GMAT ESR analysis

Question

Hello experts,

Thanks for the help beforehand. I took my GMAT on Wednesday, 31st october, 2018. 
I am not disappointed with my score even though I was unable to get my target score, which is  720 . However, I am willing to take the GMAT again and want to come back stronger and get that 720.

Experts, I would appreciate your take on my ESR and how i could improve next time around.

GMATinsight 
 EMPOWERgmatRichC  
 egmat 
 mikemcgarry 
 GMATPrepNow 
 souvik101990 
 GMATNinja

GMATinsight · Answer

ankur619 650 is a fine score to start with so it's good to hear that you are not disappointed and rather feel more energetic and closer to your target score. Let me start the calculation backwards, considering that you have done better in Quant (67th Percentile) than in Verbal (61st Percentile), I consider that Quant should be your stronger area. In order to target a 720 an appropriate scaled scores distribution should be Quant 50 and Verbal 38 So here we are talking about improvement in Quant from 48 to 50 and in Verbal from 31 to 38 Quant Analysis : Problem Solving scaled score - 47 Data Sufficiency scaled score - 49 These score can be interpreted as your comparatively better command over concepts of Quant than your command over silly errors. The reasoning is backed by the fact that Problem solving requires you to be correct in your calculation till end whereas in DS questions, if you are logically sound then you don't need to get into calculation to ascertain what should be the correct option for the given question. Here, the first suggestion will be that you start working with numbers and make sure that you reach to the correct results till end. careless reading of question or careless calculation is likely to be killing your score . Your strength of conceptual clarity is also reflected in your accuracy in Number property and Geometry and your weakness of calculation oriented question is reflected in your score in arithmetic and Inequality inclusive of algebra. So you clearly know what exactly do you need to practice more to begin with. Last thing to mention is that surprisingly you have got the worst accuracy in second quarter and you have spent maximum average time per question in this quarter which one again states that you have stuck to some question (most likely from rates/percentage/mixtures etc) which has eaten up a lot of your time leaving you with a little less average time to be spent per question which reflected in your last section where average time per question is lowest leading to second highest mistakes in last quarter of the section.. So, the second suggestion is that you focus on time management Verbal Analysis : When I see your performance in CR, RC and SC it gives me an impression that you are pretty good at CR except in a few questions probably from Assumption and inference types where your accuracy has gone to 50% Thankfully your RC seems strong enough because this section requires a lot of persistence to improve. You seems to done worst in SC but because the average time per question is minimum in SC so my analysis hints towards overconfidence leading to some mistakes which otherwise you could have avoided which if true, needs to be worked upon. SC is considered the easiest section but the accuracy needs to be maintained. I think taking your verbal from 31 to 35 is a very easy task but improving further to 38 is not that easy and requires your better command over weak areas of CR and more thoughtful attitude towards SC question. You may be positive of getting your target score in next attempt which you may plan a month later and meanwhile work on suggested area. I hope this helps!!!

ankur619 · Answer

Thanks a lot GMATinsight for your analysis and suggestions. I really appreciate this. Your analysis towards my performance in quant is certainly close to my own realization of my abilities. I get stuck at times in some tedious calculations while solving a PS question and waste too much of time into that. I just cannot let go of the question until i spend at least 3 minutes on the question that i get stuck into. I believe i have some certain bad habits whole doing calculations that i need to get rid of. I also feel that i get messier into the notebook while calculation; this might have confused me with numbers. 1. What source would you suggest to practice with, so as to improve my calculation? 2. What pattern/habits could i develop so that i can get little less messier and can solve the questions with less number of steps. As for verbal , I had the false assumption that SC was my strongest area. I do still believe the same, but after my performance on the test, I realized that Overconfidence can lead to faliure . In the last 2 official mocks ,V40,V37( taken a week before my test ) i got almost 100% of the SC questions correct and ignored SC completely. I believe i have made careless mistakes in SC on the test. I also finished the verbal part 2 minutes early.

For RC and CR, i never did skip a day without solving a single question but i guess there is a lot to improve over these areas too. 1. What source would you suggest to improve my concepts over SC and avoid carelessness? 2. What strategy can i follow to hone my skills in CR and RC? I guess i have asked a lot.

Once again, thanks GMATinsight for taking your time to reply my post.

P.S. - You were lightning fast in analyzing and replying.

GMATinsight · Answer

ankur619

For Quant: 
Stick to Manhattan books and/or refer questions in GMAT CLUB forum with timer on ... Make sure that your time elapsed in each question is very close to the average time spent by other takers on GMATCLUB

For Verbal: 
OG, OG- Review are a MUST
Manhattan Books are really good

I don't find idea of broadening the choice of sources to be used further which in turn dilutes the quality of questions to be practiced. I think important part is to learn from the well deserved questions from most trustworthy sources instead of increasing the quantity of questions to be practiced.

