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chinmayektare
Joined: 28 Nov 2018
Last visit: 18 Feb 2024
Posts: 122
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 34
Location: India
Concentration: General Management, Leadership
Schools: Tepper '24 (D)
GPA: 4
01 Nov 2021, 02:56
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hey All,
After 4 grueling attempts at the GMAT, I'm writing this post in complete agony and unrest.
I have one last attempt left in this year and will be taking it in the next 15 days. Given I missed the R1 deadline, I can't afford to miss the R2 deadlines as well. My family has been right in telling me to completely focus on my applications from here on out and forget about the GMAT.
But knowing that I still have one attempt left and a 50-50 chance to make it or break it, I can't let go and regret not taking this last opportunity. Until the GMAT itself closes it's doors on me , I don't want to give up.
So here' a not so short summary about my progress so far:
SEPT 2020:
Practice mock Official GMAT PREP 1(before starting my GMAT journey) : 590
I took up the egmat course after a thorough research and completed 70% of it before attempting my first official GMAT exam. In addition I took the offical gmat prep mocks 1 and 2.
GMAT PREP MOCK 1: 610
GMAT PREP MOCK 2: 630
Jan 4th 2021
Official GMAT EXAM 1st attempt: 540
Of course I was baffled when I saw a score that was worse than my pre preparation mock of 590. I was a little stressed before the attempt. So , I took this attempt as a mere "testing the water" and went ahead to analyze my result.
After taking 6 months of prep time and concentrating on core concepts, understanding the meaning behind SC questions, and critically examining my approach to tackle CR questions , I finally made some progress in my practice and felt good about taking another test.
GMAT PREP MOCK 2 (repeat) : 670
GMAT PREP MOCK 3: 680 (Q48,V37)
EGMAT SIGMA MOCK : 710(Q46, v41)
Now here's my biggest mistake. Given that one of my mock had finally crossed that 700 bridge, i assumed that I am ready for the real deal and dived straight into my second attempt.
GMAT official EXAM attempt 2: 640
Yes, I was surprised again, since I thought that I would have definitely scored somewhere near 700 if not it. This time around I was able to logically understand the mistakes and flaws in SC and was able to gauge the arguments better in CR. RC turned out to be my best section out of the lot but the most time consuming at the same time.
Taking lessons from my ESR and realizing that a mediocre 640 is not my cup of tea, I took this attempt with a pinch of salt and decided that I'm going to hit that 700 mark the next time. This was my turning point and I decided to do a deeper analysis into my issues.
Fast forward two months, during which I took a better look at my error logs , went through the whole SC module again from EGMAT and read the Manhattan SC series for a good number of times to solidify my concepts. I felt a good difference in my approach towards SC questions. I was finally able to reach an accuracy of more than 80 percent on med level questions and more than 70 percent on hard level questions. I was taking 1.5 minutes on an average for med and 2 min for hard level questions. CR felt amazing too, my ability was over 90 percent for CR questions of med and high difficulty in the EGMAT module and my approach had become more streamlined and structured while attempting different kinds of CR questions. I knew my weak areas and I knew my strengths, on which I did work.
RC was one area on which I did minimal work but I was consistently scoring 3/4 correct on med level questions. I was averaging 6 min for short passages and 8-9 for long med passages.
My mocks during this time were as follows:
EGMAT mocks: 680-710
GMAT prep mock 5: 680 (V 36, Q47) --> had to pause multiple times because of disturbances.
GMAT prep mock 3 :710(Q49,V38) --> ( repeat attempt, but only one repeated question in CR)
I decided that I'm probably ready and at the peak of my performance. So I went ahead and booked my test in Sept.
SEPT 2021
This time to ease my anxiety I figured I should take an online test at the comfort of my home and booked my test accordingly. There were no issues from the proctor and the process was smooth. There were glitches at times during key strokes and button taps, more so during the IR and AWA sections and luckily fewer during my first two important sections. I was calm and composed during this attempt compared to my previous two.
GMAT official attempt 3(online): 650 (Q49, V31)
The proctor had to call me three times to get my attention given how puzzled and confused I was.
I did accept the score but it had me completely devastated.
I decided that I'm not going to risk the online glitches and tech anomalies and made up my mind to take up the exam in the next month again at the test center.
I took the EGMAT mentorship program and diligently followed the verbal plan. I solved multiple mock test scenarios and strictly held onto the official questions. I simulated tests of 36 questions of med and hard difficulty level and solved them under timed conditions. I revisited my error logs and revised concepts that I was faltering in. I even took up the GMAT club QUANT practice tests and it helped me push my QUANT score up a notch.
