Guidance on GMAT Test retake - Study Plan and Strategy

Question

Experts please help me create a study plan and advice me on what is going wrong with regards to my GMAT score:

Please find below the chronological order of the practice test and official ones:

Nov 18, 2018 - 660. Q44 V37 (GMAT practice test)
Dec 25, 2018 - 630. Q47 V29 (GMAT practice test)
+Wrote all free test including Kaplan, MGMAT, etc had score ranges between (650-700).

Dec 27, 2018 - 640 Q45 V35 (Official GMAT Test Score 1) Felt was a fair reflection of my skill as on that day.

Then wrote the following test with as close to test conditions as possible with no pause or interruptions
Kaplan Test 2 - 660 Q47 V33
Kaplan Test 3 - 670 Q47 V35
Kaplan Test 4 - 700 Q46 V40
+8-10 Club test on Quants with later 3-5 on 49 mark

Feb 23, 2019 - 580 Q49 V21 (Official GMAT Test Score 2) - felt i tanked on the First RC (first verbal question)   but was suprised my the fall in verbal score

Feb 28 2019 - 690 - Q48 V35 (GMAT Practice test 3)
Kaplan 5 - 710 Q49 V39
Mar 7, 2019 - 740 Q49 V42 (GMAT Practice test 4)
+8-10 Club test on quants with 48-49 range along with some verbal test which later ranged between 38-41.

Mar 12, 2019 - 660 Q48 V33 (Official GMAT Test Score 2) - Felt very comfortable during the test both Verbal and Quant and was expecting 720+ .

Starting now i am planning for full time GMAT prep and have around 2 months timeline. Target score is 730+ (most of my target schools average GMAT is 720)

I feel comfortable on Quant section (Exception - Geometry 3D <find it tough to visualize> and coordinate geometry). On Verbal - i feel my strong point is CR and SC is my weakest link. RC depends on the kind of passage (passages on science and experiments are difficult) and fluctuates.
 
How to prepare going forward? Whether my scores would improve? Why the difference between practice test and official one? How to approach GMAT again?

What practice tests to subscribe and when to take them in the two months (as in time between tests)

Thanks in advance for you help.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Arvind42,

First off, a 660/Q48 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. There's no harm in retesting though - and you have the opportunity to pick up some points in BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long did you study before your first attempt? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Lampard42 · Answer

Hi RichC,

Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

The information required: 
1) 6 weeks for the first attempt with 28 hrs per week.

2) Used Magoosh along with OG for first attempt. Then EGmat's verbal subscription along with GMAT Club test for second attempt.

3) I don’t have break-up w.r.t quant and verbal break-up on free CATs I had attempted during the first GMAT other than those I have already mentioned. For club tests I've taken a print screen of the score movement if that would help. I am also attaching the performance summary from Kaplan's test along with official score reports. I haven't got ESR as i felt it didn't provide lot of information.

Nov 18, 2018 - 660. Q44 (52 percentile) V37 (83 percentile) (GMAT practice test 1)
Dec 25, 2018 - 630. Q47(63 percentile) V29 (57 percentile)(GMAT practice test 2)
Feb 28 2019 - 690 - Q48 (69 percentile) V35(76 percentile) (GMAT Practice test 3)
Mar 7, 2019 - 740 Q49 (75 percentile) V42(96 percentile) (GMAT Practice test 4)

Goals
4)Planning to apply for programs commencing in 2020.
5) Top 25 programs in USA.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Arvind42,

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

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Arvind42,

I’m sorry to hear about how things have been going 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 V33. 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, as you experienced, 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.

If you’d like some more specific advice on how to improve your Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning skills, feel free to reach back out.

You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Good luck!

Lampard42 · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep . Thanks for the taking the time to reply (and help).

Yes, I had gone through some basis for SC and then built up my way through practice questions ( Same for Quant). I get your suggestion and will work on the basis once more in depth before venturing out to problems, but this generally affects my timing sense as i take time to analyse the meaning and issues in answer choices rather than split method.

Personally feel CR is the strong point for me (supported by mock errors).

Any suggestion for improving RC?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Arvind42,

To improve in Reading Comprehension, you need to focus on understanding what you are reading. When you incorrectly answer Reading Comprehension questions, it’s partly because you didn’t truly understand what you read, right? Thus, you likely have to slow down in order to (eventually) speed up. At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking as much time as you need to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.

Another component of understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you are taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.

One final component of Reading Comprehension that may be tripping you up is that RC questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, a key part of training to correctly answer RC questions is learning to notice the differences between trap answers and correct answers. You have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly.

If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out.

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