Awful attempt got 560 (Q42,V25)

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 V25. 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 it helpful to read the following articles:

how to score a 700+ on the GMAT

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?
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Hi ruma2008,

Timing is very important, but you shouldn't spend any time worrying about it now (you're anyway going to get the ESR, and that'll tell you how you did in the last quarter).

Instead, focus on making sure that you get this right the next time.
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Hi Felipe,

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. It's interesting that your Official Score is similar to a CAT/mock result you mentioned back in mid-August (approximately 2 months ago). Since it's been 2 months since we last discussed your studies, before we discuss any of those potential issues with your Official Score, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying over the last 2 months:

1) What type of study routine have you been following? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials did you use during that time?
3) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks?
4) What are your current application plans?

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. If you would rather not post it publicly, then you can feel free to PM it directly to me.

760+: What GMAT Assassins Do To Score at the Highest Levels

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

Consider purchasing some Official Mocks. Working on solving approach for Verbal may be helpful, too.
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Thank you everyone for your time and advice, really appreciate it.

The result was a bummer since in the practice i was getting the questions correct in the right average of time, and if i got it wrong i did not waste extra time.

with respect to Rich questions
1) Studied 2 hours a day from monday to Thursday, Friday to sunday 2-4 hours. 1 Cat a week except for two weekends that i couldn´t
2) Used Official guide 2017 (did all SC and CR problems, almost all PS and DS), verbal review 2017 (SC and CR), Gmat Cat 1 and 2 (repeated 1, did not want to waste Cat to till before the test) MGMat cat.
3) The last cat was the friday before the test (Monday), i did the other cats Sptember 25th and before.
4) My application plans are to apply in Jannuary, have a 2nd attempt schedule for november 22 and if needed another one on december 20 (to be schedule)

I have 3 MGMAT Cat available and planning to buy 3-6 GMAT Cat

Attached is my ESR (sorry for the format, had some problems with PDF), feel free to PM with your insights.

Together with my las message and my ESR i have some question with respect to how to tackle this uphill.

1) should i give a cat this weekend MGMAT or Gmat cat 3? to get another perspective of where im standing? Suposing maybe my test was an outlier, or if it wasnt to confirm i have to make great changes.
2) Since my CR and SC are low should i restudy the strategy guides of this subjects.
4) What are your recomendations in Quant, Q42 was my lowest, my ESR showed i took to much time in the first 10 and had to recover that time.
3)I used all my official guide 2017, should i keep studing with another official guide ej 2022?
4) i also have some kaplan books from 2017?
5) In 2017 i did the Gmat and got 610? would you renstate this result? (i Canceled it)

Thank you in advance

Hi Felipe,

I've sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional questions. Since you just took the Official GMAT a couple of days ago, you should NOT take another CAT this weekend. We can talk through your other questions once we've had a chance to talk through the data in your ESR.

760+: What GMAT Assassins Do To Score at the Highest Levels

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

First of all congrats for your score.As you have 5 weeks you can subscribe TTP.it will immensely help you to ace a good score. Furthermore, do their tests with timer.

Best of luck.

Posted from my mobile device

Hi Felipe,

There's a simply question to ask yourself when your score on the Actual GMAT is lower than on your practice tests (mocks):

Did you prep for practice tests or the real GMAT?

It's a serious question because there are some realities on test day that you just can't recreate in practice tests (no matter how much you try to simulate real test conditions).

The end result is that your brain is even more distracted than it normally is (your brain is never 100% focused but when it reaches 50% in stressful situations you have play the Test Taking Game differently).

The key to overcoming test day drop-offs is:

1) Advance skills -- tackling questions with the most efficient approach
2) Test Taking Skills -- not fighting the test (since it's a test of executive reasoning) and answering question with a reasoning approach that matches what the test writers are looking for
3) Testing Simulation - practice testing ideally with a performance coach to both diagnose and address Test Taking skill gaps and optimize your strategy for each question type.

Happy to discuss more specifics related to your specific situation and set up a FREE diagnostic session if it makes sense.

Arvind
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