For RC I majorly solved the med and hard passages from Humanities , Social Sciences and business/economics as I had a hard time dealing with these topics during my test experiences. I made sure to spend good 5-10 minutes for every SC and CR question that I solved, correct or wrong, on the GC portal and read the different approaches used by Veterans and other folks. I made sure that I know if I got the correct answer for the correct reasons. If my reasoning was flawed but the answer was still right , I would tag it as incorrect.
My mock scores were as follows:
GMAT mock 4: 720 (Q49, V40)
GMAT mock 6: 720( Q50 , V38)
GMAT mock 5 : 710 ( Q48,V40) --> (repeat test, but only 1 CR repeat question for which I deliberately spent 2 min)
GMAT mock 6 : 710(Q48,V40) -->(repeat test but luckily no repeated questions)
As the deadlines were approaching and I had to make sure that I spent good time on my applications , I scheduled my latest GMAT exam in a month on 30th of Oct 2021.
GMAT official test 4: 640 (V28, Q49) ( yes it's been less than 24 hours that I'm writing this post)
I am speechless at this point. I was the least stressed this time compared to all my other attempts. I was well focused and had a good sleep.
I still cannot understand what went wrong.
Out of all my four attempts I do have certain observations:
1. I felt that the GMAT official exam SC questions are different in comparison to the OGs and practice tests. There were so many SC questions that I encountered during all of my 4 attempts, testing peculiar idiom usages and styles. Now trust me when I say this , I was able to easily remove 3 answer choices based on definite errors but the remaining two answer choices differed only on the usage of a silly idiom. I did notice this pattern at the end of my third attempt and made sure to note down every idiomatic usage during practice and revise it before I took the 4th exam.
During my practice whenever I encountered a difference in Idioms among answer choices, I would search for a different split/error and that would do the trick. During this exam , every 2nd SC question was having an Idiom/style based split as the deciding factor. I even read the choices line by line comparing all other words. But nope. It felt extremely unfair that the practice questions varied so much. It was as though a video game pal of mine turned around and opened fire at me during a crucial tournament. Although there were 600-700 level questions that I was able to answer well and that kept my confidence up, but these questions felt so unfair. ( I understand there may be gaps in my concepts but I'm being honest and fair when I say that my accuracy on official SC questions was very good at this point)
2.I have minimal complaints about RC and CR. I expected at least one dense RC and one dense RC I got. CRs didn't differ much from the Official practice. I had to guess one towards the end because of a time crunch and I marked two overall with less confidence in my answer choice. For RC I marked at least 8-9 out of the 11-12 questions with certainty.
Have to wait for my ESR to pop up on the portal, so I can check which sub sections took the hardest hits.
This has been my experience so far. It may be on the negative spectrum but the support of egmat , Manhattan books and explanations of the veteran such as GMATNinja and Bunuel have propelled my score from 540 to 700+ (at least during practice). I'm just disheartened that something is going wrong in the actual tests and I don't know what.
At this point I think, would it make a difference if I gave the exam again? Or would I repeat the same mishaps and end my GMAT journey on a sad note?
I'm an Indian IT male applicant. So, having a 50 point jump in my score would be exceptionally beneficial for my applications. Knowing this , I will be giving my next and final attempt after 2 weeks no matter what. I know I can't give anymore official mocks as they would have repeated questions and would give me scores that are unrepresentative of my actual ability.
If anyone could please nudge me in the right direction or could tell me what I can do, it would help me in heaps.
Thanks
After 4 grueling attempts at the GMAT, I'm writing this post in complete agony and unrest.
I have one last attempt left in this year and will be taking it in the next 15 days. Given I missed the R1 deadline, I can't afford to miss the R2 deadlines as well. My family has been right in telling me to completely focus on my applications from here on out and forget about the GMAT.
But knowing that I still have one attempt left and a 50-50 chance to make it or break it, I can't let go and regret not taking this last opportunity. Until the GMAT itself closes it's doors on me , I don't want to give up.
So here' a not so short summary about my progress so far:
SEPT 2020:
Practice mock Official GMAT PREP 1(before starting my GMAT journey) : 590
I took up the egmat course after a thorough research and completed 70% of it before attempting my first official GMAT exam. In addition I took the offical gmat prep mocks 1 and 2.
GMAT PREP MOCK 1: 610
GMAT PREP MOCK 2: 630
Jan 4th 2021
Official GMAT EXAM 1st attempt: 540
Of course I was baffled when I saw a score that was worse than my pre preparation mock of 590. I was a little stressed before the attempt. So , I took this attempt as a mere "testing the water" and went ahead to analyze my result.
After taking 6 months of prep time and concentrating on core concepts, understanding the meaning behind SC questions, and critically examining my approach to tackle CR questions , I finally made some progress in my practice and felt good about taking another test.
