jeetu30 wrote:
I am preparing for GMAT exam since Apr'20 and did good in GMAT Official Tests (I took 4 tests). This month, I took the GMAT exam and was shocked to see a score of 530 (V19, Q47). Surprisingly, my score in the 4 Official tests which I took was 630, 620, 650, and 680 with a minimum score of V27 and Q47. So, I am not able to understand what went wrong in the exam. I requested the ESR and noticed that I did terrible in all the 3 verbal sections, worst was the CR. I also realized that may be the stress and panic caught my brain during the exam. For your information, I completed the full exam of verbal & quant.
So, I am requesting for the expert's advice.
For the preparation, I am using PowerScore for CR,
Manhattan Prep and
egmat course for everything else and am thinking to retake the exam in 2-3 weeks. Is it a good strategy? I don't want to screw the gmat this time and need all the help/advice which I can get to get a desirable score.
Hi Jeetu,
First of all, so sorry to hear about how things went with your GMAT. But don’t get disappointed. In my journey, I have helped many students identify what’s stopping them from a getting a good score and improve their score. To give you a brief introduction, I’m a GMAT Strategy Consultant and I like to analyse stats. I’ve been in this industry for more than 8 years now, so, hopefully, helping you shouldn’t be a big problem.
Looking at your scores on mock and the actual test, I can only think of two possibilities for the difference. Ideally you should be able to reflect the mock score on the test day but this case seems pretty ironic. Anyway, the two possibilities are:
- One reason might be the nervousness on the test day. It is quite common to feel nervous on the test day and if that is the reason, then I guess you are good to for a retake because your mock scores are pretty consistent. This time make sure you take the test with a relaxed mind.
- The other reason might be you are not likely following a specific approach for all the tests. If your approach is not consistent, then I think there is some work to do.
Your quant score is pretty decent. Verbal seems to be the major concern. Before suggesting you what to do next, I would require answers to a few questions.
- Did you follow a specific approach to solve verbal questions?
- Did the approach remain same or did it change with every test?
Answers to these questions will help me guide you in a better way. The reason I’m asking these questions is because GMAT test makers set a lot of traps and often confuse students by using similar words. You need to have a strong conceptual knowledge and use the right strategies to solve verbal questions. If you do not use the right methodology, there are high chances that you might end up being confused between two choices.
What do I mean by the right methodology?
To give you an example about using the right methodology to solve Verbal questions, let me explain it using CR module. What is the general strategy that beginners or students who don’t use a methodical approach follow to solve questions?
- They read the argument or the stimulus
- They read the question stem
- They jump into the answer choices and check each of them if it answers the question stem.
If you follow this approach, you are most likely to get stuck between two or more answer choices.Now let me tell you how a student who uses methodical approach will solve the same CR question. The student
- reads the argument or the stimulus
- identifies the premises, conclusion, intermediate conclusion if any
- reads the question stem
- starts pre-thinking the missing link or the assumption (the most important step)
- starts eliminating the answer choices which do not match the pre-thought assumption
It is the right methodology on which you have to focus on. Having said that, I suggest you to book a slot only after knowing the exact reason behind your struggle. As you have an
ESR, I can help you in analyzing it. This should ideally give us a few more insights on what actually went wrong. So, if you want me to help you in analyzing your ESR,
I would suggest we do that using a zoom conference call. Because in this way, we can analyze the ESR properly and quickly narrow down things.
You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.
Click here to schedule a call _________________
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