Dejected!!!! a 650 that made me feel lost in the GMAT world!!!

Also know, that despite what everyone thinks, it is not all about the score. It really is just one piece of the pie, even for the Top Ten schools. I have seen people get into programs (Yale, for example, not a Top Ten, but still good) with a 580. Did you see that -- a 580! True, the guy had great experience, but my point is, while you obviously want to shoot for that 700+ to give yourself the best change, so much more than *just* your score comes into play at all the schools.

I was former Harvard admissions, and a Harvard grad. I know.

Hi J2S2019,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Let’s start with the good nes. 650 with Q49 quant is not too bad, my friend. Thus, don’t look at this as one of the ”biggest setbacks of your career” but rather look at it as a good sign that you only have to improve your verbal skills to achieve your GMAT score goal That said, since you scored V28, it’s clear that, moving forward, you need to follow a study plan that allows you to learn GMAT verbal from the ground up. In other words, follow a study plan that allows you to learn each verbal topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

For example, when studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you incorrectly answered a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, to be successful in Sentence Correction, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.

This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.

There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.

As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to put in the necessary time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.

To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.

You also may find my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Good luck!

Hi krtibdewal,

First off, a 650/Q49 is a solid Score, so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

There's certainly no harm in continuing to study - and you clearly have an opportunity to pick up some serious points in the Verbal section. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

ScottTargetTestPrep
Really very very thankful for all those suggestions & advices. There were certainly some wrong strategies from my end while i have worked in my verbal areas.
I can now co-relate the same after going through your reply.
I need to build up a study plan & dive into my verbal preparation going forward with a much more planned way.
Thank you again & i will surely catch up with you if i face any issues.

EMPOWERgmatRichC Thank you for taking out sometime for me. It will be very helpful if you can guide me on my way forward to boost my verbal and Quant preparation before i re-appear.
In the meantime i will get my profile evaluated from experts to check if my dream B-schools is in accordance with my profile.
Here are my inputs on those points you mentioned:-

Studies:
1) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?

I have studied for the last ~2.5 months. During a Busy work-week(Monday to Friday), i usually invested 2 hours a day, with around 4-5 hours of weekend study. In an average, i have studied 15-16 hours a week prior to two weeks of my exam. For the last two weeks, it was around 30-35 hours as i took leave from my office.

2) What study materials have you used so far?

I have used Manhatten books, OG 2017 & 2019(combined), Aristotle for SC, CR Bible for CR.
Being a GoT winner in Gmat Club, i was awarded a Math Revolution All-in-one Q51 course that helped me a good understanding meantime for my quant concept building.

I had had an Jamboree online Comprehensive account but i was not able to extract much of a help from it.
The self-Prep basically started with following expert's like you in the GMAT Club & with all these ample amount of materials available in this forum.

3) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

I have Given a Screenshot that i have used to track all my progresses in Mocks. I think it will be useful for you to guide me what i have made wrong.

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

I am planning to apply to B-schools at the end of 2020.

5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

To name a few of the B Schools i have considered to apply are Said, HBS, Wharton, Insead, Kellog, Tepper, NUS, ISB & other premium B-schools over the globe.
Though i have a strong academic back-ground with a sound work experience , the score i thought in my head differed from what i saw in the screen.

I am also thinking of an ESR of my score, and i will share with you once i have it. I will really appreciate if you can spare sometime analyzing those for me.

Meanwhile, let me get my profile evaluated from the experts in the forum.

Thank you again & have a good time ahead.

MBAIvy Thank you very much for such inspiring words, those truely mean a lot for me now.
I know that the score is just a part, but i was aiming for a 700+ & the score i got was not in accordance with my plan.
as i have some more time before i start my application process, i will try to re-attempt. I am confident of bringing some point improvement.

nightblade354 Thank you for such inspiring words. I will sit back for a while to analyze my issues & will start again with new hopes.

SajjadAhmad Thank you, I will not Give up. I will try to make it again.
& thank you for the RC help

Hi J2S2019,

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

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

It is natural to feel down after setting expectations of a high score. You have to allow time to pass after which you can begin anew. It is too soon to formulate new strategies with a clouded mind.

You have mentioned that you took many mock tests. Leaving aside the official ones, I could count 23+ tests. In my view, that is a lot of tests to waste one's energy on. It would be better instead to concentrate on learning. Your strategy seems to be based on testing. This may be fine for a few tests but the approach of extending it to dozens of tests needs be examined.

Verbal ability requires time and dedication to build It cannot be hurried through tests. GL!

Hovkial Thank you for those inspiring words.
Seems i made some mistake in taking more mocks as i was trying to learn from the mistakes i made in those MOCKs.
I will refresh myself for a while now & then start again fresh.
Thanks again. Have a good time!

I'm happy to help!