GMAT PREP MOCK 2 (repeat) : 670
GMAT PREP MOCK 3: 680 (Q48,V37)
EGMAT SIGMA MOCK : 710(Q46, v41)
Now here's my biggest mistake. Given that one of my mock had finally crossed that 700 bridge, i assumed that I am ready for the real deal and dived straight into my second attempt.
GMAT official EXAM attempt 2: 640
Yes, I was surprised again, since I thought that I would have definitely scored somewhere near 700 if not it. This time around I was able to logically understand the mistakes and flaws in SC and was able to gauge the arguments better in CR. RC turned out to be my best section out of the lot but the most time consuming at the same time.
Taking lessons from my ESR and realizing that a mediocre 640 is not my cup of tea, I took this attempt with a pinch of salt and decided that I'm going to hit that 700 mark the next time. This was my turning point and I decided to do a deeper analysis into my issues.
Fast forward two months, during which I took a better look at my error logs , went through the whole SC module again from EGMAT and read the Manhattan SC series for a good number of times to solidify my concepts. I felt a good difference in my approach towards SC questions. I was finally able to reach an accuracy of more than 80 percent on med level questions and more than 70 percent on hard level questions. I was taking 1.5 minutes on an average for med and 2 min for hard level questions. CR felt amazing too, my ability was over 90 percent for CR questions of med and high difficulty in the EGMAT module and my approach had become more streamlined and structured while attempting different kinds of CR questions. I knew my weak areas and I knew my strengths, on which I did work.
RC was one area on which I did minimal work but I was consistently scoring 3/4 correct on med level questions. I was averaging 6 min for short passages and 8-9 for long med passages.
My mocks during this time were as follows:
EGMAT mocks: 680-710
GMAT prep mock 5: 680 (V 36, Q47) --> had to pause multiple times because of disturbances.
GMAT prep mock 3 :710(Q49,V38) --> ( repeat attempt, but only one repeated question in CR)
I decided that I'm probably ready and at the peak of my performance. So I went ahead and booked my test in Sept.
SEPT 2021
This time to ease my anxiety I figured I should take an online test at the comfort of my home and booked my test accordingly. There were no issues from the proctor and the process was smooth. There were glitches at times during key strokes and button taps, more so during the IR and AWA sections and luckily fewer during my first two important sections. I was calm and composed during this attempt compared to my previous two.
GMAT official attempt 3(online): 650 (Q49, V31)
The proctor had to call me three times to get my attention given how puzzled and confused I was.
I did accept the score but it had me completely devastated.
I decided that I'm not going to risk the online glitches and tech anomalies and made up my mind to take up the exam in the next month again at the test center.
I took the EGMAT mentorship program and diligently followed the verbal plan. I solved multiple mock test scenarios and strictly held onto the official questions. I simulated tests of 36 questions of med and hard difficulty level and solved them under timed conditions. I revisited my error logs and revised concepts that I was faltering in. I even took up the GMAT club QUANT practice tests and it helped me push my QUANT score up a notch.
For RC I majorly solved the med and hard passages from Humanities , Social Sciences and business/economics as I had a hard time dealing with these topics during my test experiences. I made sure to spend good 5-10 minutes for every SC and CR question that I solved, correct or wrong, on the GC portal and read the different approaches used by Veterans and other folks. I made sure that I know if I got the correct answer for the correct reasons. If my reasoning was flawed but the answer was still right , I would tag it as incorrect.
My mock scores were as follows:
GMAT mock 4: 720 (Q49, V40)
GMAT mock 6: 720( Q50 , V38)
GMAT mock 5 : 710 ( Q48,V40) --> (repeat test, but only 1 CR repeat question for which I deliberately spent 2 min)
GMAT mock 6 : 710(Q48,V40) -->(repeat test but luckily no repeated questions)
As the deadlines were approaching and I had to make sure that I spent good time on my applications , I scheduled my latest GMAT exam in a month on 30th of Oct 2021.
GMAT official test 4: 640 (V28, Q49) ( yes it's been less than 24 hours that I'm writing this post)
I am speechless at this point. I was the least stressed this time compared to all my other attempts. I was well focused and had a good sleep.
I still cannot understand what went wrong.
Out of all my four attempts I do have certain observations:
1. I felt that the GMAT official exam SC questions are different in comparison to the OGs and practice tests. There were so many SC questions that I encountered during all of my 4 attempts, testing peculiar idiom usages and styles. Now trust me when I say this , I was able to easily remove 3 answer choices based on definite errors but the remaining two answer choices differed only on the usage of a silly idiom. I did notice this pattern at the end of my third attempt and made sure to note down every idiomatic usage during practice and revise it before I took the 4th exam.
