Urgent Gmat advise ( About retake)

As long as you did not cancel your first attempt, yes. If you did, just reinstate your score.

Also, make sure that you send your first score to your target programs. If you cancel your second attempt, your first score will not be accessible to programs that you selected this time around, unless you selected them the first time you took the GMAT as well. You'll have to get additional score reports if that is the case.

Hi,

Thank you very much for all of your responses. I am little bit frustrated and you helped lot.
I also appreciate your valuable answers about my situation.
In my first attempt, ı didn't study lot, and ended up with 610(Q49,V25) I thought my verbal score underestimates my ability since ı was performed well on standardized test before (99,9% percentile in university exam)
In my second try ı spent 40 days going through manhattan SC, RC, CR bible , Gmat club etc. Focused solely on verbal. I was confident about quant since ı scored 49 without too much study in first attempt.
In mock exams ı was consistently scoring around 700's. Average of 6 gmatprep is around 690. Manhattan cats averaged 680.
Kaplan cats averaged 690. In all tests ı never scored below 49, and consistently scored 50 easily (also in kaplan and manhattan)

2nd attempted ended up with 610 (Q47, V28) and ı was shocked, ı never get 47 even with no study in the first day ı solved a cat.
Also ı never scored below 30 in verbal during second time.

Do you have any idea what happened and what can ı do?

bb Sir, ı am not really familiar with the use of this forum but ı believe you can identify what happened

Hi cagi,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +/- 30 points of actual ability. Your 2 Official Scores show that you essentially performed the same each time (610 +/- a few points in the Quant and Verbal sections). You handle certain aspects of the GMAT consistently well, but you also make certain consistent mistakes. Since you were scoring higher on your CATs/mocks, we have to consider a number of possible reasons for the differences in your Scores. 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) On what dates did you take each of your CATs and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for each)?
2) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
3) Did you take them at home?
4) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
5) 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.)?
6) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

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 (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

Hello cagi

Yes your first score does count, as long as you actually didn't cancel your first score.

If you did cancel your first score, just reinstate it.

I believe that can be done for some fee.


It is not that easy to increase score, as many test takers believe it.

GMAT and GRE do test accumulative knowledge, those tests cannot be crammed.


For testing purpose I would not use Kaplan, just official tests, Manhattan and GMAT club test for quant, if you need additional practice.

From what you described seems like you just had bad test day.

Overconfidence can backwards also.

You can see that you did increase your verbal score from V25-V28, however you should not neglect quant in order to have higher total score.

Just study hard again and for longer period of time, I believe you do have time, since application window is usually in September, if that is the case, schedule your exam for some latest possible date, but still leave some space for another retake if necessary.


Good Luck with prep !

Hello cagi ....sorry that you could not reach the target score.

But, believe me it happens a lot. Here is what I would do :
1. Take a break ( absolutely no GMAT !!)
2. Think if its really important for you before you jump in the fire again.
3. Next time ------------
A. For verbal only concentrate on verbal ......and concentrate on why the wrong choices are wrong.... you will have ample material in this forum... and definitely go through the perspectives of the other users ......you may have to spend 5 hrs in a Q... but make sure you donot move on untill you are absolutely satisfied.
B. For Quant :
i. Use GMAT Club pdf (free !! )to refresh and/or learn the concepts tested in the exam.
ii. Start practicing 500 level Qs at the links below, and once I reach 90% accuracy I would move to 600 level.
iii. Similarly at 600 level I would strive for 80-85% accuracy and then move to 700 level.
iv. And then continue with 700 level ..... more the merrier !!


DS : https://gmatclub.com/forum/ds-question- ... 28728.html
PS : https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-ps-ques ... 27957.html



Hope this helps!!

Hi cagi,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. First off, you must understand that you really have not put in a ton of study time (only 40 days). Most GMAT test-takers spend around 3 to 5 months to achieve a 700+ GMAT score. That said, given that your actual GMAT score was lower than your scores on your practice exams, we really need to determine what caused that score drop. Stress could have played a role, but a more likely cause is that in your GMAT preparation, 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.

In my eyes, there is only one path forward, and that is to take a deep dive back into your prep (especially for verbal) so you can individually master each topic, starting with the foundations before moving to more advanced topics. For verbal, you have to learn to see more of what is going on in the questions and answer choices. Doing so will take working topic by topic, carefully answering questions as you work on each topic. You won't lock in a high verbal score by continuing to do what you did before this recent test. You have to adjust your training to become more skilled in clearly defining the differences between incorrect answers and correct answers to verbal questions.

In other words, you have to learn to make your reasons for eliminating choices less like these:

"This choice is too extreme."

"I don't see how this applies."

and more like this one:

"This choice seems to conflict with the premises of the argument but actually fits the constraints established by the premises and fails to attack the connection between the premises and the conclusion."

For quant, since you scored a Q47 (and as high as a Q49) on your first exam, it’s clear that you have a solid foundation. Thus, to improve your quant skills, you need to go through GMAT quant 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.

Moving forward, you may need to use some additional prep materials, so take a look at success stories of past GMAT students as well as reviews of various GMAT prep courses to see what prep materials have worked for other test-takers.

You also may find it helpful to read the following articles: The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT and How to Score a 700+ on the GMAT.

Feel free to reach out with further questions.

Good luck!