Appeared for my GMAT on 15th Oct 2019, and the trend of mock test seems to have continued . Having scored 650 + in a couple of mock tests, my final GMAT score is a dismal 590 (Q48,v23). Immensely disappointed, but looking forward to re-appearing in next couple of months and hence looking for advise to improve a couple of points in quant and 15 + points in verbal.
Below is the analysis of my journey so far, in my preparation of 4 months I have been quiet comfortable with Quant (Although could improve in Very Hard category questions), Verbal has been quite inconsistent. Since I purchased e-gmat had heavily relied on the course but found the below issues/challenges:

1) CR & RC: Was more comfortable with the CR, as at least I knew where am I going wrong, but the application is where I lacked in CR & RC.
2) SC: This is where I had major challenges, as I was not fully aligned with the Grammar rules as well as application part of it, so had no clue of what is happening there.
3) Quants : Grammar and Advanced Topics is where I need to work hard to get couple of additional points.

Have already purchased ESR and awaiting the same.

Looking forward to this community on how to take my preparation forward to achieve 720 plus score.

Hi adiforaditya,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Regarding verbal, I’d like you to review my previous response, which has some great advice you can follow to improve your verbal skills.

Regarding quant, to improve your score to a higher level, you have to go through GMAT quant carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

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

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

Please reach out with any further questions.

Let’s do this!!
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Hi adiforuaditya,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not turn out as well as hoped. 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. It's interesting how similar this Official Score is to the CAT Score you reported back in early July (about 3.5 months ago) - it's possible that you developed some 'bad habits' during your studies that kept you from scoring higher on the Official GMAT. 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:

Studies:
1) Since July, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used over the course of all of your studies?
3) On what 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)?

While the Enhanced Score Report 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). Since you have purchased the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you. If you would rather not post it publicly, then you can feel free to PM it to me directly).

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