First time taking gmat, got 710. How can I improve my score?

Question

Hi,

I took my gmat for the first time today and got 710 today. I can’t recall the exact score split but I believe my verbal was around 90% and math was 68% (ugh). I want to raise my score to 750+, and I’ve been getting 750-780 on mock exams on the official website.

I’ve been studying on my own for the past 2.5 months. Every day for 2-3 hours after work, which is more difficult than I thought. It’s really disappointing to get a score below my expectation based on practice exam scores.

I don’t know what went wrong really and I want to know what I could do to bring up the score to the desired level. Could you please advise? Thanks!

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akadiyan · Answer

Hello  katkim

First of all congratulations for your 700+ score.

I can understand that you want to push your score towards 750. The first step would be to get the ESR. ESR will give you detailed information about your test result.

Once you get the ESR, you can post your ESR and ask for experts suggestion in this forum. Then you can devise your study accordingly.

Regards
Akadiyan

katkim · Answer

Hi - thank you for the response. Would I be able to get the ESR if I cancel my score? I have chosen to send the score report to some schools and I’m not sure if my current score is something that I want to send over to the five schools I listed at the beginning of the test.

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

akadiyan · Answer

katkim

Yes , you would be able to get the ESR for the cancelled score.

Please look for related information in the link below

https://www.mba.com/frequently-asked-qu ... #question6

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Kelen · Answer

Imo don't cancel the score. Even if you improve from 710 to 760 it shows persistence. There's no downside to keeping a 710, since it is a pretty good score anyway.

GMATNinja · Answer

I wholeheartedly agree with Amaranth : there's really no good reason to cancel the 710. It's actually a great score, and if you can improve on it, it would be a great sign of your willingness to continue working hard. As far as the reasons for the dropoff from your practice tests, you might want to check out this post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 46658.html. Maybe something in there looks familiar? Good luck with your retake, we're all rooting for you!

GMATNinja · Answer

And one more quick thought: those percentiles can be really deceptive on the GMAT. If I'm not mistaken, 68th percentile is now a 48 on the GMAT, and that's actually a really, really good score; 90th percentile on verbal would give you a raw score of 40. If your goal is a 750+, you'll obviously want to improve both scores as much as you possibly can, but there isn't all that much more room left on the quant score scale, so a good chunk of the improvement will have to come from verbal.

I don't think that should affect your study strategies much, but I didn't want you to think that the quantitative percentile is a sign of the apocalypse. The score is still really good, and the quant percentiles are just desperately skewed.

I don't think that should affect your study strategies much, but I didn't want you to think that the quantitative percentile is a sign of the apocalypse. The score is still really good, and the quant percentiles are just desperately skewed.

egmat · Answer

Hi katkim , 710 is a very good score even if it is not in line with your expectations. It could just have been an off day that resulted in lower scores in Quant than your expectations. Ordering your ESR and analyzing it would be a good place to start. If you need help in analyzing your ESR, you can refer to this article about Analyzing ESRs . Improving from a score of 710 would be more about refining your preparation rather than learning. I would recommend that you follow the below mentioned steps to refine your preparation in both Verbal and Quant: 1. Take Ability Quiz in Scholaranium ( Verbal Ability Quiz | Quant Ability Quiz ) 2. Identify topic level weaknesses and improve upon them If you need any further assistance, you may write to us at support@e-gmat.com. Regards, Aditee

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi katkim,

First off, 710 is not a bad score! Remember, it’s quite possible that your score drop was due to nerves. However, before taking your next GMAT, it couldn’t hurt to do some further studying to improve upon any lingering weaknesses.

When studying, you have to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you would have had to know in order to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

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

You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

katkim · Answer

Thanks guys, for amazing tips! I really appreciate it, and I think the biggest thing for me at the moment is to regain confidence and come up with better study plans.

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First time taking gmat, got 710. How can I improve my score?

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