Main exam gone wrong despite acing the mocks. Suggestions welcome.

Bro, it happens...Exam depend upon the level of anxiety on the day of exam. I would suggest just wait for few days, collect your rhythm then again give the exam.

yashhh I have one question for you, Could you answer it?

Does in the break time the instructor take away the rough papers in which we were working. Let suppose I have started with essay then IR, and I have got some time and I wrote down ABCDE like stuff in the remaining rough pages. After IR, in the break, do they will take the papers away and give the new rough sheets after the the break.

Waiting for your answer.

Hi yashhh,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not 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 long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) We need to be more specific about your CAT/mock data. 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)?

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?

If you took your GMAT at a Test Center, then 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 Yash,

Sorry to hear about how things went with your GMAT. I am assuming that you have taken the official mocks. Ideally, you should be getting a similar score to your mocks. There might be two reasons for it.

• The test day anxiety - If this is the case, I suggest you to go for a retake and give the test with a calm mind
• Inconsistent approach - You might have somehow got the right answers in the mocks without using the right method and unfortunately that didn't happen on the test day. I don't see this as the case as your mock scores are consistent and you can't get lucky all the times.

So, to suggest you better, I would need a little more information about your way of preparation and the approach of solving questions. It would be better if we get in touch over a call and discuss the same. You can use the below link to get in touch with me.

Such deviation from the mocks, is quite amazing yashhh. Verbal especially was a catastrophe for you on the exam day. Anything untoward that you recollect?

Also, did you order a ESR, by any chance?

Hello Yash,

A score of 570 in the Official GMAT tells that basics are intact, and the ground is prepared. Now you need to practice hard and hardest level questions and take as many mock tests as possible. Create the error log and try access to the specific areas and topics that require improvement.

Also, I fully understand your frustration because, with my GMAT tutoring, guidance, and counseling experience, we have to accept a fact with a pinch of salt that diagnostic/ mock test scores are above then what one should expect in a real test. There is often dropping in the score. Some students have even experienced a drop of 100 pointers. It is one of the realities, and your preparation should not sideline this fact.

A couple of things that can be a noticeable barrier to your scores would be some or all of the below.

• No expert support (maybe) who can tutor, analyze, and guide you during your learning, especially on hard level questions while stably hitting middle-level questions.
• Lack of many updated questions and practice in the recent exam trend
• Not well aligned with time to solve questions.

We would recommend you make a note of various possible combinations of your target score. The possible scores will help you track your performance after taking the mock or practice test. It will also help you maintain balance in both the sections, and you will always be in a great position to allot the study hours to a specific area accordingly.

The possible score combinations for 700 or 700+: Q should be Q 49, 50, 51, and V should be V38, 37, 36.

You can try our free diagnostic test and receive a comprehensive study guide by topic. receive. This test will clearly help you understand your weak areas.

You can schedule a Free counseling session for 20 mins with one of our experts:https://calendly.com/mathrevolution/1-on-1-session for detailed advice on your current study plans.

You must schedule your day smartly to revise the topics and also practice more questions. We would suggest you register with MathRevolution https://www.mathrevolution.com/member/signup to get access to our 7-day full on-demand course (27 topics, 490 subtopics, and 1,500 questions) for free trial lessons. 700+ level questions https://www.mathrevolution.com/gmat/questionbank are separately available, too.

Since we are a math expert, we will recommend you go through our post on the GMAT club: Breakdown of GMAT math questions and types: https://gmatclub.com/forum/overview-of- ... l#p1641411.

Follow the same procedure for Verbal. You may access a lot of free materials available on the GMAT club for Verbal.

In the end, make sure you have an error log for every day. Keep checking your performance by attempting as many mock tests as possible.

Regular tests will reflect the positive change in the score, and hence, your confidence will boost up. Gradually, with the help of mock tests, you will be able to compete with time and hence will be able to learn time-management.

We appreciate your time and patience in reading this reply.

Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@mathrevolution.com.

Success is within your reach.
Good luck!

Punit Joshi
Math Revolution Team

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your 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 V21. 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 it helpful to read the following articles:

how to score a 700+ on the GMAT

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?

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