Help? Scored 700 Q48/V38 w/ ESR. I'll retake but exhausted materials

Thanks Rich!

1) Those are non-repeat GMAT PREP mocks.
2) 15-20h/ week

I’ll retest to increase my odds of being admitted and because I don’t think my official GMAT was representative of my abilities. My average was Q50 - even Scored Q50 on my diagnostic test.

On the test, on quant, I was so obsessed about trying to score a Q51 that I missed easy questions for going too fast.

On verbal, I believe my current score (based on average) is 39. But I will try my best to improve it so that I can get to 750+. I was thinking about doing e-gmat SC and CR courses. However, since I’ve already devoted a lot of time to theory and developing my method, I’m not sure whether investing 50h+ on theory would be The best path. Or if I should just practice official material while revising materials on weakness points (from different sources)

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Hi sweetlyimproved,

First off, great job with 700! Looking at the score breakdowns from your practice exams, you had just a slight drop in both your quant and verbal scores. So, with some further prep, I do believe you can improve your GMAT score. With that said, here is some advice you can follow to do so.

To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, 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.

You also may find it helpful to read my article about [how to score a 700 on the GMAT](https://blog.targettestprep.com/how-to-s ... -the-gmat/).

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

Scott's article is amazing!

I myself used Target Test Prep to increase my Quant score so I just want to give a huge shoutout to TTP!

Awesome! Thanks Scott.

I'll make sure to find my weaknesses and focus on them!

Hi sweetlyimproved,

I've sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional notes.

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

My pleasure!!

I'm so happy we were able to help!