Is it possible to improve 650 GMAT after 2 attempts

Hi gmatStudent555,

Do not get disappointed. You can definitely improve your Verbal score if you do your preparation right. You need to learn the right methods and strategies along with the concepts to score well on GMAT. So, you start practicing questions only after you are done with learning the concepts and the methodology. This way there are less chances for you to get confused between two answer choices.

Here's how Akshat improved his score from 650 to 730 in just 24 days by focusing on the methodology and learning the right approach.



Having said that, it would be premature to give you any suggestions without knowing the complete information about your GMAT preparation. I can suggest you in a better way if you can give me some more information about the way you prepared till now, your weak areas and the way you approached questions. This will help me understand your concerns and guide you in a better way.

I think a one-on-one discussion would be more effective than replying here. We can get in touch over a call and have a detailed discussion regarding the study strategy and plan of action. You can use the below link to schedule a call with me.

Hi gmatStudent555

First thing you must do is to get an ESR report and find out what is the problem area

Keep in mind that improving from 650 to 700 is three times as tough as improving 600 to 650.

Get an ESR and share with me to give you the right suggestion. Every other suggestion will be generic and I refrain from giving only comforting suggestions. Afterall we must know whats the disease to suggest a prescription.

all the best!

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Do not take time off from work if you can invest about 2 hrs everyday to GMAT prep. Having 16 hrs at your disposal for a week will not make much difference, especially not for Verbal. Instead, make a routine of reading for an hour everyday and analysing Verbal practice questions. Usually when people say that they have run out of all material, it just means that they have attempted all questions. The value does not come from attempting them. It comes from analysing them from every angle possible - for every answer choice you should be able to see why it is wrong. Be prepared to read the question stem at least 5 times while evaluating the options. Know the types of questions you are asked in CR and RC - just telling yourself that it is a weaken question will reassure you that you can handle it. Know the most common errors in SC and identify them at decision points of every option.
Ensure that you practice Quant too over the weekend.

Thank you all very much for your answers, I really appreciate your help!
Sadly I can not use ESR as I only took ONLINE GMAT and it doesn’t work for these... but I will try to give as much details as I can on how I studied :

For the first attempt, I almost did nothing to prepare for verbal as I thought that the math was the difficult part and as I was pretty good in French classes and had no issues in English, I thought it was going to be easy (BIG MISTAKE ) so I only studied math but not very efficiently as I have an engineer background so I was already pretty confortable. Then two weeks before first attempt, I did my first practice test : I got Q48V30. I had two weeks before real test (but really 2 week-ends as I work full time) so I decided to study only Verbal. Basically I tried to do as much official practice questions as I could but in a completely inefficient way as I wasn’t really checking corrections. So I did not improve at all, I was never able to reach my first V30 and the more I studied, the lower my score was. I was stuck at V25 or below. I still did a first attempt with absolutely no hope and knew I would have to try again. I did 600 : Q46V25


After this, for the second attempt, I studied only Verbal and didn’t touch quant at all (at all my practice I was always getting 48 which I could improve but I thought I needed to improve Verbal first)
I started to study from the 1st January to the 14th of January. I studied only Verbal as said, during the week end only, which makes 7 week ends overall so 14 days -> approx. 6-7h each day. I tried to study after work but honestly I was to exhausted to be efficient.. during my study sessions, first I went through the entire Kaplan verbal methodo which helped as I had no idea there was any methods to deal with this then I practice doing basically all the questions from the official bank (sometimes with timer, sometimes without) and took time to understand why I was wrong when I was. You are absolutely right to say that I should go through every question again to understand perfectly why every choice is right/wrong and it’s a good new angle for practice.
I can see how I could improve on SC and CR but when it comes to RC... but to read 2 hours a day is a great advice!!

During my practice tests, I was usually doing 11 mistakes : about 3 SC, 3-4 CR and 4-5 RC. I struggle a lot with timer and I was very nervous both during practice and even more during test day. As I am nervous, I continually check the timer and lose my focus on the question (especially on RC)


My goal is 700 (as every one ) but I don’t have much time : I need to take it by the 20th of april (If I take it again) and I will still be working full time while studying. I am willing to take a week off for this if it can help me improve significantly.

Here you have the entire story, sorry for the very long post let me know if you need/want more details!

GMATWhizTeam, I will definitely schedule a call, thank you so much for offering!

Posted from my mobile device

What programs are you applying to? What is the desired score for such programs?

Having said that if you can score 650 then you can score 700+ as well. So you must remain positive and go for it one more time if you are not satisfied with your 650. You can do it!

Take the test only when you have fully prepared. You took the second test in Feb 2021. Your scores on quant have remained almost the same, while you have shown significant improvement in verbal. You may be able to improve on verbal if you can set aside time to focus on your specific mistakes.

Unless you can address your mistakes, there would be no point in taking another test very soon. You will make the same mistakes and receive a similar score. Take the test only when you are reasonably certain that your preparation has been different.

Great!! Looking forward

Hi gmatStudent555,

The good news is that 650 is a very nice start! 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!