During my practice whenever I encountered a difference in Idioms among answer choices, I would search for a different split/error and that would do the trick. During this exam , every 2nd SC question was having an Idiom/style based split as the deciding factor. I even read the choices line by line comparing all other words. But nope. It felt extremely unfair that the practice questions varied so much. It was as though a video game pal of mine turned around and opened fire at me during a crucial tournament. Although there were 600-700 level questions that I was able to answer well and that kept my confidence up, but these questions felt so unfair. ( I understand there may be gaps in my concepts but I'm being honest and fair when I say that my accuracy on official SC questions was very good at this point)
2.I have minimal complaints about RC and CR. I expected at least one dense RC and one dense RC I got. CRs didn't differ much from the Official practice. I had to guess one towards the end because of a time crunch and I marked two overall with less confidence in my answer choice. For RC I marked at least 8-9 out of the 11-12 questions with certainty.
Have to wait for my ESR to pop up on the portal, so I can check which sub sections took the hardest hits.
This has been my experience so far. It may be on the negative spectrum but the support of egmat , Manhattan books and explanations of the veteran such as GMATNinja and Bunuel have propelled my score from 540 to 700+ (at least during practice). I'm just disheartened that something is going wrong in the actual tests and I don't know what.
At this point I think, would it make a difference if I gave the exam again? Or would I repeat the same mishaps and end my GMAT journey on a sad note?
I'm an Indian IT male applicant. So, having a 50 point jump in my score would be exceptionally beneficial for my applications. Knowing this , I will be giving my next and final attempt after 2 weeks no matter what. I know I can't give anymore official mocks as they would have repeated questions and would give me scores that are unrepresentative of my actual ability.
If anyone could please nudge me in the right direction or could tell me what I can do, it would help me in heaps.
Thanks
01 Nov 2021, 04:00
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi chinmayektare.
It appears that somehow all the work you're doing is driving your verbal score down rather than up. In light of that fact, I think you should do a few things.
One is that you should reconsider taking the GMAT again in 15 days. You get only 5 attempts in a rolling 12 month period. So, if you take the GMAT again in 15 days and don't hit your score goal, you'l be stuck waiting until January of next year to take the GMAT again.
The second is you should consider that something about what you have been doing to prepare has not been working at all, seek to figure out what that something is, and change it.
I think that, if you prepare properly, you can score significantly higher on GMAT verbal in three to six weeks. However, I'm also confident that, if you keep doing what you have been, the likelihood that you will score higher next time is slim to nonexistent.
To get some insights into why your preparation so far has not worked, see this post. Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?
To get some insights into how to effectively prepare for GMAT verbal see these posts.
How to Score High on GMAT Verbal
GMAT Sentence Correction: 8 Essential Tips
GMAT Critical Reasoning: 8 Essential Tips
GMAT Reading Comprehension Tips: Top 8 DOs and DON’Ts
I feel for you. So, I'm going to repeat. You can score much higher on GMAT verbal in within three to six weeks if you prepare properly. So, carefully assess your situation, and make your score goal happen.
It appears that somehow all the work you're doing is driving your verbal score down rather than up. In light of that fact, I think you should do a few things.
One is that you should reconsider taking the GMAT again in 15 days. You get only 5 attempts in a rolling 12 month period. So, if you take the GMAT again in 15 days and don't hit your score goal, you'l be stuck waiting until January of next year to take the GMAT again.
The second is you should consider that something about what you have been doing to prepare has not been working at all, seek to figure out what that something is, and change it.
I think that, if you prepare properly, you can score significantly higher on GMAT verbal in three to six weeks. However, I'm also confident that, if you keep doing what you have been, the likelihood that you will score higher next time is slim to nonexistent.
To get some insights into why your preparation so far has not worked, see this post. Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?
To get some insights into how to effectively prepare for GMAT verbal see these posts.
How to Score High on GMAT Verbal
GMAT Sentence Correction: 8 Essential Tips
GMAT Critical Reasoning: 8 Essential Tips
GMAT Reading Comprehension Tips: Top 8 DOs and DON’Ts
I feel for you. So, I'm going to repeat. You can score much higher on GMAT verbal in within three to six weeks if you prepare properly. So, carefully assess your situation, and make your score goal happen.
chinmayektare
Joined: 28 Nov 2018
Last visit: 18 Feb 2024
Posts: 122
Given Kudos: 34
Location: India
Concentration: General Management, Leadership
Schools: Tepper '24 (D)
GPA: 4
01 Nov 2021, 08:00
Kudos
Bookmarks
MartyTargetTestPrep
Thank you so much for these insights and for connecting with me today. I will go through these posts and come up with a definitive plan
Posted from my mobile device
Thank you so much for these insights and for connecting with me today. I will go through these posts and come up with a definitive plan
Posted from my mobile device
