How stress and nerves can impact your scores greatly

This is not your 700+ GMAT success story, but I feel like sharing this since I think some other people out there might experience something similar.

On 11th of March this year I took an official GMAT test and scored 530 (23Q, 38V) after two months of preparation. I was absolutely devastated when I see the quant score as I regularly scores above 40 in my prep (another interesting fact is that I took an official test on 2012 without preparation and get a score of 530 (38Q, and 23V). I realize it was my nerve with pressures of application deadlines and self-expectations. That particular score makes me really depressed for 2-3 days.

After those 3 days I decided that perhaps im really not good enough and took an MGMAT free test for the 1st time and scored 41 on quant, and started to think that im not actually 'that bad', so i started to study more casually such as looking at every new quant posts on gmatclub, looking through my mistakes from mgmat cat and their online question bank (obtained from purchasing their books). From my personal experience MGMAT question banks from those 5 guide is really helpful to build on understanding on quant.

I realized another of my major mistake is trying to solve problem through ideal gmat explanation and forgot to focus on understanding the question. This particular mistake makes me solve OG problems through memorization rather than understanding the whole concept which doesnt help at all.

I purchased another 2 sets of GMAT prep for gauging purpose and do 1 of them on the 4th of April and scored 660 (44Q, 38V) and I feel that i was getting better and somewhat more motivated. On the 13th of April I took another GMATprep and scored another 660 (47Q, 35V) and feel that I might have the chance to score 680 which is my realistic target score (if i get 700+ I'll be very happy ofc). Since my application deadline is coming up real soon I got no choice but to take another official test on 20th of April. I took them and scored 660 (47Q, 35V), wasnt entirely happy and feel that I can do a bit better since I was able to score 38V previously and will have a 690 even if I have a 37V but I guess im content with it.

Im sharing this story since im sure a lot of other people have cases on their prep score and official score does not match up (I know some people score higher on real test but i think majority of people score somewhat lower).

I did learn some simple technique to reduce stress and nerves and I think this will really help for those people that easily get stiff. Techniques such as loosening up your neck and shoulders whenever you feel nervous does help, taking several deep breaths and think about relaxing image will definitely help too. Another fact is excess energy tend to build up stress more easily and doing some light exercise such as push-ups and stretches will relieve some of those excess energies.

I hope this post will answer some questions from those that have problems with nerves and stress during tests

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