From a 680 Gmat official mock to a terrible 570 in actual gmat

Hey there,
thanks for your reply.
1) How long have you studied? How many hours did you typically study each week?

I was almost full-time on gmat. I did a month of full quant in september 2021. Was back on gmat in January 2022 to start verbal and have been studying since then until now. My last month was full time gmat.

2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?

Only official GMAT mock (did 1,2,3 & 4) and one Manhattan
I used mainly gmatclub for verbal and official books. (I did several hundreds of questions) Gmatclub estimate score gave me around V40.
For Quant I used official gmat books + online classes from a teacher for theory in quant.

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)?

September 2021: official mock 1, just did quant: Q47
End February 2022: Manhattan mock 1, just did verbal: V35
Mid March: official mock 1, just did verbal: V26
End March: official mock 2, just did verbal: V27
Mid April: official mock 1 remake, just did verbal: V32
End April: official mock 2 remake, just did verbal: V39
Beginning May: Official mock 3, V29, Q42 590
Last week: official mock 4, V38, Q45 680
Actual V33 Q35 570

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

MIM INSEAD HEC INSEAD LBS BOCCO HSG ESCP and CEMS
Early rounds this october 2022

I just do not understand why in verbal I get most of my questions wrong every-time in the first 10.

many thanks

Hi jonNNNNNy,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

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 570. 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.

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?

Hi jonNNNNNy

Sorry about how things went with your GMAT. There could be a couple of reasons for the drop in the score. Please go through the article below to find out the probable reasons.


Having said that, it would be too early to conclude anything without knowing the actual reason. To understand what could have led to the drop in the score and to suggest you the plan of action, I need a little more information about your GMAT preparation. I would like to know more about

• the way you prepared till now (your study strategy)
• your weak areas
• your approach of solving questions

Answers to these questions will help me guide you in a better way. And I personally suggest to go for the retake only after you prepared well and are 100% confident.

Having said that, I would like to have a one-on-one conversation with you. The discussion would be mostly around the answers to the above questions, the approximate time you have for the next attempt and the plan of action. If you have an ESR with you, that will be even more helpful to get the insights about your performance. You use use the link below to schedule a call with me.