Crumbled after actual GMAT

Question

Hi all,

Following roughly 6 months of preparation, I finally took the GMAT (test center) and scored a shameful 600 (Q43 V29) (I would note that right after the score popped up in the display, I decided to cancel it, thus I have no option to order an ESR). Needless to say, this score came as a shock to me as I was scoring in the 700 range on different CATs. Detailed breakthrough of my mocks are as follows:

GMATPrep 1 May 02 - 670 (Q44 V38)
GMATPrep 2 May 20 690 (Q46 V36)
GMATPrep 1 June 5 - 710 (Q50 V37) (Retake - came across a couple of previously seen questions, though for the most part, I got them correctly on the first take.)
Manhattan CAT 1 June 15 - 660 (Q44 V39)
Manhattan CAT 2 June 22 - 680 (Q47 V36)
GMATPrep 3 June 28 - 710 (Q48 V39)
GMATPrep 4 July 3 - 720 (Q49 V39)

With regard to the preparation materials, I have used mainly TTP for the quant (focused on my weak areas), MGMAT guides for quant and verbal (focused mainly on the SC and CR guides), the official guides ('19 and '20) and questions from GMAT club. 
The thing is that I'm unable to figure out what went wrong on the exam. I wasn't particularly anxious or tired during the exam, nor did I rush through certain sections in the exam. I did have to guess about 4-6 questions in each section, but I surmise that its quite common among most test takers (and in any case, I wouldn't attribute my guessing strategy to a ~100 pts discrepancy between the mocks and the actual exam).

Would appreciate if any expert on here could share some insights or tips (I'm planning on retaking the exam in about 3-4 weeks, aiming at a score of ~720).

Many thanks!

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Unfortunate. There is an opinion out there that if you aren't "struggling" during the exam that it's basically not a good sign.

Perhaps you made some unfortunate errors on easy questions early on that affected the algorithm.

MCBAS · Answer

Not sure at this point. I did have some challenging questions and for comparison's sake, some of my mocks felt slightly easier.

harshtandel838 · Answer

You’ve done good in mocks, in Quant it’s really good! I’ve too given the actual GMAT, I felt the time pressure in actual test! It was not while mocks and I scored 60 point lower in actual exam. Btw, the thing is also with regard to algorithm! Getting an easy question wrong, the GMAT gives huge penalty. I’d suggest you to recall the exam experience and mocks experience, or get ESR if you don’t know which are your weak areas.

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi MCBAS,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) What type of study routine did you follow over the last 6 months? How many hours did you typically study each week?
2) For your next attempt, are you planning to take the At-home GMAT or are you planning to take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

MCBAS · Answer

EMPOWERgmatRichC, see below the responses to your questions:

1. I was working full-time (quite demanding job), but I did manage to study about 20-30 hours a week. Note that I did take 3 weeks vacation from work, during which I've managed to study a little more;
2. Test Center;
3. I'm planning on applying in the first or second round for the '22 intake. My targets school are the following - LBS, Booth, Stern, Wharton and CBS (I have a quite strong profile (GPA, work experience, extra curriculars etc.), other than the awful GMAT score I just received).

MCBAS · Answer

gmatknightDOTcom 
I've just examined my ESR (I'll try to upload it later) and in the Quant section, for instance, I was receiving medium-high difficulty question throughout the entire exam! Similar experience with the Verbal section - I was receiving medium difficulty questions in each quarter of the section....

MCBAS · Answer

I also attach my ESR. Would appreciate if any expert on here could assist in analyzing its content.

IanStewart · Answer

This one real test score is such an outlier that I don't think you should be too concerned about it. If you take a real test tomorrow, from your scoring history I'd be very confident you'd score in the Q46-Q50 range and in the V36-V39 range. When test takers get outlier scores like yours, there are a few common explanations, though it's hard to tell which might apply in your case. Test anxiety is the most common explanation, but that does not seem to have affected you. If you were tired on test day (you mention a demanding job) that might be an explanation. Or there might not be any identifiable cause, and you may just have had an unusually bad or unlucky day. That's not likely to happen again.

I can see why your score was what it was, from the ESR, but because you've performed better on every other test, I wouldn't make any major changes to your approach. One thing about ESRs is that their breakdowns by question type (when it tells you how good you are at SC, CR, RC, or Geometry, Algebra, etc) are based on such small samples of questions that they don't mean all that much. In Quant, for example, all I'd really be even moderately confident saying is that you're strong in Geometry. The differences in the Verbal breakdowns aren't large enough to be significant.

In the Verbal section, your performance early on was well below normal for you. The difficulty graphs on ESRs are condensed, so when reading your Verbal difficulty graph, the leftmost blue dot is about as low as those dots get. In the first quarter of the test, you were getting the absolute easiest questions right, but were getting 500-level questions wrong. Then in the second quarter of the test you were still getting some 400-level questions wrong, and by the time the first half of the test was over, the algorithm didn't have a high opinion of your Verbal ability. Obviously you haven't performed that way on any other test, and I'm not sure what happened on this one, but whatever happened, it's not likely to happen again. One thing I notice is that your Verbal timing was rushed right at the beginning (if you did Verbal first, maybe there was some adrenaline responsible, but if not, then I'm not sure what happened). So even if you didn't feel test pressure, you might have adopted a pacing strategy different from your normal one, and that might have led to mistakes early on that you don't normally make. If you can relax and slow down slightly at the start, and just make sure you're getting questions right when you understand the logic behind them, that should give you a better chance at a strong score.

You had a hard Quant test overall, and I'm a bit surprised by the score you got -- considering that almost all of your questions were hard, I'd have expected your performance on this test to produce a Q45 or so. It's probably because your hit rate in the final quarter wasn't too strong (and that happened because you were short on time) that your score dipped to the Q43.

So in Quant, it appears you need to speed up a bit, and in Verbal you need to slow down a bit, but any adjustments you make should be minor, because your diagnostic scores are very strong. To save time in Q, you'd normally want to simply be willing to move on from very hard questions a bit more quickly, unless you can see a path to a solution (it's not a good idea to try to save time by rushing through questions you know how to solve -- then you'll more likely make careless errors on easier questions, and wrong answers on easy questions are hard to recover from). Naturally if you can learn faster Quant methods, that will also help. If you have a similarly difficult Q test next time, your score will boil down to how well you answer hard questions, so you might want to devote more time to practicing realistic high-level questions (I sell several problem sets full of very challenging questions - feel free to contact me if you might find those helpful). But even if you did nothing at all, I think you're in a great position to score a 700-720, and one unusual test score doesn't change that. Good luck!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi MCBAS,

I'm sorry to hear about how things went with your GMAT. Can you please paste in a screenshot of your TTP analytics page, so I can check out your TTP stats and course progress? Once I have that information, I can provide some advice.

MCBAS · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep 
 sent you a PM

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi MCBAS,

I've sent you a PM with some notes and additional questions.

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

signyc · Answer

Hey - sent you a PM. I am having similar issues about performing poorly during the test. Would appreciate if we can discuss and share strategy for the next step..

Cheers..

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