Online Gmat - at home

Hi vijk,

I'm sorry to hear that your 2nd attempt was so problematic; obviously, we won't know how much it may have impacted your performance until you receive your Official Score, so I hope that you post back here once you have received it.

In the meantime, if we proceed with the idea that you will take the GMAT again, then it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) How long have you studied in total? Over the last month, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what 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)?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Hey Rich, I got the score and I scored very badly. a 610 Q 33 and V 40. I am not sure if the Quant going down from 44 to 33 is because of having to wait so long or it is something else.

I usually studied for approximately 20 hours a week for the last 3-4 months, completed OG 19 and verbal review and a local test prep but it was not really helpful for quant. I haven't studied traditional math in over a decade.

I took 4 mocks, first was just after I completed the verbal study and scored a 580, Q 31 n V 40
2nd 700, Q 44, V 41, 3rd 600 Q 35 and V 38, 4th 710 Q 46 and V 41.

I am right now out of ideas on what to do. I do realise my quant is not great and at times end up doing 3-4 questions wrong at a stretch which hurt my score.

My target is Indian schools, and I require a score above 700 to have a chance of an admit.

I will be very thankful if you could suggest something.

Hi vijk,

I'm sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Looking at your practice exams scores, I would not say that the GMAT was not a total disaster. Regarding how to move forward with a retake, to improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable, and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. 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.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the best quant and verbal courses.

You also may find my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

Hi vijk,

I've sent you a PM with some additional notes and questions.

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