GMAT re-take tips

Question

Hi Experts,

I took my GMAT exam last month and got a score of 640 (Q48 V30), which is way lower than the score I got in my mocks. After deep analysis of my previous attempt, I understood that I made lot of early mistakes in my verbal section and didnt quite maintained the difficulty level. I have scheduled my exam at the end of next week. This past month, I have been working on my Sentence Correction Communication questions, the section in which I made a lot of mistakes. I am also thinking to change my section order, which is previously Verbal->Quant. I am hoping that doing Quant first will help me calm my nerves and will set up my rythm for the exam.

I will be really grateful for the tips or things I need to do this week. I am targeting for a score of 720+

Thank You.

GMATinsight · Answer

It's a sensible decision to take the Order Q-V-IR-AWA for most indian candidates because they do well on quant and hence, to keep high spirit and motivation, they must start from Quant. About your analysis of "lot of early mistakes in my verbal section" I am apprehensive unless this claim is backed by ESR report. Most candidates misjudge the reason of getting lower score than expected. I recommend that back your judgement with ESR report. It tells you a lot about what went wrong. All the best!!!

NithishKumar · Answer

Thank you for the reply and wishes. Yes, I have taken my analysis from the ESR. It would be really helpful if you can share any resources or tips to avoid such mistakes at the starting. My exam experience and results are entirely different from those of my mocks.

Thank you.

Posted from my mobile device

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi NithishKumar, I'm sure you made a considerable improvement in this gap because if you haven't I would suggest you to reschedule your exam to a further date. I recommend you to take the exam only if you are 100% confident. And regarding the section order, if you wish to try a order, make sure you do that at least a couple of times in the mocks. If you see a good result, then go ahead with it. I recommend you to go through this recording to understand a few test taking strategies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0vSq0eP1k Hope it helped! All the best

egmat · Answer

Hi  NithishKumar

Thanks for reaching out on the forum, it feels good to see you coming out and asking for advice.

Looking at your scores, I can say that you need significant improvement in Verbal. Majority of students falter in their GMAT exam because they start their preparation with OG. 
This is a major mistake because if you start your preparation by solving OG questions, you are skipping to practicing questions without learning the concepts. This is a trial-and-error based preparation methodology which cause a two-fold problem:

1. It increases your preparation time by up-to 5X. 
2. You tend to miss out on concepts even after solving many questions.

We have helped more than 25,000 people in last 1 year in achieving their target of a good GMAT score. Maximum people attributed their success to the structured process which we suggested them. I suggest you break your preparation into 3 stages and follow the below plan:

Stage – 1 --> Learn the concepts
Stage – 2 --> Cement the concepts by practicing a sub-section in Isolation
Stage – 3 --> Become test ready (practicing all the sub-sections together)

If you follow the above approach you can expect your preparation to get over in a timeline of 2-3 months with 18 hours of preparation time per week.

You can also analyze your ability topic-wise and skip stages if you are good in a topic, this will expedite your preparation even further.

I would be happy to explain this Strategy in detail and create personalized milestones for you on a quick call. Please select a time slot that works  here .

Hope the above strategy get you to your target score

Karan
e-GMAT strategy Expert

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

The good news is that 640 is not a bad start!

To improve your GMAT score, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal 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, types that you would rather not see, and types 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.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

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 verbal and quant 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

GMAT Sentence Correction: 8 Essential Tips

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

GMAT re-take tips

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards