How to improve my score from 720 to 750+?

Question

Hi Experts,

I took the GMAT online earlier this month and scored a  720 (Q50, V37, IR8, AWA5) . Since I am from India, a highly competitive demographic, I want to prove my score further. Prior to taking the GMAT, I scored 750 and 760 in the 2 official mocks. I want to take the GMAT again asap, but I do not know from where shall I start my preparations and what should be the way forward.

Kindly help.

bansalgaurav · Answer

IMHO, you should request ESR report, on asap basis, and share it. Besides, sharing your opinion on your existing weak areas and what went wrong during the exam shall help to connect the dots.

globaldesi · Answer

720 to 750 is again dependent on lot of factors. Recently I have read lots of similar storied where GMAT score dipped from what people scored in mocks.
ESR will definitely help you, Given your verbal score , you may want to recap and see what areas you felt were difficult during actual GMAT

Siddharth10 · Answer

Thanks for the reply. Since I took the GMAT online, unfortunately, ESR is not available. Regarding the verbal section in the exam, I found a lot of the SC questions were based on idiomatic usage with idioms being the only distinguishing factors in a few answer choices. It might have been a consequence of the exam pressure, but I wasn't able to apply grammar rules in such questions. Again, this is based on memory as I do not know in which section did I commit the mistakes.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Siddharth10,

Since you need to improve in verbal, here is the perfect article for you:

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Gokul20 · Answer

Hey Siddharth10
I am in the same boat as you. I recently scored a 720 (Q50, V38) in an in-person GMAT. I have scheduled my retake and am looking to score 740+. Since I found some weakness in Verbal, I am working on it right now. You can probably do the same. If you identify SC as your weak area, you can try to narrow it down to sub-topics such as Parallelism, modifiers, comparisons etc. I would also recommend you to take some more mocks. Probably, you can buy the official mocks from mba.com and see how you score on those.

EducationAisle · Answer

Would not suggest that you alter your preparation/strategy drastically at this stage.

Frankly, since you've scored 750 and 760 in the 2 official mocks, I think you just need one "good day", to get a 750+ (assuming you did not get any  repeat  questions on your official mocks).

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Siddharth10,

First of all, 720 is a great score to secure in GMAT online. However, I can understand the feeling of getting 750+ scores on GMAT prep official mocks and not able to reflect the same in the actual test. I can see that you are almost there. So, don’t lose hope. Just a little brush up/guidance will help you understand what is holding you back. Let me share my observations here.

Your individual score break-up indicates that you have a solid command over Quant. However, there is still room for improvement in Verbal.
 
Your Verbal score suggests that you are good enough with two of the three modules (SC, CR and RC) and need to work on the other one. You should consider identifying the weaker module, analyse your setbacks and turn them into your strengths. Using the right methodologies and strategies to approach the Verbal questions should ideally help you to avoid the traps set by the test makers.

In case of Verbal:
  For SC – Follow the meaning-based approach.  
 For CR – Focus on Scope Analysis and Framework driven Pre-thinking.  
 For RC – Involve yourself in the passage and understand why the passage is written and not just on what’s written.

If you are struggling with some specific topics, you may share the same for better understanding and I can help you out with your worries.

Having said this, I would like to know what is the approach you followed during the test along with a few other things so that I can suggest you a more structured plan. If you wish to discuss this over a call, you can schedule a free consultation call using the below link. Considering the effort, you have put, I would really like to know the concerns and help you improve your score.

Click here to schedule a call

Siddharth10 · Answer

Hi Experts,

I just retook the GMAT and have an unofficial score of  740 (Q50 V40 and IR4) . The reason why I scored 4 in IR is that the GMAT server was hanging throughout the test (this was also brought to the knowledge of the proctor) and during the IR section, the calculator stopped working properly. Moreover, when I clicked the next button on the final question of the IR section, the next screen did not load and as appeared from the score, my answer wasn't registered on the server. Below are my questions-

Q1- Is my first attempt score, 720 (Q50 V37 IR8), better than this attempt's score?

Q2- What course of action should I take to bring this technical goof-up to GMAC's knowledge and get a resolution?

Q3- How critical is the IR score for the Top US MBA colleges?

Kindly help.
Siddharth

Siddharth10 · Answer

Admissionado   mbaMission

egmat · Answer

Siddharth10 - get this resolved by the GMAC. They should have an after-action log for the test. Use your optional essay to explain this if you cannot get a resolution. Either way, submit both scores as evidence of your IR proficiency.

-Rajat

-Rajat

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