GMAT Prep 760 - Real GMAT 690

Question

Hi All,

I have been practicing for the GMAT for 3 months now. Practicing questions every day and tracking my progress using Manhattan Prep and GMAT Prep CATs. I'll post all my results to put you in context: (my goal score is +720)

Manhattan Prep:
7/Sept/20: Q39 V36 620
25/Sept/20: Q42 V36 640
12/Oct/20: Q42 V37 650
14/Oct/20: Q44 V35 650
20/Oct/20: Q44 V34 640
27/Oct/20: Q43 V36 650

GMAT Prep:
9/Aug/20: Q43 V37 660
5/Oct/20: Q49 V38 710
23/Oct/20: Q50 V40 740
29/Oct/20: Q49 V44 760

Real GMAT:
31/Oct/20: Q45 V39 690

All practice exams (MP and GMATPrep) were done under exam conditions, without stopping the time, at the same time during the day as the real one, no resets... Basically as if I were sitting the real thing.

As you can see, based on Manhattan Prep CATs I seem to have made absolutely no progress but when looking at my results from GMAT Prep CATs it looks like I was going to score +720 in the real GMAT.  I found that, especially Exams 3 and 4 from GMAT Prep were  extremely easy   (most of the quant questions were below 25%ile when I looked them up in GMATClub and I made at most 3 or 4 mistakes in the whole section). I have cancelled my scores, they are well below what I need to get into the programmes I want, and I am now left thinking when to repeat the exam. I am very disappointed with my score as I legit thought I was going to score +710.

I would really appreciate it if you guys could give me some insight or useful input. I want to apply around December/January so in that regards I have time to improve my score.

VoltAmpere · Answer

You may want to try advanced Quant questions here in the GMATClub. Take GMATClub tests and follow  Bunuel .

For the verbal, analyze your error logs and focus on answering official questions.

oe9917 · Answer

Will do, thanks! Do you recommend taking the exam again in 2 weeks or should I wait a little longer?

siriusly · Answer

It's best that you give yourself as much time as possible to practice using the GMAT Club tests and improve your score.  GMATNinja  has great verbal solutions so you could check those out too

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

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 690. 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.

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

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?

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi oe9917,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. A 690/Q45 is still a solid Score though - and could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. That having been said, since you are interested in some Finance-based Programs, retaking the GMAT (with the goal of scoring higher in the Quant section) would make sense. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day.

Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) How many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) What specific application deadlines are you facing?

If you took your GMAT at a Test Center, then you might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

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