Low GMAT scores after 2 months of study and multiple GRE attempts.

Question

Hi all,

I need a piece of advice with my GMAT prep. I am a non-native English speaker from India preparing for the standardized tests for more than 1 year.

I started my journey in Jan 2018 after taking official mocks of both GRE and GMAT. My GMAT mock score was in the low 400's and GRE mock was 305. I decided to choose GRE looking at a better score compared to that of GMAT. I had not spent much time to do complete research in selecting B Schools and to check if they accept GRE or not. I started preparing in Jan assuming that all the B schools accept GRE or GMAT and they weigh both of them equally.

I had attempted GRE twice last year while working full time. I was dedicating around 1-2 hrs on weekdays and around 3 hrs on weekends (mostly for mocks).

Here are details of my GRE attempts:
 
 Studies: GRE 
1) How long have you studied?
Attempt 1: Mid Jan - April 2018
Attempt 2: Mid July - October 2018

2) What study materials have you used so far?
Quant: Manhattan 5 LB, ETS official GRE guide, ETS Quant review
Verbal: Magoosh GRE portal, ETS Official GRE guide, ETS Verbal review, RC from GMAT OG - 16

3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs/mocks (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Attempt 1:
08/04/2018 GRE ETS 1 - 310 (Q164 . V146)
15/04/2018 GRE ETS 2 - 301 (Q157 . V144)
16/04/2018 GRE Official - 305 (Q156 . V149)

Attempt 2:
29/09/2018 GRE Princeton - 320 (Q169 . V151)
30/09/2018 GRE Princeton - 313 (Q160 . V153)
06/10/2018 GRE ETS 2 - 304 (Q159 . V145)
11/10/2018 GRE Official - 300 (Q159 . V141)

My target score was 325.

I had given a total of 18 mocks from Princeton, Kaplan, Manhattan, and ETS before the official GRE but have listed the scores only from the last 2-3 tests here.

Mistakes I realized:
1. I spent the majority of the time on giving mock tests without actually learning new concepts. 
2. Did not do a complete analysis of the mistakes I made during mocks.
3. Focussed majorly on quant than verbal.
4. I was not able to balance work with study and was not following a fixed daily study routine due to long working hours clubbed with 2 hrs of driving per day.
 
After 2 unsuccessful attempts, I had done some research to validate if GRE is the right direction for an MBA program. I have decided my college's list and realized that a few of them prefer GMAT scores over GRE whereas some do not accept GMAT as well.

I started fresh this year and gave a GMAT mock again around End January. Despite getting a low score again, I took it as a challenge to achieve my target score of 720. This time I ensured to apply the learnings from mistakes in the last 2 GRE attempts. I study consistently for 2 hours after work on the weekdays and around 4-5 hours on the weekends. Also, I did not give any mocks during prep.

Here is my GMAT progress to date:

Studies: GMAT 
1) How long have you studied?
2 Months, starting from March.

2) What study materials have you used so far?
I have been using e-GMAT while solving relevant questions from OG, OG QR, and OG VR - 18,19.

3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs/mocks (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
26-01-2019: GMAT Prep 1 - 460 (Q 35 . V 19)
05-05-2019: E-GMAT Mock - 470 (Q 35 . V 20)

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
My Goal is to get a score of 720.

5) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
By the end of June - 2019. I haven't blocked a date yet but want to block it in the next 1 week.

6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
I'm planning to apply to B Schools this year in September.

7) What Schools are you planning to apply to? (In the order of preference)
ISB, Tepper (GMAT preferred), UC Berkely: Haas, UCLA: Anderson, INSEAD, Melbourne business school (GMAT only).

Seeing low scores like this is demotivating and it's making me question my ability.

I am confused now, not sure which path to take. 
1. Should I stick to GMAT prep? If yes, what are the changes I should make to improve my score? Is it possible to improve ~250 points in a month and a half?
2. Should I switch back to GRE and apply to colleges that accept GRE only? If yes, how should I improve my verbal score?

Please advice. Thanks in advance.

u1983 · Answer

Hello  AA01  ... welcome to the community.

I cannot speak for GRE, but here are my 2 cents for GMAT.

Your mock scores represent fundamental gaps. Below are the 1st 2 things I would do :
1. Verbal: get a good hold on the basics. I would also consider a good online course for this one. And once done concentrate on official Qs & the relevant discussions available for them in this forum. 
2. Quant: Use GMAT club math book (free pdf) to solidify fundamentals And practice a lot 500 & 600 level Qs in this forum till I get comfortable( 80% correct under 2 mins)

Then finally tale mock test to gauge my improvement and take it from there.

Hope this helps. All the best !!

Albs · Answer

I think you're using the wrong strategy, you don't know how to study, your timing is of meaning you're missing a crucial trick in the question, which may also be due to the fact you're not a native English speaker.

This was me last year as i kept getting 460 and I didn't know why as I have always been excellent at Math in school and Verbal has always been my weakness. For some reason, I was getting much better scores in Verbal and terrible scores in Math. Mainly it was due to my timing.

I took some wonderful notes for verbal which has dramatically improved my scores because after reading the Manhattan guide, it clicked. If you want me to share them, send me a message.
I'm now just focusing on my timings.

INSEAD is also on my list so I understand your frustration.

If you need a study buddy, I'm here.

m1033512 · Answer

IMO Practicing GRE and expecting improvement in GMAT is fundamentally flawed in itself .

