Drop in Verbal during GMAT online

Question

Hi All!

In July 2021, I gave GMAT for the first time and my score was 710 (V41, Q46). And since I wanted to apply to top 15 colleges (with scholarship), I got back to prep for attempt#2. In the second attempt, I got 680 (V40, Q45) and was extremely disappointed.
So, after another short break, I got back to prep and by December 2021, I gave GMAT a 3rd try and was absolutely shocked to see a 650 score (V33, Q48).

I was of the opinion that my Verbal was strong and was shocked to see such an extremely low score flash on the screen.
I'm extremely confused about what could've gone wrong and since it was the online exam, I have no way to check the ESR breakdown either. The only thing I can pinpoint to is the fact that I had ~4-5 RCs which may have slowed me down in the last quarter of the section.

I'm open to any feedback/suggestion(s) about what could have gone wrong and how I can improve for my next attempt.

Additional Context - All GMATprep scores were in the range of 710-740 with minimum Verbal 38 and Minimum Quant 49.

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  LALALandSB2358 ,

It's not easy to advise someone with a 94% score in verbal, but there is one thing that we can say for sure: as you don't have any way to check either how many mistakes you made or the average difficulty of the questions presented to you,  you should not spend any time trying to pinpoint exactly what went wrong that day . Instead, you could consider applying with your 710 (which is a great score) or you could go for a retake. If you do decide to take the exam again, make sure that you:

1. Don't take verbal for granted
2. Don't panic and change your approach or start using low quality material
3. Have a timing strategy in place
4. Take a few practice tests before the real thing

Also, do you want to give the regular GMAT (the test center version) a shot?

Russ19 · Answer

LALALandSB2358 , Did you allocate more time for quant and less for verbal in the 2nd and 3rd attempts?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi LALALandSB2358,

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 V33. 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

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