Hi everyone,
I just had my GMAT on the 17th (Oct) and got an unexpected score of 620 (Q48 V27).
I had started preparing in March 2016 with a full time job and breaks in between (almost 2-2.5 months) due to unavoidable reasons. I used
Manhattan books for all except CR for which I used Power score Bible. I wrote Manhattan mocks mostly in 2016 with 640 as my highest score. The mocks were definitely tougher than all other mock CATs and specially the GMAT quant. I had also written the 2 free veritas MOCK CATs wherein I got 650 as highest By Jan-Feb I completed all official quant guides and most of the portion of verbal guides. Then I started giving the official GMAT prep CATs
as well as GMATCLUB quant CATs.
The I attempted the free GMAT preps 5 times with the following scores:
Mar 5 2017 - 640 (Q48 V30) - 1st attempt gmat prep 1
May 28 2017 - 620 (Q47 V28) - 1st attempt gmat prep 2
Jun 18 2017 - 690 (Q49 V35) - repeat
Jul 16 2017 - 630 (Q47 V30)- repeat
Aug 13 2017 - 730 (Q50 V39) - repeat
I kept practicing and attempting
gmatclub tests whenever they were free and mostly focused on quant portion where my highest score was q 45. Must say they were a bit hard and good to practice so I also took various quizzes. Now i was running short on practice tests so I availed the offer of
ExpertsGlobal mock CATS, 15 of them. Till my exam date I attempted 10 of their mock CATS which seemed good to practice with and tested various concepts. I averaged 670-680 in these tests with 750 being the highest (Q49 V42). I was quite pleased with my verbal performance that first time I went beyond 700 and V35. In subsequent tests I was scoring mostly 670-680 but at times I scored 600/640 in a subsequent mock. In my last two mocks before the GMAT I scored 740 (q48 v42) and 680 (Q46 V38 - just a week before GMAT) so I thought I was on track and can hit my target of 700+. I had already booked my appointment in September.
Now in verbal I used to struggle with CR and later on with RC. SC was going fine though with some anomalies at times. In CR I could not follow the pre-thinking approach and mostly relied on powerscore approach of reading argument then question stem and then going through each choice, relating it with argument and eliminating accordingly. At times my CR accuracy would go up to 70-75% from 40-50%. Similarly for RC though I could not go through 1 passage a day everyday owing to a long preparation period but I would read editorials of economists, smithsonian magazine etc. quite frequently apart from doing the official exercises and mock CATS. In last month before GMAT i made it a point to do 2-3 passages and that too from gmat prep (referred the tags). I thought that I could manage both CR and RC.
Come exam day, I had booked a morning appointment of 9 AM. Really nice and peaceful environment at the test center. I started with Quant section. It was going really good and questions seemed to simpler than what I had attempted in Mocks. I felt I was doing really well till 15th question and well ahead of the time. There were couple of guesses here and there however then later on in one or simple word problems I don't know if I spent too much time because I knew the approach but just could not arrive at the correct answer. When I reached Q30 I realized that I was now behind the target time. Solved quickly few questions and guessed the last two simply as I did not have time left. I thought that Quant was fine but could have been better had I finished on the right note.
Now I took a break went to the loo, had my snacks but when I came back I had already lost 2 odd minutes on verbal. I calmed myself and then started quickly. Went through the first 10 questions which were fine. Obviously I was behind the time since I had lost more than 2 minutes. The questions specially the RCs I thought were tougher than the mocks. Towards the end I had i think just 11-12 minutes left for final 10 questions. I don't think I guessed too much in verbal (probably just 1-2). Honestly I wasn't really sure how I did on verbal though it was a bit harder than the mocks but then I scored well in mocks even when I didn't have much idea of my performance.
I took another break and finished with IR and AWA. Now as I pressed Next button I was hoping that I might get a good score but too my utter shock I saw a 620. I was really disappointed since it was way lower then my recent mocks, especially verbal which was 11 points lower than my last mock. I got my lowest verbal score ever among all the mock CATS, though quant was similar to my average score although I believed I could hit Q49. Obviously I cancelled my score immediately.
Anyways I have decided that I would definitely have a retake as my target is 720-740 to get into a top business school since I am an Indian applicant and it would be quite competitive for me.
Kindly advice now how should I plan and approach my next attempt. I am planning to schedule next month itself. I would like to push my quant score to 50 and verbal has to get back to near 40.
I also ordered my ESR report for the exam and I am attaching the same. Any advice or insights based on this will be appreciated.