Need help in GMAT

Question

Hello everyone,

I gave my GMAT exam last weekend and got 420, I am surprised and stun to see my score. I got 32 in Quant, 16 in Verbal and 5 in IR.

A brief intro about myself- I am an engineer by profession, working in MNC for last 7 years and my job profile requires me to travel almost every alternate week and i work at odd hours and in different time zones. I have been 'practicing' GMAT since last 4 months. I have prepared by myself after religiously following OG, Manhattan ebooks and Veritas question banks (and offcourse 'THE GMAT CLUB').

Considering the fact that after 7 years, I sat down to study anything was not a piece of cake as i had thought earlier. I started from the basics first to re-learn and refresh what i had learned in my school time, on the concepts and etc. During, the last 4 months, I gave 15 GMAT practice exams and my score were on an average were approx 550 (quant 44 and verbal 24, IR - 1-3 range). Most of the exams, that i gave were at night(the complete set ie including AWA and IR), just before my bed time, so i thought since I am getting around 540-560 range I should be able to cross atleast 600 points on the actual exam. But on the game day my actual score was -130 points less than my average score.

Also here are a few things i would like to highlight from my error log -
1) for me to get 43-45 in Quant was never a challenged, and honestly i never practiced anything beyond OG.
2) In verbal section, SC is the strongest section (my accuracy is on an average 70%), followed by CR (50%)and then RC (30%).
3) in RC - out of 3 -4 RC in an exam i usually end up screwing all the questions of last RCs either because time management problem or focus problem. I realized that when my mind gets tired i subconsciously skim the para ad in the CR the ans choices.

I am here to seek support from the GMAT experts and GMAT assassins - on how to crack GMAT and to get some other useful tips that could help me nail this GMAT ( or to point out on my approach). I plan to retake my GMAT around 12 Aug now and reach to 680-710 range, and i think this is doable, also since the exam pattern is changing I plan to follow - V--> Quant--> IR and AWA pattern.

Thanks in advance

Best Regards.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi InsaneSatan,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't 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. If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take any of them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE?

Beyond those questions, I'm also curious why you didn't push back your Test Date. Based on what you described, you weren't scoring close to your score goal, so what were you expecting to happen on Test Day? And assuming that you had hit your 'practice average' score, then what were you originally planning to do next?

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

AjiteshArun · Answer

You might want to pick up something more than just the OG for quant practice. Also, if you want to give yourself a little more time on RC, you could try to practice SC with a target average time of 1 min in mind. Don't let your SC slip though (remember to go by scaled scores, as accuracy is not a very reliable measure of performance on the GMAT).

InsaneSatan · Answer

Hello Rich,

Thanks for your reply. Here are answers to your questions below:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)? - Not every time, almost 9 out of 15 were full length exams, in last 2 weeks before the exam, I gave 2 (Quant and verbal only - got 570, 540) and one full exam of GMAT Prep,4 days before the official GMAT and got 550. ( I think my mistake no. 1)
2) Did you take them at home? - Yes, I did.
3) Did you take any of them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?- Nope, none of my exams matched my official GMAT time. (perhaps, my mistake no. 2)
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? - No, infact, i've always cut down my breaks from 8 mins to less than 5 mins. (not sure if this a good or bad)
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE? Yes,I have exhausted my Veritas exams now and so in last 2 Veritas exams ( as per point 1, 2 short tests)I saw 3-4 questions at max similar in each section.

Beyond those questions, I'm also curious why you didn't push back your Test Date.Based on what you described, you weren't scoring close to your score goal, so what were you expecting to happen on Test Day? And assuming that you had hit your 'practice average' score, then what were you originally planning to do next?
- For 3 reasons, 1) all of my practice exams, that i gave were at odd hours and usually after long day at work and i believed that, if i could get 550 score now, on my official GMAT exam i would cross 600 points, 2) I wanted to get a first hand experience on difference between actual GMAT and other exams i gave 3) because of my work priorities, this was the only available weekend i had available in my home city- as my work requires me to travel a lot.

