ADVICE ON 710 SCORE

Hi JobnSpecter,

First off, great job with 710. Regarding your chances of acceptance to a top business school, you may find it helpful to reach out to one of the many admissions consultants here on GMAT club. In any case, since you plan to retake the GMAT, here is some advice you can follow to improve both your verbal and quant skills.

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.

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!
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Hi JonSpecter,

First off, a 710/Q50 is an outstanding Score, so you can comfortably apply to any Business Schools that interest you. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Since you've named some highly-competitive Schools, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

There's no harm in continuing to study though - and with a V34, you would have lost significant points in at least 1 of the three major Verbal categories (RC, SC or CR). Before we can discuss how you might best proceed with your studies (if you choose to), it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your prior studies:

1) How long have you studied? How many hours do 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)?

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 on Test Day (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

You may get better response if you ask this question to admission consultants!
https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... 4/?fl=menu
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Whatever you decide, let me tell you JonSpecter
710 for a first attempt is really a great score, not everyone scores this high

Congrats for the same & best of luck for your apps or your next attempt !!

JonSpecter - Definitely take the GMAT if you come from a competitive background. US B schools these days require a high GMAT score. Many of our students were waitlisted at 710/720 mark and were admitted by Scholarships by the same schools when they improved to a higher score. Below are a few examples:

Ayush: Waitlisted (710) by ROSS and then with a 750 - admitted with scholarship by ROSS and Columbia.
Nishant: Rejected by various schools in R2 and accepted with scholarships with 740.
Krishna Kanth: Received 15 rejections but got four full fellowships once he improved his score to 720.

You can watch Ayush's video below:



So overall, improve to 740+ to increase your chances of receiving an admit and scholarship from a US B school.

-Rajat
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