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bakshiaashna
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GMAT 1: 630 Q47 V30
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EMPOWERgmatRichC
Hi bakshiaashna,

Many GMATers spend 3 months (or more) of consistent study time before they hit their 'peak' scores. Based on the timeline that you have described, by the time you take your 2nd Official GMAT, you will have put in around 2 months of total study time - so there might be a limit to how much you can improve.

While it might be tempting to try to 'cram' in a lot of study time over the next 4 weeks, 'cramming' rarely leads to great results on Exams such as the GMAT. In addition, if you're going to study 6-7 hours a day during this stretch, then you'll greatly increase your chances of 'burning out' before Test Day (which is something that we want to avoid). As such, I suggest that for every 2 hours of study that you do, you take one hour "off" (re: study for 2 hours, take 1 hour off, study for another 2 hours, take 1 hour off, etc. - the exception will be when you take your CATs, since those should each be done in a continuous 3.5 hour block).

Before I can offer you any additional advice for your studies, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) 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)?
2) What are your exact Official Test Dates?
3) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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


Mock 1- 02 Jan, 570 V29 Q39
Mock 2- 14 Jan, 590 V31 Q39
Mock 3- 24 Jan, 640 V 32 Q45

My test dates are Feb 6,2020 and Feb 26,2020

Applying to B Schools in First week of march, got my other parts of application almost ready. Just waiting to take the test
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Hi bakshiaashna,

Although it may be difficult to improve from 640 to 710 in just one month, there’s nothing wrong with giving it your best shot, right? Regarding how 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 quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for [the best quant](https://gmatclub.com/reviews/highest-ra ... or-quant-4) and [verbal courses](https://gmatclub.com/reviews/highest-ra ... -verbal-34]. You also may find my article with more information regarding
how to score a 700+ on the GMAT helpful.
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Hi bakshiaashna,

Based on your profile and your posts, it's not clear which specific Schools/Programs you plan to apply to, but if any of them are considered highly-competitive (re: Top 20 Schools, M7 Schools, etc.), then you might want to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement.

There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

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

You appear to have made some nice progress in your CAT Scores so far, but it's not clear whether your recent 640 is an accurate reflection of your current 'ability level' or not (since it's the only one at that higher level - and your first 2 CAT Scores were so similar to one another, so it's possible that this recent score increase is the result of some lucky guesses during that exam).

1) What "brands" of CATs/mocks have you used so far? Were each of these 3 CATs "new" exams (or did you take any of them more than once?)?
2) What is the minimum GMAT Score that you would apply with?

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