Learn GMAT way, Practice GMAT way and expect improvement Posted from my mobile device

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi AA01,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. So to start, I’d like to be really honest with you; it’s not going to be possible to significantly improve either your GMAT or your GRE score in just a month and a half.

Regarding which exam to pursue, since you are in a similar place in terms of your score on both, perhaps take the exam that will allow greater flexibility and allow you to apply to more programs.

That said, at the moment, it’s clear that you are lacking the GRE and GMAT quant and verbal fundamentals you need for a high score, right? So, whichever exam you pursue, you really need to follow a linear and structured study plan, so that you can individually learn each quant and verbal topic and practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. That said, this process will take longer than just one month. Thus, I’d consider waiting to take your GMAT or GRE until you are truly ready to do so.

Once you make a decision either way, please reach back out, and I’d be happy to provide some more detailed advice on how to improve your GMAT or GRE verbal and quant skills.

In the meantime, you may find it helpful to read the following articles about  How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT  and  How to Score 330+ on the GRE .

Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi AA01,

Your 2 CAT results (from a few days ago and approximately 3.5 months ago) are almost identical, which means that you continue to 'see' (and respond to) the GMAT in the same general ways as before. You handle certain aspects of the Exam well, but you also make certain consistent mistakes. Raising a 470 to the point that you can consistently score 720+ will likely require at least another 3 months of consistent, guided study - and you'll have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. A Test Date at the end of June would only give you roughly another 1.5 months of study time though, so you might need to adjust your timeline. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level.

"Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix'). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

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

AliceRodriguez14 · Answer

I am also getting stuck onto this path, i want to feel really prepared to take the official GMAT exam! 
I need to organize timing and establish a very good structured plan for study!
My expectations are not as high as yours, I expect to get at least 650
Now I'm like yours around 450

If you have any good resources or some info you can share to me I will aprecciate , I think share your history with mine
I also work for very long hours adding driving time to get home

Anyway
Good vibes and we should def stay positiveeee

Posted from my mobile device

AA01 · Answer

Thanks for your reply Rich.

So, I have decided to extend my GMAT date further. I will follow a proper study plan, constantly evaluating and identifying my focus areas in the next 2-3 months. I will target to give my GMAT by end of July.

I have also analyzed my previous mock and came up with the following answers.

Quant 
1) Because of a silly/little mistake? -  7  questions
2) Because there was some math that you just could not remember how to do? -  2 
3) Because the question was too hard? -  2 
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess? -  3 
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong? -  0

Verbal 
1) Because of a silly/little mistake? -  0 
2) Because there was some verbal that you just could not remember how to do? -  6 
3) Because the question was too hard? -  8 
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess? -  6 
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong? -  0

In quant, I see a lot of scope for improvement if the silly mistakes are avoided. In verbal, most of the questions were either hard or were the ones I couldn't apply my learnings. The hard questions took a lot of time and eventually I had to guess the last 6 questions.

How do you think I should proceed? Should I focus on quant and fill the gaps or work on both quant and verbal parallelly with a major focus on verbal?

AA01 · Answer

Thanks for offering your notes Albs. Please do share it. I have sent a PM.

AA01 · Answer

Hi Scott,

The articles were helpful.

I plan to stick with GMAT and extend my target date to the end of July. I would love to hear your advice on how to improve my skills.

Thanks in advance.

AjiteshArun · Answer

I think "parallel" is better (you can focus on one section, as you mentioned). Otherwise, you could lose some of the gains you've made in a section if you ignore it, and a little variety in what you're studying will help you whenever you hit a "block" on one section.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi AA01,

The additional month of study time should be quite helpful, but it's still not certain whether you will be able to hit your Goal Score in that timeframe or not. That having been said, it's clear that you'll have to do some serious work in BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections to hit your Goal Score, so to maximize the study time that you will have during these next 2.5 months, you would likely benefit from investing in study materials that will keep you focused on the proper content and Tactics for both sections.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

AA01 · Answer

I plan to study 30 hours per week. 3 hours per day on weekdays and 15 hours in total on the weekends.

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi AA01,

With that many study hours a week, you have to be careful about not 'burning out' before Test Day. For longer study days, you might want to plan a few 30-60 minute 'breaks' every couple of hours (as opposed to trying to study for 6-8 hours straight).

Since your two CAT Scores are so similar - and your 2nd Score came after approximately 2 months of recent study, it's likely that "your way" of approaching the overall GMAT has gotten you 'stuck' at this particular score level. By extension, you might want to work some new materials that train you in different Tactics than the ones that you are currently using. When it comes to studying for the GMAT, there are lots of different resources to choose from. Most GMAT Companies offer some type of free materials (practice problems, Trial Accounts, videos, etc.) that you can use to 'test out' a product before you buy it. We have a variety of those resources at our website (www.empowergmat.com). I suggest that you take advantage of all of them then choose the one that best matches your personality, timeline and budget.

If you have any additional questions, then just let me know.

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi AA01,

So in order to improve your GMAT skills, first off, you need to ensure that you are following a structured and linear study plan that allows you to individually learn each GMAT quant topic and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

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.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as The Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. Likely, the main reason that Sentence Correction has not "clicked" for you is that you have not put enough work into developing your skill in seeing what is going on in the various versions of the sentence that the answer choices create. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices in a Sentence Correction question, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

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 it helpful to read the following articles about 
 How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT  and  The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT .

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

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