From scoring 710/720 on gmat prep to a devastating 600 on Real Gmat

Official GMAT PowerPrep tests are indeed pretty good predictors of your official score. In your case, however, your verbal score fell over 10 points on actual test. If you did not feel that your performance was severely compromised on the test day due to pressure or lack of sleep, it is rather difficult to account for such huge disparity.

So, I think you should definitely look at the ESR for your verbal section. Did you do especially poorly in SC, CR or RC? How many questions did you guess? Should a better time management help improve your score? To the last question, I am pretty sure the answer is Yes. But by how many points?

Wish you much better score next month!

Hi Ritika1990,

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. 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) 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)?

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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). Since you purchased the ESR, I'll be happy to analyze it for you. Before you can include attachments with your posts/PMs, you need to have at least 5 posts in the forums. If you would rather not go through those additional steps at this point, then you can feel free to email your ESR directly to me (at Rich.C@empowergmat.com)

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

Were you slow cause 1. it was more difficult than you were prepared for, or 2. you were being extra careful?

Everyone has a bad day sometimes, but since GMAT scores only tend to vary about plus or minus 50 points from your "true score," something went especially wrong for you on G-day.

Dust yourself off and try again!

Hey Zhanbo,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I myself believe Gmat Prep tests to be the closest predictor of the actual GMAT and even if pressure and lack of sleep did compromise my performance on the test day, I only need to understand if it could account for dip of 10 points on verbal? Or is it that my preparation is still not where it should be?



From the looks of the ESR, i can definitely see a dip on the last quarter of my Verbal section. My accuracy as well as my level of question difficulty takes a rather drastic drop for that last part. It can be explained by the fact that for the last part i was definitely running low on time and had to rush my way through the question. I did end up guessing rather 3-4 question in the end and remember seeing a rather big RC passage that i just couldn't read with my normal level of comprehension.
And Maybe thats why my RC score is below the other two.
And its actually like what you just wrote, my whole point of having this discussion is only to try and figure out if a drop of 10 points can be accounted for by my performance of that last quarter? Or is it that I'm just not as prepared for my verbal as i initially thought i was?
Gonna try adding my ESR report as Attachment later but its not letting me yet. Maybe you can give it a look and share your valuable insights further.

Hey Rich,
Really appreciate you takin out the time to help me with all this.
I'll try to share as much information as possible so you can guide me with this particular situation i'm stuck at.
As far as the two unlikely causes you mentioned, the only thing that comes to my mind is the fact that my exam centre wasn't exactly in my city. It was an 2 hour drive from my place so i decided to reach there one night before and get the proper sleep before i could head over to the centre in the morning. Now it might be partly because of the new place and partly because of the exam pressure but i definitely did not get a proper night sleep before the exam. I'v mentioned the same above.
But when it comes to the actual G-day, everything else was pretty standard. I gave my practice exams with the same exam conditions, no extra breaks, exactly at the same time of the day when my Gmat was scheduled.



1) I started with my Gmat preparations in August and have been keeping a consistent 4-5 hours a day study routine. (with some exceptions in between when i had to travel for 2-3 days every month)
2) Here are the details of my Gmat Prep Exams:

Gmat Prep 1 : 710 (V-41, Q-47) on 7th October 2019
Gmat Prep 2: 700 (V-38, Q-48) on 13th October 2019
Gmat Prep 3: 680 (V-35,Q-48) on 23rd October 2019
Gmat Prep 4: 710 (V-40,Q-47) on 11th November 2019
Gmat Prep 5: 710 (V-44, Q-43) on 12th November 2019
Gmat Prep 6: 720 (V-42, Q-47) on 13th November 2019

And then gave my Gmat on the 14th of November 2019.



3) I would be happy with a score of 720/730 and i truly believe its something i can achieve after all the time and practice I've given to the same. I researched on topics i couldn't totally grasp from books and I'v really tried my best to understand the base of things and not just apply some of the strategies to get the answer right.
4) I'm planning to apply for the B-schools starting next year ( 2020 Batch). I really want to apply for the second rounds since from what i hear, the third rounds are the most competitive. Most deadlines are for the 1st Week of January and I did some more research to find out we can apply with the unofficial Report in case the official isn't ready by then. Later of-course we have to provide the same. So my best judgement is telling me to go for the exam for around 20th of December.
5) My ambitious choices would be INSEAD and HEC Paris. I'm more inclined towards a one year MBA program.


Yes, that precisely why i decided to get the ESR. I was just desperately searching for some answers to how i bombed my Verbal.
There are a few things i did notice myself but would require an experts help to analyse properly:
1. I do remember not having enough time left with me for the last quarter of my exam and having to rush with the same. And that is pretty evident with the ESR as well, my accuracy and question difficulty took a nose dive for my last quarter, How large of a point drop could you say this might signify?
2. Also my performance for RC is a little off from my PREP performance reviews. Again this might be because of the fact that i encountered a long RC passage towards the end that i just couldn't provide the time it required and had to hurriedly rush my way across.

Let me try to attach the ESR report below but in case it still Doesn't let me, i will definitely mail you the mail. It would be immense if you could help me understand it better.
Thank you so much

So its still not letting me attach the ESR here. I'v gone ahead and mailed you the same.

Any insights would be immensely appreciated

Hey philipssonicare,
So i'd say it was mostly because of 2.
I was trying to be extra careful so i don't select any of the trick options towards the beginning of the exam.
I read a report somewhere that said, if you get questions wrong towards the beginning, you aren't able to reach your potential score later on. Well right now, i guess i feel missing questions towards the ends have a pretty similar effect and not less.

Hey mcelroytutoring,
Thank you so much for the words of motivation.
Believe me, its something i wish to follow myself but I'm really low on time if i wanna make that second round deadline so i can't afford to miss my next chance. Plus with exam being that expensive, i can't see myself taking it over and over again.

I just need to figure out what went wrong the first time and how i can avoid it for my next attempt before i can book that next appointment.

Hi Ritika1990,

I've sent you an email with an analysis of your ESR and some additional questions and notes.

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

Hi Ritika1990,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

The good news is that you scored really well on quant, right? That said, I understand that you are not satisfied with your verbal score, so the question we need to ask is why you scored so high on your practice exams but lower on the real 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 V28. 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 my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!
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Sufficient sleep before test day and balanced nutrition are required to perform well in real gmat. Make sure you have all that for your next exam.

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I can give you a detailed analysis of what could have happened.
Kindly text me later in the PM and please give a reattempt asap
It seems as if you just had a bad day?
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Hi ritika.

Something similar happened with me in may this year.

My case..
1. I was underprepared.
A. Didn't pre think on thw answer choices.
B. I wanted to get the exam done asap.
C. I under estimated the exam because of my 700 plus scores in mocks.

Though i am not a gmat killer but i guess above points might apply to your case as well.

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Your mock scores are much more than what you scored on the real GMAT. I feel you just had an off day.

Just recollect yourself. Whatever that has happened, has happened! No one can change it. Learn from what has gone wrong and try that the same mistakes are not repeated. I feel you will do better in your second attempt.

All the best!
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Hi Ritika1990,

I suppose you have retaken your gmat and scored as what you expect. Kindly share your update (experience on prep and 2nd gmat test day). Thanks

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