Is there a need for timing & stress management or something else?

Question

As the title implies, I require assistance in understanding my situation and organizing my thoughts about the GMAT exam.

I have invested significant time in GMAT preparation. While my quant score is nearly perfect, my verbal score has been fluctuating greatly, causing concern. I have reviewed the theory for all three verbal sub-sections and have recently focused on practising official questions (untimed) via the Wiley Efficient Learning portal. My accuracy in these attempts is as below:

Easy SC and Easy CR - >= 90%, Easy RC - >= 80%. 
 Medium SC and Medium CR - >= 80%, Medium RC - >=60% 
 Hard SC and Hard CR - >= 80%, Hard RC - >=60%

The figures mentioned above are based on my performance in approximately 6-7 attempts of Official Guide (OG) questions, with each attempt consisting of 10-20 questions. I had previously attempted only a small portion of these questions around 6 months ago, and I firmly believe that my accuracy is not merely a coincidence. I can confidently reject the four incorrect answer choices by providing proper justification.

However, during my attempts at a full-length GMAT test or a GMAT Club verbal test, my performance has been poor. I am finding it challenging to surpass the V35 barrier, and sometimes even the V30 barrier.

My plan is to take the GMAT in June of this year and apply to colleges, hopefully in the first round. However, I am concerned about my performance plateauing at a V30 score since my target score is 740+.

Some of the observations that I have made so far -
1. During timed mock quizzes, I often feel intimidated by the clock and end up rushing through the questions.
2. During the mock exam, I often feel restless and just want to get it over with so that I can see my score on the screen.
3. I have seven years of experience and have attempted the GMAT twice before, but without achieving a decent score. As this year is my final opportunity to pursue an MBA, I am under immense pressure to succeed. The fear of not getting into any college, let alone my dream college, and being stuck in my current work-life cycle causes me anxiety, making it difficult to sleep and even to concentrate during the exam.

In addition, I am heartbroken by my consistently low sectional scores, despite dedicating around 5-6 hours per day to GMAT preparation. To address my anxiety related to the exam, I have scheduled a therapy session for later this week.

If there is any way that this community could assist me in navigating this situation, I would be immensely appreciative of each and every one of you.

bb · Answer

Hi. Quick question for you, when you practice questions from the official guide and you shared statistics of your results, is that timed practice or is that limited time practice?

Thus if you practiced under times conditions, what is different when you take a test?

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TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

Hi  bb ,

Thank you for your response.
I attempt the questions without time restrictions. I have not yet taken time-restricted quizzes (recently). However, my average time per question in SC is 60-90 seconds, and in CR it's 3-4 minutes. Sometimes even more. Most of my time goes into RC, where I take a lot of time to read and re-read the passage.

bb · Answer

Well, I think you have answered your own questions…. To a large extent.

The accuracy that you have is not really a reflection of your performance on the test. Spending a lot of time on the question can significantly boost your result. So unfortunately some bad news in the sense that your success rates and different questions need to be revisited under times conditions.

Also, doing reading comprehension without timing yourself is not helpful for preparation. The whole point is the time crunch. Sorry.

PS. I know many experts including GMAT Ninja suggest starting out without timing yourself and then transitioning slowly towards taking timed practice. I am on the other hand in the camp that you start timing yourself on day one. Otherwise the transition towards timing is unclear and opaque. If you are planning to take the GMAT in June, you should definitely only take timed questions. Take for example five questions or 10 questions and give yourself 10 or 20 minutes. This simulates the GMAT and makes it much more reflective in terms of your practice and quiz scores.

PPS. I expect one of the side effects of timing yourself will be discovery of a number of deficiencies and things that perhaps you were not working on and were using abundance of time to cover up and now with strict timing you will have to address those issues. It’s not bad. It’s actually good, it’s the things that will help your score higher on the GMAT but you have to work through them. This is things such as Answering critical reasoning questions faster and only reading them once. Same applies to reading comprehension. You cannot afford to read a passage twice. There’s just not enough time…

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TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

This helps add a perspective. Thanks a lot! For the next 7 days, I am gonna take only timed quizzes and will take another GMAT Club Verbal quiz and a SigmaX quiz to track my performance. I hope to see some change! Appreciate the time you've taken to read and to give me a starter to change my strategy!

bb · Answer

To set your expectations, you will get hammered in your first quiz. Going from untimed towards a timed practice experience it’s going to feel I guess just like a practice test. Your scores will take a hit but the idea is not so much to score amazing on your first timed quiz but rather find in efficiencies, identify them, and then put strategies or effort into eliminating them.

Also, don’t expect that by simply taking more quizzes your results will improve. Practice sets and quizzes are simply a way to measure your progress and abilities. I think of it as measuring your body temperature when you have a fever. You can measure it every five minutes but it’s not going to go down because you measure it. There is some learning that you do during a quiz but I kind of doubt that you will stumble upon an amazing reading comprehension strategy just by smashing yourself against passages so don’t expect improving much through practice alone. You have to learn strategies and you have to put them into practice. You have to follow them even if they don’t make sense…

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EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Dipesh,

We last discussed your studies near the end of last year (when we reviewed your ESR). To properly define your current situation, it would help to know a bit more about how you have been studying over the last 4.5 months:

1) What type of study routine have you been following?? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Have you used any other study materials besides the OG/questions you mentioned? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) On what dates (or approximate 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)?

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

Contact Rich at: [email protected]

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Dipesh.

Short story.

Those accuracies aren't high enough. They indicate about a 35 in Verbal.

To get to the 40s, you need accuracies like the following:

E- close to 100%
M - 90%+
H - 70%+ (and 80%+ is better)

Getting medium questions correct is the foundation of scoring high on GMAT Verbal. So, your hard accuracy is OK, but your medium accuracy is too low.

Also, I disagree with bb. I think you can practice untimed and master the GMAT since the same skills that support high accuracy support speed. So, if you learn to get close to 100% of medium questions correct, you should be fast as well.

If you use the streaks method to master every topic, you'll achieve your score goal. To see what I'm talking about, read this post.

The Best GMAT Practice Methods

Also, check out these videos to get some key insights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyyPP9XQBxI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0jVmMqGis

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Person went from a V31 to V40 in about 30 days. Ended up with 740. Maybe some quick tips you can take. https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-online- ... 68599.html To reduce anxiety, considering thinking of a plan B. May sound strange but having a plan B may help a person do plan A more calmly.

TargetKellogg2024 · Answer

Thank you, everyone, for your valuable feedback. I will work on my weak areas as suggested, and I hope that I will see better results in mock exams.
Just an update - I took a timed quiz on "Hard" OG SC questions, and here are my results:

Note - I had never attempted or seen these questions before

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

That's great progress!! Also, in regard to your issues with anxiety, give this article a read:

How to Eliminate GMAT Test-Day Anxiety

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