Disappointed with my GMAT scores, help needed for my next attempt

Question

Hi GMAT Experts,

I am an e-gmat live prep student. I recently gave my gmat and scored 650 (Q50 V27). Clearly I am not happy with my verbal score (my target was 750) and purpose of writing this mail is to get some advice from you before I re-appear.

To give you a complete picture I will highlight all important aspects of my verbal preparation.

1) I started my preparation in mid August and appeared for GMAT on 13th November. I studied for around 7-8 hours per day. Since I took some time leave from office I was able to dedicate more than avg. time for my prep

2) As discussed in the e-gmat strategy sessions I studied their concept files, attended live sessions and moved to scholaranium for practice after finishing OG. My ability in scholaranium was as follows
RC - 68%
CR - 58%
SC - 68%

In CR and SC accuracy was about 50% for tough questions and more than 80% for easy and medium questions

For RC there was no such trend and accuracy was evenly split between medium and tough questions. For easy questions it was a little higher

I would like to mention that my biggest pain point among the 3 sections was CR. I struggled a lot in that. After reading about some experts advice on GMAT club i started solving some questions from LSAT. I thought practicing from LSAT helped me as I was not afraid of tough questions and started becoming comfortable with the thinking that is required for CR. This is my takeaway but i would like to gather some thoughts from you.

3) Also I give GMAT prep test after 1.5 month of my prep to see where I am standing. At this point of time i have already covered all my concept files and live sessions and moved to scholaranium for practice. I scored 700 (Q49, V35). I was happy to see 700 but wanted to move close to 750. I didn't take a diagnostic test before the start of my prep. I realized this was a big mistake

4) After 15 days of more practice I give another gmat prep test and this time scored 690 (Q49, V33). I thought i need to do more practice.

5) Since I have completed all the difficult questions in scholaranium I moved to gmat club to see what other resources I can use to practice. There I got comprehensive documents for all the three sections RC, CR and SC. These document contain questions form gmat prep and is one of the biggest resource of official questions. I practiced all these questions. 
I saw that I was improving in all the three sections
a) My RC accuracy was increasing steadily and timing was also improving. Also I started practicing from LSAT
b) My CR accuracy was also close to 85%. Thanks to LSAT i was able to see the change
c) My SC accuracy was around 70%. I kept working on it and solved more and more questions

6) I also signed up with MGMAT tests to see whether my test scores are improving or not. My test scores were as follows:-
MGMAT 1 - 660 (Q48, V31)
MGMAT 2 - 640 (Q45, V32)
MGMAT 3 - 650 (Q43, V36)
MGMAT4 - 690 (Q46, V38)

I was never worried with my quant scores (Manhattan quant is too difficult) and was happy that my verbal scores are improving.

I thought if i can get close to V40's my target of 750 is possible as i was confident about my quant

7) At the end of my prep I took the e-gmat verbal workshop and got a score of 41. I was disappointed but thought may be it was a bad day and i should continue with my prep.

8) At last i gave a free veritas prep free mock test and got a score of 650 (Q49, V32). In verbal I found many debatable OA's. I tried to forget it and focus on my actual exam

9) I appeared for GMAT and was devastated to get a score of 650. After getting V27 i got depressed and started looking at my 3 months work as complete waste. Today I generated my EPR report to see what went wrong in the test.
My EPR scores for verbal are as follows
1) CR - 23/51
2) RC - 26/51
3) SC - 31/51

I just don't understand what happened with my CR and RC. After having practiced so much how can i screw these sections.

Also i was not nervous during the exam. Infact my quant section was very smooth. I finished my quant 5 mins earlier and I was hopeful that I can nail this test. Also verbal started good and I think it was this third RC around question 22-23 where things started slipping away. I wasted a lot of time on that RC and was not able to identify right answers and ultimately had to guess. After that I started seeing some very simple questions. Also I was able to reach till question 38 and ultimately had to guess the last three questions.

10) I just wanted to understand how should I prepare now. I want to reappear within a 1-1.5 month and what should be my strategy.

Also I would like to gather some thoughts from you on the following points
- Does practicing from lsat helps? What do you think? Should I continue?
- Also I have exhausted most of my resources what all resources I can leverage now?