Here are a few more points i want highlight in general:
1) i was late for my exam, and i reached 10 mins before my actual time, the facilitator was helpful she took bio metrics scan and gave me 5 mins to sit down to relax. I took additional 5 mins during my AWA as I was already stressed and was unable to focus.
2) I also think after 3 hours in my exam, i have problem in focusing, i think that is the primary reason why i didnt perform well in verbal.
3) I also have not been sleeping and relaxing well in last 2-3 weeks.

Well that's it, i will look forward to hearing from you, Rich, and thank you for helping me out over here. :-)

Best Regards,

Best Regards,

InsaneSatan · Answer

Thank you Ajitesh, for your reply. I think you have a brilliant point here ' (remember to go by scaled scores, as accuracy is not a very reliable measure of performance on the GMAT) ' - I have been relying more on accuracy than on the 'Type of Question' which i get right or wrong. Also i have never practiced SC under 1 min, this will challenging at first, but I think this is doable for me. I am from IT Services Sales background, science and technology and business/economics related articles interests me, getting through boring history and politics related RCs , is very challenging. I am trying hard to learn 'the art of fake loving these types of topics' but i am not yet successful. Will practice more in coming few weeks and lets see how this goes. Thanks a ton and i appreciate your help :-)

Best Regards,

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi InsaneSatan,

Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your practice scores can become - and that's what happened here. By skipping sections, taking the CATs at home, taking them at different times of day, etc., you weren't properly training for the FULL GMAT 'experience.' By extension, your practice CAT scores were not accurate. In addition, getting to the Test Center late and not sleeping well for the last 2-3 weeks likely impacted your performance (and it's not clear how well you will be able to avoid these issues in the future).

Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. Unfortunately, the goal of raising a 420 to a 680+ in the timeframe that you've described is not realistic. With an August 12th Test Date, you have a little over 6 weeks of study time - but the 260+ points that you're looking to gain will require that you make big improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections - and all of that work will take time. It's likely that you will need at least another 3 months of consistent, guided study to hit your goal, so you might want to push back your Test Date.

1) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
2) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

InsaneSatan · Answer

Thank you Rich, for the detailed assessment,here are the answers to your queries:
1) When are you planning to apply to Business School? -  I plan to apply to B schools by Aug end.  
2) What Schools are you planning to apply to? -  I plan to apply in HEC, ESMT, Rotterdam Erasmus and IE University.  
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week? -  I will be able to take out 40-48 hours including weekends. 
 .

What do you think is an average improvement that one can achieve in 6 weeks of prep (I know this may be very vague question, and depends highly on one person to the other, but considering an average student with dedicated study hours defined )
Also, i believe that i used to get relatively higher scores in my practice exams in April end May start, i gave couple of full standard sets ~ 4 hours and i received 590, 610. I personally believe that since than I have seen decline in my scores week on week, so is it a possible scenario or I am just thinking unnecessarily a lot?
And lastly, how many practice exams ideally one should give in 6 weeks time frame? -I realized giving 15 exams and not reviewing was one of my biggest mistakes.

Thank you and I really appreciate you in taking out time for me and providing your valuable feedback.

Best Regards,

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi InsaneSatan,

While I believe you when you say that you scored higher during your practice CATs, I have no way of knowing how you took those CATs (and how many differences there were between how you faced your Official GMAT and how you took your practice Exams). We have one Official Score to use as reference (the 420), so we have to work up from there. Trying to estimate your potential score improvement over the next 6 weeks is impractical, but I wouldn't expect it to be more than 50-100 points. Of course, no one here knows what you're capable of, so you could gain more points than that. Keep in mind that it's considerably easier to raise a 420 to a 520 than it is to raise a 520 to a 620.

A CAT is really a 'measuring device' - when used correctly, it will give you a realistic score and help define your strengths and weaknesses, but it will NOT help you to fix any of those weaknesses. To raise your scores, you have to put in the necessary practice and repetitions. The CAT will show you whether your studies are helping you to improve or not. As such, you really shouldn't take more than 1 FULL CAT per week.

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

InsaneSatan · Answer

Thank you Rich, for your guidance :-)

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