I hope this helps!!!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi ankur619,

First off, a 650/Q48 is a strong score (it's right around the 75th percentile overall), so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admission ... tants-124/

Before we discuss the data in your ESR, 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?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

ankur619 · Answer

Hello EMPOWERgmatRichC Thanks for replying to my post. I would like to start off with some background information. I had completed my Masters in Construction management in the year 2015. Since then, i have been working on my online retail firm because of which i was completely out of touch with the books. I started my GMAT journey on Dec 2017. Till then, i didn't calculate even a single mathematical equation or correct a grammatical error. I was completely away from the "study" thing. After my decision to appear for the GMAT, I had the feeling that i need to start all over again with the whole a^2+b^2=r^2 thing. I was completely unknowledgeable of the GMAT world and had to rely on variety of sources over the internet. At times, I felt persuaded by reading such flawless debriefs on https://www.gmatclub.com as "Got a 760 by studying for 3 months" . But i knew that I had at least 6 months to study before i can start with the applications and all. So I started with the OGs by checking my basic concepts in both quant and verbal. Here are the answers to your questions. Studies: 1) How long have you studied? As i had mentioned earlier, I started with the OGs and studied intermittently for the next 4 months till the mid of April 2018. I took an official CAT and scored 600 on that. After that I took a month break and started studying seriously for 3-4 months and took Official and unofficial CATs every 15 days till the end of september. I took the test date and just 10 days before the test I took a week long holiday trip starting from 14th Oct - 21st october. I completely forgot the GMAT at the trip and after that i revised my concepts and took 2 official CATs on which i scored (710, Q49V36 and 730, Q49V40). 2) What study materials have you used so far? I started with the OGs and used multiple sources for multiple reasons. a. Used Magoosh question bank for practicing quant and verbal. b. Veritas videos for conceptual understanding and Veritas question bank. c. Manhattan SC book. d. I used gmatclub question bank for quant and verbal. I did questions based on difficulty. e. Gmatclub quant quizzes. f. Gmatprep question pack. 3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)? I took CATs from multiple sources. I started with official ones. 15th April 2018 Gmatprep 1 - 600 Q48 V28 26th june 2018 Veritas - 640 Q44 V34 7th july 2018 Manhattan - 650 Q41 V37 22nd july 2018 Economist - 680 Q43 V42 11th Aug 2018 Gmatprep 2- 740 Q49 V41 ( got 4-5 repeated ones in verbal ) 19th Aug 2018 Gmatprep 1(repeated) - 640 Q48 V32 (got 3 RC repeated ) Experts Global test series Test 1 29/Aug/18 670 Q47 V35 Test 2 05/Sep/18 660 Q46 V35 Test 3 12/Sep/18 710 Q46 V41 Test 4 19/Sep/18 730 Q47 V42 Test 5 26/Sep/18 720 Q49 V40 Test 6 03/Oct/18 740 Q50 V40 Test 7 10/Oct/18 690 Q47 V38 Test 8 12/Oct/18 680 Q48 V35 13th oct 2018 Gmatprep 3 - 690 Q48 V37 (did see 2 questions in verbal that i had seen eariler) 26th oct 2018 Gmatprep 4 - 710 Q49 V36 (did see 3 questions in verbal that i had seen eariler) 29th oct 2018 Gmatprep 5 - 730 Q49 V40 (did see 1 RC in verbal that i had seen eariler) Goals: 4) When are you planning to apply to Business School? I am planning to apply for Round 2. 5) What Schools are you planning to apply to? I am planning to apply to the following schools. Babson College (Olin) University of Southern California (Marshall) Indiana University (Kelley) University of Texas--Austin (McCombs) Brigham Young University (Marriott) Rice University (Jones) University of Utah (Eccles) University of Washington (Foster) Thanks in advance for your help.

ankur619 · Answer

Thank you  GMATinsight  for your valuable suggestions.

Posted from my mobile device

egmat · Answer

Hi ankur619 , Your scores in the ESR suggests process gaps and specific concept gaps. You must identify these gaps and plug them to reach your target score. You can get this information from error log if you have maintained one. If not, you may follow the below mentioned steps: 1. Take Ability Quizzes in Scholaranium ( Verbal Ability Quiz | Quant Ability Quiz ) 2. Isolate your weaknesses from the Skill Data section and work upon them 3. Track your improvement and repeat the process till you reach your target score We are conducting a Free Quant Workshop tomorrow. It is a proctored Quant test that gives a true measure of your current Quant Ability and gives you insights on how to achieve your target score. Register here to reserve your spot. Hope this helps! Please feel free to write to us at support@e-gmat.com if you have any further queries. Regards, Aditee

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi ankur619,

I've send you a PM with some notes and additional suggestions based on your ESR.

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

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Ankur! Since SC comes across as your specific area of concern, thought I would mention that our sentence correction book  Sentence Correction Nirvana  is perhaps the  only  book that offers a score improvement  guarantee , and is especially designed for  non-native  speakers.

After reading the book  twice  (yes! it's an  academic  book, and so must be read twice in all seriousness, to  reinforce  the concepts), you will start looking forward to solving SC questions!

The book is available on  Flipkart  and  Amazon.in . You might want to refer to these sites, to also read testimonials of how readers have benefited.

See  here  how Mohit, who scored 750 on GMAT, vouches for our book.

If you want to  sample  a chapter before deciding to go ahead with our book, please PM me your mail-id (along with the chapter that you would like to sample) and I will be happy to send that chapter to you by mail. In addition, the entire Grammar section of the book is also available for free preview at  pothi .

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Although I don’t know too much about how you previously studied or your score on practice exams, 650 with a Q48 is a pretty good start, so nice work! That being said, since you scored a V31, it’s clear that your verbal needs significant improvement for you to hit 720, right? Furthermore, although your Critical Reasoning score (70th percentile) is higher than your Reading Comprehension (57th percentile) and Sentence Correction (46th percentile), I’m happy to provide advice on how to improve your verbal skills in all three areas.

Let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each Critical Reasoning question type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type of question. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, it is likely that you will have to work on all three of those aspects.
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. It may take time for you to see what you have to see. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your Sentence Correction skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

You also may find it helpful to read this article about
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT .

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

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