GMAT is to see what you are capable of given limited information. With this in mind, you have no choice but to actively read and think through every question, not necessarily trying to answer the question while you read it, rather work through reasons certain pieces of information are given and other pieces of information omitted. This helped me a great deal.
I hope I helped a little bit. If you have any questions let me know!
AustinLM
It sounds like you felt pretty good about much of the test with the exception of the reading comprehension and critical reasoning questions. In the weeks before I took the test I wasn't completely confident in these section either. What I did to get better was a combination of working through as many example problems as I could and reading things having nothing to do with the GMAT.
Reading in general helped with my confidence in being able to read a passage and have some sort of semblance of what the author is trying to get across. The one thing I really focused on while reading was being as active a reader as possible. Why is the author telling me this? What is the purpose of the passage? Why is the passage organized this way? And so on.
While working through example questions I knew that being an active reader was the only way to be able to efficiently answer the succeeding questions. I took a little more time to better read the passage and answer questions in my head, then when working through the questions I generally didn't have to do a whole lot of rereading any portion of the passage.
The questions that appear to have been difficult for you are questions about inference and purpose. This is understandable given most people's instinct is to read for content rather than content and motivation. Again this is where actively reading helps.
What I've written above is mostly focused on reading comprehension, but it is 100% applicable to critical reasoning. Ask yourself the same questions and take it a step further and ask yourself: What are the flaws in their reasoning? What would hurt or strengthen the argument? Being able to think of questions while reading will help a great deal.
Lastly, at one point I did some reading about the purpose of the GMAT. The one thing that sticks with me is that the whole purpose of the GMAT is to see what you are capable of given limited information. With this in mind, you have no choice but to actively read and think through every question, not necessarily trying to answer the question while you read it, rather work through reasons certain pieces of information are given and other pieces of information omitted. This helped me a great deal.
I hope I helped a little bit. If you have any questions let me know!
AustinLM
19 Oct 2016, 20:13
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Bookmarks
AustinLM is spot-on -- and I just wanted to add a couple of small things.
First, I think we sometimes underestimate how exhausting it can be to take the actual GMAT exam for the first time. You're in a strange environment with palm vein scans and overly short breaks and maybe some unusual background noise. Maybe you're nervous on some (perhaps subconscious) level -- but even if you aren't, you're probably expending more energy than you do when you take a practice GMAT in the comfort of your own home. So by the time verbal rolls around, you might be a little bit tired, even if you don't really notice it. And verbal is exactly where fatigue will start to hurt your score.
Also, you'll definitely want to concentrate on official GMAT verbal materials from now on. I obviously don't know which resources you've been using -- but follow AustinLM's advice about active reading, do every official GMAT verbal question you can get your hands on, and supplement the GMAT OGs with official LSATs if you need some extra CR and RC material. Focus on making your verbal approach as mind-numbingly consistent as you can, so that you'll do the same thing on the real exam -- even if you're a little bit fatigued in hour #4 of the GMAT.
And keep at it. Don't let one crappy day ruin your goals!
First, I think we sometimes underestimate how exhausting it can be to take the actual GMAT exam for the first time. You're in a strange environment with palm vein scans and overly short breaks and maybe some unusual background noise. Maybe you're nervous on some (perhaps subconscious) level -- but even if you aren't, you're probably expending more energy than you do when you take a practice GMAT in the comfort of your own home. So by the time verbal rolls around, you might be a little bit tired, even if you don't really notice it. And verbal is exactly where fatigue will start to hurt your score.
Also, you'll definitely want to concentrate on official GMAT verbal materials from now on. I obviously don't know which resources you've been using -- but follow AustinLM's advice about active reading, do every official GMAT verbal question you can get your hands on, and supplement the GMAT OGs with official LSATs if you need some extra CR and RC material. Focus on making your verbal approach as mind-numbingly consistent as you can, so that you'll do the same thing on the real exam -- even if you're a little bit fatigued in hour #4 of the GMAT.
And keep at it. Don't let one crappy day ruin your goals!
