First try - 700 (V49 Q36) - just wanted to vent for a bit

Hello, greysholic. If you completed just the 2022 OG and managed to earn a 770 on an official practice test the first time you attempted it (i.e. you did not reset a previously taken exam), then you clearly have the potential to earn a higher score. When you say that your jaw dropped, was that score much different from any other score on an official practice exam? I ask because it is important for you to determine whether the 770 or the 700 was the outlier. Also, what were you doing, taking a full-length practice test the day before the exam? I have heard of keeping busy to calm the nerves, but you do not want to subject yourself to even a two-hour battery of practice problems just to repeat the process the next day during the exam. Your mind needs to rest. Think of the GMAT™ as a mental marathon. With its physical counterpart, a marathoner would not think of running the race distance the day before, but might run a couple laps on a track or put in a mile or two, just to loosen up the muscles. You would do well to follow the same sort of training leading up to your exam. There is nothing to gain from putting in a personal best the day before, when it does not count. Sure, you might gain some confidence, but the effort can leave you exhausted (even if you do not feel drained at first).

If you set a date for a retake, do not put too much pressure on yourself to get back up to that 770. I write this all the time in my responses to posts such as yours, but when you earned that high score, you probably felt at ease, looking at each question objectively, curious about how your performance would turn out. When you took the exam, you were probably thinking about other nonsense, concerned about the score you wanted or felt you needed to get into your target programs, working harder to ensure accuracy. Your desire to exchange things is on the right track, but you will want to switch your mentality, in all likelihood, before you sit the exam again, or going up even 10 more points will prove a challenge.

Good luck with your studies. If you can pull everything together and earn a 99th-percentile score, your story would make for an interesting debrief.

- Andrew

Hi greysholic.

700 is a good start, particularly given that you haven't done that much to prepare.

Also, since only a relatively small fraction of the verbal questions in the OG are hard, you didn't get much practice answering hard verbal questions.

As someone said above, you could get the ESR to see where the biggest opportunities to increase your score lie. If SC is a major one, then one key move to increase your score is to add learning SC rules and concepts to what you have been doing to prepare.

For some additional insights into how to lock in a 40s or 50s verbal score, see these posts.

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal

Three Key Practice Tips for Mastering GMAT Verbal

Thanks for the kind words! I actually took the first practice test (practice exam 1) first a couple of days before the second practice test (practice exam 2, aka the one which I scored 770; I did not reset this one) and scored horribly (640), but that was a) my first practice test ever and b) it was after not touching anything GMAT-related for more than a month (I had a study group with a few friends from March to May where we studied the 2022 official guide together, I kinda got lazy after the study group ended and never did anything) so I wasn't prepared at all. I would say 700-740 is my expected range and I hope to score on the high end/slightly above this range.

You brought up a good point about a rest period though. Between the first and second practice test I did have a day where I only reviewed the questions in the 2022 guide that I got wrong. I will keep that in mind!

Wow... that's impressive if all you did was the OG. Man!
Not sure what happened. How many tests have you taken? Was 770 inflated or the 700 deflated? Sometimes people improve up to 100 points by just taking a test again without much prep... but that's if their scores were not representative - e.g. things went the wrong way on the test day.