Please provide some tips so that i can improve for my next attempt.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi invictus53,

You'll likely get some additional responses if you post your story here:

share-gmat-experience-8/

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.

If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once?

Since you've worked with resources that have not helped you to achieve your goals, some new resources/tactics/practice are in order (and there are plenty of high-quality resources available).

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

invictus53 · Answer

Thanks Rich for your reply

I have posted my experience in the share GMAT experience section as well. Hopefully I will get some more replies now.

Please find my responses to the questions you asked.

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)? - Not always I skipped AWA section on more than 50% of my mock tests
2) Did you take them at home? - Yes 
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as your Official GMAT? - I managed to give only two tests on the same time
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? - I exceeded my breaks sometimes
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? - No, all tests were taken once

Just one question - Is it possible giving mocks in a non ideal manner can cause such a drop?

Also it would be great if you can suggest some high quality resources.

Thanks

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi invictus53,

The extra information that you've provided is quite useful, as it helps to define what went wrong on Test Day. In real basic terms, you took your CATs in such a way that you were NOT properly training to face the Official GMAT.

Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your scores can become - and that's what happened here. By skipping sections, taking the CATs at home, taking CATs at different times, etc., you weren't properly training for the FULL GMAT 'experience.' At higher scoring levels, the GMAT becomes really 'sensitive' to little mistakes - you made a few too many (because you weren't properly ready to face the FULL GMAT under Exam conditions) and your score dropped

Thankfully, this is a relatively easy set of problems to fix. The big question now is "how long will it take you to properly get 'used to' taking the full GMAT?" You'll certainly need a new set of practice CATs to work with and you have to put in the necessary time to train your brain (and body) for the FULL GMAT. You might also need to invest in some new GMAT training materials.

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

egmat · Answer

Hi invictus53 , Sometimes “life happens” and we are not able to get the desired results. With appropriate planning and diligent execution, you should succeed the next time on the GMAT. Can you please provide me the answers to the following questions so that I can guide you appropriately. 1) What were your target scores in Quant and Verbal for reaching a 750 score overall? The minimum score you should be getting to get a 750 is a V40 (91 percentile). Considering your current Scholaranium abilities, your overall Verbal Ability is around 65%. You should have ideally worked upon your Verbal score until you reached 85% Verbal Ability before giving the GMAT. 2) How do you approach SC, CR and RC questions? List down the process you follow in detail. I look forward to your responses. Answer to your question Frankly, you don't need to refer to the LAST guides when you have so many resources at your disposal. Remember that it’s the quality rather than the quantity that matters to cement knowledge about any concept. Also, what’s important is the quality of your effort when you attempt and review questions during your preparation. When you get a question wrong, you should ask yourself the following “Why did I get this question wrong. At which step did I make a mistake?” “How can I avoid making this mistake?” To understand more on this, view the interview of our student Hari from here: https://goo.gl/VLyfEf. He was in a very similar situation as yours. Hari improved his verbal score from V31 to V37 . Here are three things that made a difference in his second attempt: 1) Followed a structured approach : Hari realized that consistency is key to acing GMAT Verbal and he can only be consistent if he followed a structured approach to solve questions. 2) Refinement: Hari focused on understanding the areas where he lacked and relentlessly focused on improving those areas. 3) Smart Practice: Hari did not practice a lot, but ensured that whatever he practiced he understood the same completely. Quote from Hari : The difference between an amateur and professional is that an amateur practices till he gets it right while a professional practices till he does not get it wrong. I hope this help. I look forward to hearing you. Regards, Rajat Sadana

GMATPILLBILL · Answer

Hey invictus53, We are sorry to hear that the exam did not go as well, as planned. With about a month to study, here is a customized one month study plan that can help boost your score: https://www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-t ... study-plan Use this as a guideline. You don’t have to follow it exactly but the structure of the study plan should be the same structure that you take in your approach. This helps to optimize your retention and learning. As you study, we recommend that you focus on one particular subsection for multiple consecutive days before moving onto the next. You can see this in our study plan where we recommend 5 days on nothing but SC -- before moving onto CR and then RC. Here is a sample SC video to help you start your journey: https://www.gmatpill.com/sentencecorrect ... ythons.mp4 Best of luck- we are here to help.

Disappointed with my GMAT scores, help needed for my next attempt

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