Sorry that you'd had such a rough go of this! (And this message is for both aim730 and our suffering friend muthappashivani, who sounds particularly unhappy.)
Aim730, the big issue here seems to be consistency, and it's difficult to tell what your "real" skills are on either section of the test. On quant, you had a couple of 49s on the GMATPrep (awesome!) -- but there might have been some inflation from repeat questions (GMATPrep Exams 1 & 2 actually share the same question bank, sadly), and then the rest of your tests have hovered in the mid-40s. But maybe your skills really are in the high 40s somewhere, and if that's true, my guess would be that you have a tendency to rush through some of the questions that you find easy -- which means that you miss them sometimes. And on an adaptive test, it doesn't take a whole lot of careless errors to drag that score down.
Job #1 for you on quant: make sure that whenever you do homework or a practice test, you don't miss anything you actually understand how to do. One or two careless errors on easy questions can absolutely ruin your day. Job #1A for you on quant: be careful not to spend too much time on the harder ones. Sometimes, when I see erratic quant scores, it's because the time management is shaky -- lots of stubborn behavior on hard questions, which makes it harder for you to execute carefully on the questions that are in your wheelhouse. Maybe time management isn't an issue for you, but it looks like a possible suspect.
On verbal -- well, consistency is an issue here, too, right? You're all over the place, and that's a sign that you're fundamentally changing your approach from test to test. Maybe that's because you're nervous or "amped up" on test day, and you start reading faster than you normally would. But there's a lot of fluctuation in all of your verbal scores, which makes me think that you've never practiced in way that really builds consistency. When, say, a CR question pops up on the screen, you should basically do the same thing every time: read with the same level of intensity, look for the same key connections or key words, take the same sorts of notes, use the same process of elimination. Every time.
Of course, different books/teachers/tutors will teach you to do these things in different ways, especially on verbal -- and that's a whole different conversation that won't fit into a forum post -- but the key is to figure out what works for you, and do the same thing every single time. My bet is that you're not doing that with 100% consistency right now, or else your scores would look very, very different.
Muthappashivani -- I think much of what I said to Aim730 will apply to you as well. The keys to success are consistency, great time management, and avoiding careless errors. The GMAT isn't really a knowledge test -- it's mostly about logic and reading and reasoning and consistency. Sure, you need to know a thing or two about math and grammar. But at the end of the day, it's about consistency and performance and execution.
And I think your parents were right, at least on some level. If you just memorized tons of stuff, your brain will probably logjam on test day. If you studied for nine hours a day, I'll bet anything you were making careless errors in hour #9 (and probably hours #5-8 as well) -- basically, you
practiced making unforced errors, so of course you made some on your actual exam. And it doesn't take many of those to drag your score down. And perhaps most importantly, you were probably incredibly amped up or stressed out or nervous on test day after all of that studying.
Here, read this for inspiration:
https://www.gmatninja.com/2013/02/18/tak ... -the-gmat/. Sure, the guy in the article probably took the relaxed approach TOO far, but you get the idea.
I hope this helps, and good luck to both of you!
close
23 Jan 2017, 10:33
