I have been preparing for the GMAT for more than 1.5 years now. I took my first official GMAT attempt in March and scored 575. The attempt did not go as well as I had expected, so I took a break for about a month and then resumed my preparation with a target of 650+.
When I restarted, I decided to prepare in a very structured, topic-by-topic manner. I covered individual topics across Quant, Verbal, and Data Insights, practiced questions from the Official Guide and GMAT Club, made detailed notes, and repeatedly reviewed my mistakes. I also worked through previous OG and GMAT Club Insights questions and practiced different question types extensively.
Before taking my next official practice exam, I also took three to four GMAT Club mocks. Although my scores on these mocks were generally in the 500 range, when I analyzed them afterward, I noticed something important: a large proportion of my mistakes were not because I didn’t know the concepts. They were usually due to silly mistakes, misreading, or running out of time.
Based on this analysis, I felt that my conceptual preparation was reasonably strong and that my main problem was exam execution. I therefore continued preparing for another four months, focusing on strengthening my concepts, strategies, and question-solving approach.
However, I recently took Official Practice Exam 3 after those additional four months of preparation, and I scored 515.
This has left me extremely confused because my score has actually gone down despite putting in a significant amount of additional preparation. It is even lower than my previous official score of 575.
The biggest issue is that I don’t feel that I lack preparation when I look at my performance outside a timed exam. When I practice without a timer, I am generally able to solve the questions. I have studied the concepts, learned the strategies, practiced extensively, and made notes from my mistakes. I feel like I know what I am supposed to do.
But when I actually sit for the exam, something changes. I make silly mistakes, struggle with time management, and don’t perform at the level I seem capable of during practice. So I am starting to think that my primary problem may not be knowledge or preparation, but how I am performing under actual exam conditions.
At this point, I genuinely don’t know what I should do next. I have already spent a very significant amount of time preparing, and despite another four months of focused preparation, my official practice score has gone down rather than improved.
I am now questioning whether I am approaching the GMAT preparation in the wrong way, whether there is something fundamentally wrong with my exam-taking approach, or whether the GMAT may simply not be the right exam for me.
I am even considering switching to the GRE at this point.
What I really need is an objective diagnosis of where I am going wrong and what I should change from here. I don’t want to simply keep doing more questions and preparing topic-by-topic if the underlying problem is actually exam execution. I want to understand why my untimed/practice performance does not translate into my actual test performance, and whether I should continue with the GMAT or seriously consider switching to the