Disappointing first attempt!

Question

Hello everyone!

I studied for gmat for nearly 5 months, starting right from math basics, considering I was always a weak student at math. Also did an e-gmat course for verbal. I gave manhattan mocks and all official gmat mocks within the last three weeks of my exam date, with varying results in both. Manhattan ranging from 590-640 and official gmat ranging from 600 to 690. At this point I was feeling confident about the general level of preparedness for both quant and verbal, while quant has always made me uneasy considering I have struggled with it my whole life.

I ended up scoring a 540 on test day and was completely devastated.

My verbal score was 32, much lower than I expected. My ESR shows that I started off with a couple of mistakes however did much better in the 2nd quarter, and achieved 100% accuracy in the third quarter however completely tanked my score in the 4th quarter by achieving only 50% accuracy. The biggest area of concern that dipped my score was critical reasoning. I performed moderately on reading comprehension and did well on sentence correction.

My quant score was also 32, lower than any of my mocks which normally never dipped beyond 40. A string of 7-8 Data Sufficiency questions together, completely threw me off my timing strategy leaving me to guess on a large number of questions towards the end, hurting my score beyond repair. Data sufficiency, again being an area I tend to struggle with. The ESR shows that all areas of quant were generally weak with Geometry being particularly weak, which lead me to believe that the 5 months of prep on my math concepts may not have been fruitful at all.

My target gmat score is 700. In light of the results of my first attempt, I need a well defined study plan in order to perform better on my second and hopefully last attempt on gmat. Any suggestions and guidance is welcome as I am completely perplexed as to what I did wrong and what I need to do in order to fix it this time around! 
Thank you!

Gmatsaiyan · Answer

You can follow this study plan:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-study-p ... ml?fl=menu
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-self-pr ... tml?f=menu

Courses that can help with your prep:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-co ... ml?fl=menu

Best books for Quants:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ma ... ml?fl=menu
Best books for Verbal:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... ml?fl=menu

Best Gmat practice tests:-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/all-gmat-pra ... tml?fl=men

rr10 · Answer

Hi  sanyatalwar28

Sorry to hear about your first attempt. No need to be disappointed now. It happens as I was there too. My first attempt was not good at all (Going for my next- probably LAST).

Take some days off and then start again. Your quant seems to be your weak area as you've said it earlier. After break, revise the basic concepts and then start practicing questions from this forum. Daily 10 questions for PS and DS each. Start with some 600-700 level questions. And as you find yourself comfortable, try to solve 700 level. This forum has the best and every types of questions. Solutions are given in a great manner. So nothing more is required IMO. But first go through with the concepts.

Your verbal score was 32 is quite good. You should try little hard in CR and RC. Do at least 3-4RCs every day. For CR pre-thinking is a good strategy. Just maintain the pace with verbal. You will surely break 700 barrier.

Just do not overthink. You can PM me for any preparation help.

Best Regards!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

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 540. 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, particularly in verbal, 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.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

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?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sanyatalwar28,

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) During your studies, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) 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)?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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). Since you purchased your ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you. Before you can include attachments with your posts/PMs, you need to have at least 5 posts in the forums (right now, you have just 1 post). If you would rather not go through those extra steps right now, then you can feel free to email your ESR directly to me (at [email protected]).

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

AnubhavC97 · Answer

I have observed who all take EGMAT course face this issue. The course is a complete waste of one's time. On the contrary their team is pretty active in marketing only 1 out 1000 story and advertising that folks scored 700-760 in 20-40 days which further demotivates other students who are working hard for months

Abi1995 · Answer

Sorry to hear about it, don’t worry many success stories emerge from first attempt failure. Dont lose hope, keep working hard.

Posted from my mobile device

egmat · Answer

sanyatalwar28 - I am sorry to hear that you did not do as well on the GMAT. V32 is 66th percentile on GMAT Verbal. What were your ability scores in Scholaranium? How did you score in concept and practice files in the e-GMAT portal? You can improve from V32 to V40 in 15 to 30 days depending on whether you need to improve in one sub-section or multiple.

A Q32 on the other hand is 19th percentile. How did you study for GMAT Quant? You probably need a good two months there.

AnubhavC97 - we have students who ace the test in 20 days and those who take months. We are probably the only company that provides you with an exact estimate of how long you will take to improve. As long as you put in the correct starting abilities, the plan will give you a fairly accurate estimate of the time. In fact, post the planner, we even tell you the aspects of the course you should focus on to improve. This completely takes the guesswork out of the equation.

If you go to the link below, you will see all kinds of success stories (same with those on this forum as well as in the review section). Some people need a few months while others need a few weeks. You can see all sorts of examples here. It just depends on their particular use case and the kind of time commitment they can put in. Bottom line: the planner tells you the amount of time you need.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... caQTR6mAia

sanyatalwar28 - reach out to the support team to plan your quant and verbal improvement.

-Rajat

pyaasa · Answer

I was a student of e-gmat and I can vouch that it’s course is not a waste of time.
Although, I didn’t achieve my target score in the first 2 attempts, I still make use of the notes that I made during my egmat days. It’s SC is sooooo good.

And those YouTube videos, they actually motivate me. So many students sharing their insights is great. Same with GMATclub debriefs.

It really depends on how dedicated we are as students. Blaming tutors and expecting them to cast a magic spell will do no good.

Cheers to all the tutors out there. Their hardwork has made GMAT easier for us.

Posted from my mobile device

freedom128 · Answer

I think you need to do all OG questions and read every single explanation provided. E gmat alone is not sufficient, in my experience.

Posted from my mobile device

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