GMAT Verbal No Score Improvement

Your Quant score is in line with your practice score (and of course, quite good at that!) so I assume nothing untoward happened before/during the test. It is then a bit surprising to see a verbal score so much below your practice test scores. Check out this old post of mine (which is still relevant):
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2013/0 ... bal-score/

Since your practice test verbal scores are quite decent, you will not be able to figure out the issues using those. Hopefully, your ESR will show the section(s) you messed up. We can discuss the corrective measures once you have the ESR.

Thank you so much for your reply Rich. I really appreciate your support. Please find below more details:
Studies:
1) When did you take your 1st Official GMAT?
I took my first official GMAT in October 2021, and then I had to pause my preparation. I resumed my preparation from February 2022 and appeared for the second attempt yesterday

2) How long did you study before each attempt? For this 2nd attempt, how many hours did you typically study each week?
For the first attempt I studied for 7-8 weeks before the exam and for the second attempt I studied for around 8 weeks. For the second attempt during the last 4 weeks before the exam, I studied for around 6 hours daily (4 hours Verbal, 2 hours Quant)

3) What study materials have you used over the course of ALL of yours studies?
[*]For SC I studied Manhattan SC guide and practiced questions from OG 20 and retired gmat questions as well as used gmatclub's filters to practice around next 300 or so questions. Total for SC I practiced around 570+ questions during my preparation for second attempt
[*] For CR I referred to youtube videos from various test preps to build my understanding and practiced questions from OG20, retired GMAT questions and gmatclub filtered questions. Total for CR I practiced 320+ questions during my preparation for second attempt
[*] For RC I practiced questions from OG20, retired GMAT questions, and gmat club questions filtered for official sources. Total for RC I practiced 385+ questions from 75 passages during my preparation for second attempt

4) You listed a number of CAT/mock results in your post; did you take any of those CATs before (when you were preparing for your 1st attempt)?
Yes I took CAT before my first attempt too. I mostly attempted Veritas and gmatclub CATs. In Veritas I was scoring V30-V38 and in gmatclub verbal CATs I was scoring V35-V45

Goals:
5) What is your overall goal score?
I am looking for a 740 score. I am facing a major roadblock with verbal, if I am able to fix it, I think I can get that score

6) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?
I plan to start working on my applications from June onwards, however because of my current work setting at my job, I want to close GMAT as soon as possible

Furthermore, I have attached my ESR. It would be really helpful if you could please provide your observations from it

Hi Karishma,

Thank you so much for the reply. I have followed your posts since very long and have learnt a lot from your responses on various questions especially CR ones. I really appreciate your support.
Also, I have gone through the article you shared and I think it completely makes sense that the type of questions I have been practicing were different from the ones I received in the actual exam. I have also updated my ESR in the post, please let me know your observations from the report.

One thing that stands out in your ESR is that your first quarter of Verbal did not go well. That could be one reason for such a low score. You did put in enough time in the first quarter so I cannot blame you either. Do you remember much about your beginning of the verbal section? You did get the harder questions incorrect (on average) though the difference wasn't much. This means that you likely got one or two easy questions incorrect too. In the third quarter too, you messed up on a couple of simple questions. The penalty for getting an easy question wrong is far more than the penalty for getting a hard one wrong.
Your performance in SC seems alright though you have a low overall percentile in it. The reason could be that you got served some very simple SC questions and most people performed very well on those.
CR and RC both need a decent bit of work in all question types. I would suggest you to go through the CR and RC curriculum of a test prep properly and then practice some official questions.

Hi sham264.

One thing that often goes on in verbal is that, to prepare for verbal, people learn a lot about "what the GMAT does," without being aware that "what the GMAT does" is what people noticed the GMAT did on the official practice tests. So, what happens is that people who prepare by learning about "what the GMAT does" are preparing for the official practice tests rather than for the actual GMAT.

So, what is likely causing there to be a difference between your practice test verbal scores and your actual GMAT verbal scores is that you prepared for the practice test questions rather than for whatever the actual GMAT might throw at you.

What this means is that, to increase your verbal score, you have to adjust the way you have been preparing.

In these two posts, I cover in detail how to prepare for GMAT verbal, discussing both pitfalls to avoid and key approaches you can use to succeed. I think that, by reading these posts, you'll get a clear idea of what you can do to break out in verbal and finally achieve your verbal score goal.

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal

Three Key Practice Tips for Mastering GMAT Verbal

Hi Sham264. This is what I did to prepare for my Verbal to score a V44. I did a lot of LSAT official material for RC and CR and I did E-GMAT's SC course.

Every LSAT paper will give you 4 RC passages, and about 28 question. Then there are 2 other sections of Logical Reasoning questions (these are the same as CR in GMAT). There are a total of about 50 LR questions per paper.

For RC and CR LSAT official material is the best available there. Better than any course. More importantly there are more LSAT official questions than you can ever solve.

The RC passages, on average, are far more dense than GMAT passages. The questions are more difficult too. LR, on the other hand, is far more difficult than CR. I found it very difficult to consistently perform in the LR sections because a few questions are really difficult to crack in 2 minutes.


For SC I used E-GMAT. I think the best thing about this course is it covers most of the topics that you will find in GMAT. Their questions, however, are far longer, denser and more difficult than official GMAT questions.

You would have noticed above that I have repeatedly used the word "difficult". Actually that is key to making GMAT official questions easier. If you do enough LSAT questions, and go through the E-GMAT course thoroughly, materials that are really tough, you will find the official GMAT questions very easy. In fact in the real exam you will cruise.

Lastly, don't get disheartened. My first attempt was pretty bad. I came back after about 7-8 months of work and then I scored a 740. It wasn't the most perfect exam though as I messed up my Quant a bit. I also learnt through that period that to score very high on the GMAT you also need a bit of luck. 2-3 questions can be the difference between 710 and 750. If you keep at it, your bit of luck will come to you too.

All the best for your next attempt.