GMAT Strategy | Should I reappear?

Question

Hi all,

I gave the GMAT today and got a score of 680 (Q49 V34), which is well below my expected score

I have studied for about ~2 months for the exam, and completed the following materials:

GMAT Verbal and Quant Review
GMAT Official Guide
Manhattan book for SC and RC
A couple of questions from the official Problem sets and GMATclub topicwise questions as well

I have taken all of the official mocks with the below scores:

Mock 1 - 700 Q49, V37 (Sept 14, 2020)
Mock 2 - 650 Q42, V38 (Oct 05, 2020)
Mock 3 - 730 Q49, V41 (Oct 09, 2020)
Mock 4 - 740 Q49, V41 (Oct 12, 2020)
Mock 5 - 710 Q48, V38 (Oct 15, 2020)
Mock 6 - 740 Q49, V42 (Oct 18, 2020)

As per my understanding, I should be able to perform better if I give it a second attempt in about two weeks. I would be extremely grateful if you could provide some guidance regarding the same. Should I reappear for the exam now? and what would be a suitable strategy for me?

Thanks and Best Regards

----

EMPOWERgmatRichC 
 DisciplinedPrep 
 ScottTargetTestPrep

mayank1311 · Answer

souvik101990 
 GMATNinja 
Would really love to know your expert thoughts on this.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Aydv97,

First off, a 680/Q49 is a strong Score, 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. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

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

There's certainly no harm in retesting - and you have the potential to pick up some significant points in the Verbal section. 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) Have you used any other study materials besides the books that you listed?
3) What is your overall Score Goal?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Aydv97,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

The good news is that you scored really well on quant, right? That said, I understand that you are not satisfied with your verbal score, so the question we need to ask is why you scored so high on your practice exams but lower on the real 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 V27. 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.

Regarding your question, I think you should be fine if you take the test relatively soon but you may want to give yourself a little more time than just two weeks.

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?

Good luck!

Aydv97 · Answer

Many thanks for your kind response EMPOWERgmatRichC

To answer your questions,
1) I would typically study for about 3-4 hours on a weekday and 5-6 hours over the weekends, with concentrated efforts over the last two to three weeks in the run-up to the test
2) I started by studying Sentence correction using the Manhattan SC guide and the Aristotle book as well and did all of the official material; reading up on the solutions given by experts on the forum and understanding why one option has been selected over the other. I never really read any books for CR. Once I had an understanding of what the question types are, I started solving the official material and the accuracy was satisfactory. Similarly for RC, I was fairly good at understanding passages and getting factual and inference based questions mostly right during my practice. Besides the above-mentioned sources, I haven't referred to any other prep material.
3) My goal scores would be in the range of 730 to 740
4) Mainly planning to apply to the ISB (Round 2)and a 730-40 is an advisable score for my profile

It seems that the ESR hasn't been generated yet but I am very grateful to you for the guidance, Thank you

Aydv97 · Answer

Thank you so much for your kind response,  ScottTargetTestPrep , and for linking me to other relevant articles

Yes, I had attempted the tests under realistic conditions and I feel I did put in the effort to understand the logic behind accepting/rejecting a given option for a lot of questions. I think I do need to be able to better differentiate between the trap answer choices and the correct ones. It is likely that I was unable to understand correctly what a given CR prompt asked for on the actual test or just fell for the trap choices a lot of times. Can't be sure.

Thanks again for your valuable guidance, 
Best Regards

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Aydv97,

I've sent you a PM with some additional notes and questions.

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

GMAT Strategy | Should I reappear?

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