ESR EVAL & What to do next? 690 > 620

GC Verbal CATs have plenty of questions akin to Official mocks. Else, GC Forum Quiz also provides an aexcellent resource for practice.
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Hi leggotake2,

I'm sorry to hear that your 2nd attempt 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 - and since you have under-performed on both of your Official GMATs, it's likely that you developed some 'bad habits' during your earlier studies that are still keeping you from scoring higher. 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:

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? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) On what dates (or approximate 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) What is your overall goal score?
5) 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). 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 posting steps at this point, then you can feel free to email me directly (at Rich.C@empowergmat.com).

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

Contact Rich at: Rich.C@empowergmat.com

Hi leggotake2,

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 V26. 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 must 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.

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?
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2nd Attempt - Offline GMAT - 620 Q49 V26

Here's an idiom list that may help SC.

Practiced using official questions only(2017-2022), now since I have not many of them left, where should I practice from?

Consider purchasing the Online only question banks. You can find them through the mba website.
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Have you taken official practice tests 3 to 6? If not, take one of those and see what you score in that. You may not have come across many of their or similar questions on the forum. Evaluating your performance in those may help you figure out your weaknesses. Ensure that you take them under strict time conditions.

This must be some miraculous idiom list that can help one get from 620 to 760




Posted from my mobile device
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Hi leggotake2,

I’m sorry that you could not score up to your potential on the second attempt. This fluctuation in the scores suggests a fundamental issue with your approach in Verbal. I’ve seen cases like this before. Here are a couple of examples –

680+ on mocks, 580 on the GMAT.
710-780 on mocks, 640 on the GMAT

You must make some big changes to your methodology to improve. Here are my answers to your questions.

a) Not able to understand the wide fluctuation in verbal score between the mocks and the GMAT exam which leaves me clueless on how and what to target.

Your current ESR shows low ability scores in CR and SC. You must overhaul your approach in these two sections i.e., build the skills properly (for example- communication in SC, Inference in CR). The scores in SC and CR also suggest conceptual gaps. You must identify the weak topics and work on them.

b) Practiced using official questions only (2017-2022), now since I have not many of them left, where should I practice from?

Your first priority should be to fix concept gaps and build skills. Learn the right process to approach questions (in a step-by-step manner) and then focus on practicing questions.

Ideally, you should look for a quizzing platform that can give you some data on your progress and help you figure out your weak areas. You should test out a few test prep question banks and choose one that fits your needs. Also, you can access the Questions from e-GMAT Scholaranium from your free trial.

Also, as per your ESR, you should focus a bit on the Algebra section to improve your Quant score (these is some scope for improvement here).

Hope this helps!
-Sundeep
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Hi leggotake2

As you have provided the link to your ESR, that would be definitely helpful but I feel it's better to have a one-on-one discussion rather than responding here as the former would be more effective. We could connect over a zoom conference call and analyze your ESR together and at the same time come up with a strategy/plan of action to help you hit your target score after identifying what's stopping you. You can use the below link to get in touch with me.


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