Please help - scored 630 after getting 730-760s on practice tests

Question

Hi GMAT Club community,
Today I took the real GMAT after months of prepping in quarantine, where I had been studying pretty seriously 2-4 hours everyday for the last 3 months. I had studied a bit in the fall of last year, but gave up as life responsibilities were catching up with me, and started again in earnest in April of this year. I had been scoring really well on my practice tests (the official practice tests from the official site), so went into the test feeling fairly confident.

Today, I scored a 630 - Q42, V34. I was shocked and very disappointed: my last few practice tests had all been in the mid-700s range, and I was hoping for at least a 700 to be able to apply to the Top 5 schools.

Here is some of my more recent practice test history from 2020:

4/18/20 Manhattan Prep #6, 640 - Q42, V36
5/10/20 Manhattan Prep #1A  , 680 - Q45, V37
5/31/20 Manhattan Prep #2A  , 720 - Q43, V45
6/9/20 Official Practice Test #1  , 760 - Q49, V44
6/27/20 Official Practice Test #2, 730 - Q47, V44
7/2/20 Official Practice Test #3, 750 - Q47, V45

I had been seeing steady improvement over the last few months and really kicked up both of my raw scores in May after really focused study. I was extremely disappointed today to receive such a lower score on the real test - lower than even my test back in April. It felt as if all the last few months of studying had been for nothing, and that my last few practice tests had just been false positives. I cancelled the scores because as I said, I'm only hoping to apply to the top business school programs and felt that I needed at LEAST a 690, ideally 700+ to be competitive.

For further context, I'm an American female who went to school at an Ivy League college with a 3.75 GPA, and am currently working in Sales Strategy and Operations at a large tech company. I don't have any language disadvantages, and I'm particularly disappointed by my Verbal score, which somehow completely plummeted despite normally being my stronger section (and scoring in the mid-40s on my last few tests). I feel like there's not much more content I can learn, except maybe having better strategies and learning how to minimize my anxiety, because I'm honestly at a loss for how different my scores are from my practice exams.

If anyone has any advice or anything similar happened to them, PLEASE do let me know - I'm feeling pretty discouraged after today's disastrous result.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi micahahaha23,

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:

1) Did you take the At-home GMAT or did you take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) Did you take any other practice CATs/mocks besides the ones that you listed? 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)?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

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

Goviz · Answer

micahahaha23, very sorry to hear that you could not score 700+ despite of scoring 700+ in most of the practice exams u took. But please make note of one important factor-> the actual exam is tougher than the practice ones(especially the Q part) . You need to be scoring Q46+ for you to score a Q49 in the actual exam. What I get out of ur breakup score is that there is a lot of delta in Q.

All the best

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi micahahaha23,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your 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 630. 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?

micahahaha23 · Answer

Hi there, 
1) I took both the at-home GMAT and the test at a facility, back to back (Monday and then Wednesday of the same week). I knew I flunked the at home test, because I left two of the last Quant questions blank. The score for that test was also a 630, but with a Q39 (which I expected, since I messed up the timing...was really upset about that) and V36, so still a much lower Verbal score than I was used to.

2) I've mostly been studying out of the Official Guides and have used the Manhattan Prep practice tests. I also went through the Fundamentals of Math book about a year ago.

3) This is getting really far back, but here are my scores on the Manhattan Prep tests when I took them a verrry long time ago:
Official Practice Test #1, 620 - Q42, V34  
9/15/19 Manhattan Prep #1, 570 - Q37, V31
9/28/19 Manhattan Prep #2, 640 - Q43, V34
10/12/19 Manhattan Prep #3, 630 - Q42, V34
1/2/20, Manhattan Prep #4, 600 - Q42, V32 (this was after 3 months of not studying)
2/23/20 Manhattan Prep #5, 640 - Q42, V35 (after studying a bit for a month and a half, basically back to where I was before)
So you can see that it was really only in the last few months that I started scoring really well on the practice tests. The ones I took last fall I almost saw as "flukes", because I was taking tests but not reviewing thoroughly or studying as much as I should've been.

4) I'm hoping to apply Round 2 of this year (January 2021).

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

Don't feel discouraged because of today's performance. Such an incident may happen because of several reasons. While your retake scores in practice exam cannot be inferred as your real level but looking at your other scores it seems you might have had an off day. For the 720, and 750 that you scored in your last two official practice exams, did you give the exams in timed conditions and with any retakes? Did you see any familiar questions?

Just recollect yourself and go for it with full force one more time.

Navski · Answer

Hey Mica,

So I have been in your shoes many times and have had a similar issue of doing better at home vs in the test center. Scoring between 640-670 consistently and my highest score on the real test was only 570 (taken 3 times).

At first I blamed it on bad luck, test nerves, etc. which all probably play some factor but not to this extent. Recently I have had a shift in mindset and maybe you can try this out on a practice test and see how you feel.

From what I can tell it seems like me you have a time management issue rather than a lack of ability. If you’re anything like me you like me you don’t like giving up a question because you’re so close to the solution.

I have started to realize this way of approaching the GMAT is forcing me to guess where I don’t want to or rush through other questions.

I noticed that after a certain amount of time no matter how much time I spend on a question there is a 80-90% chance I’ll get it wrong. Usually 2 mins for most quant questions and about 1:40 for sc, 2:10 for CR. If I get to this time mark and am still confused I’ll just let the question go.

What this will do is give you more time to focus on your strong points. There is no reason to stress your self about difficulty of questions. I have done mocks where I felt these questions were too easy I won’t even get a 600 and ended up with 650. You shouldn’t spend time judging the question or worrying about your score. Just treat the actual exam like a mock and not worry about my performance.

This is easier said then done. It’s really hard to let go of questions and skip it’s so counter intuitive to the way we have been taught. The gmat test our decision making abilities under a time constraint. Time is such a precious resource and we shouldn’t waste it on questions that we don’t have a good probability to get correct.

If you go through your mock exams I am sure there is about 4-5 questions on each section that you’re like oh yeah I could have easily got this had I been more calm or had more time. That might be the difference you need.

Best of luck on your exam, don’t put too much pressure on your self, and take things a day at a time! Persevere and you will get there!

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi micahahaha23,

I've sent you a PM with some additional notes and questions.

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

leavenworthgmat · Answer

hi  micahahaha23 , congrats on improving your score and applying! we have very similar background, and i myself ended up in a similar boat (700s on OG practice test, but lower on the actual exam). I am prepping to retake within a month or so.  would you mind outlining your path to getting 720 in your retake?

thank you in advance, it means a lot!

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

leavenworthgmat

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Please help - scored 630 after getting 730-760s on practice tests

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