[Gmat Experience]Huge disappointment in the verbal section !!!

Hi ayoubbk,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) Over the last 4 months, did you take just those 3 CATs/mocks? On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and 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

HI ayoubbk,

I’m sorry to hear how things went 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 V18. 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, 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.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses. You also may find my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!

Hello guys!

Thank you for all the help and support. I have just ordered the ESR to have a clear vision on what went wrong. Can someone help me plan on what exactly should I focus on for my next retake ?

Hi ayoubbk,

I'm reviewing your ESR right now; I'll still need answers to my prior questions though before I can help you to create a proper Study Plan for this next phase of your studies.

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

Studies:
1) How many hours did you typically study each week?
Well i'll say around 10-15hrs a week for the past 4 months
2) What study materials have you used so far?
Kaplan's guide, Magoosh
3) Over the last 4 months, did you take just those 3 CATs/mocks? On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
i took kaplan's Mocks in the very beginning of my prep. my scores ranged from 520 (41 21) to 590 (44 26). I also took the Economist Free mock where I score 580 (39 31) but i took the majority of these mocks around 3 months ago.
Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
something around 680 to 700
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?
Late april (round 4)

Thank you !! EMPOWERgmatRichC

Hi ayoubbk,

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

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

You have a great Quant but low verbal. You can find within this forum:

1) Hardest CR, e.g. https://gmatclub.com/forum/100-hardest- ... l#p1282964
2) Hardest SC
3) hardest RC

They are a lot of good questions within the forum. Try them

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