Poor second attempt at the GMAT - Suggestions for retake strategy?

Hey Pratu27,

You are on the right track, not just in terms of preparation / performance but also in terms of strategy. Its good that you have looked into section wise details and identified relative weaknesses in RC and CR. Definitely you are doing poorly in inference type questions.

You are already preparing from a number of resources. We would suggest you stick to those instead to scrambling around for more. Doing practice and concepts from one / two good resources is sufficient.
For RC / CR, Manhattan prep guide books are good resources. You can supplement those with Aristotle prep books.

As for practice, you need to focus on accuracy than on speed. Speed is just a function of your grasp on concepts and practice in their application.
We hope you understand the message we seek to convey.

For any further advise, feel free to get in touch with us at www.toptiermba.org

All the best.

Cheers!
TopTierMBA

yashikaaggarwal Thank you for the link! Hopefully I will find what I need.

toptiermba Thank you for the recommendation!

ScottTargetTestPrep

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your suggestions and for the link to the article. I would love some advice on how to improve my RC and CR skills (I need all the help I can get!).
Additionally, do you have any recommendations pertaining to mental preparation? I honestly believe that it is fundamental to success on the exam.

Thanks & regards,
PratU27

PS: Apologies if I have deviated from custom by not quoting your post. Unfortunately as I only have 4 posts as of writing this post, I am not authorised to post URLs or links.

pratu27

You have increased you score by 40 points. That's big.

For Quant, learn to pace and up skill yourself with gmatclub test Quant. I am pretty surprised because the questions there have similar tone as gmat real test questions.

For verbal, you can use a lot of CR and RC questions in this forum.

Good luck

Posted from my mobile device

Hi PratU27,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not turn out better. 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:

Studies:
1) How long did you study before each attempt? For this 2nd attempt, many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials did you use during your studies for your 1st attempt?

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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). Since you've purchased the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you (and you can feel free to PM it directly to me if you would rather not post it publicly).

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

Hi EMPOWERgmatRichC ,

Thank you for your response and for taking the time to understand this further. Below are my responses to your questions:

Studies:
1) How long did you study before each attempt? For this 2nd attempt, many hours did you typically study each week?
A) 3 months before the first one. For the second attempt, I took some time off in between jobs and managed to do 4-5 hours of quality study for a month and a half straight (around 100+ hours from mid December 2019 to end Jan 2020). Once I joined my new job, around an hour everyday after work (Monday through Saturday) through February. Sunday was typically practice exam day.

2) What study materials did you use during your studies for your 1st attempt?
A) For the first attempt I took a math tutor, so I used some of his material, supplemented with OG only (not Quant OG). I also used Powerscore for SC, Aristotle for SC and subscribed to your EMPOWER program for a month (predominantly for SC - It clearly worked as SC is my strongest suit now).

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
A) Ideally 720+. I will have to reassess if my third attempt does not work out.

4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?
A) I was aiming for R2 of INSEAD for the term commencing September 2020. I may have to defer this to R3 for another GMAT attempt. I would also like to apply to the M7 business schools in R1 for the program term commencing September 2020. Again, this might have to be re-evaluated following my third attempt at the GMAT.

I think my main hurdle is my mental preparation. I freeze during the exam due to stress. This does not happen during the practice exams. Do you have any suggestions for tackling this?

Thank you for offering to analyse my ESR. I have sent it to you in a PM.

Regards,
PratU27

Hi PratU27,

I've sent you a PM with an analysis of your ESR and some additional questions.

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

Here is some advice you can follow to improve your CR and RC skills. I’ll start with CR.

To improve in Critical Reasoning, you first need to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice so you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

A major mistake that people make when training for CR, and for GMAT verbal in general, is that they do practice questions too fast. To get Critical Reasoning questions correct, you have to see exactly what's going on in the passages and answer choices, and it's likely that you won't learn to do so by spending a few minutes on each question. At this stage of your training, you may need to spend as many as 15 minutes on each question, learning to see what there is to see. Here is a way to look at this process: If you get a new job in a field in which you are not experienced, you may not be as fast as the other people working with you, but you know you have a job to do and you make sure you learn all the angles, so that you do the job well, if not as quickly as those around you. Rushing through the job and doing it incorrectly would not make sense. Then, as you gain more experience, you learn to do the same job more quickly. Think of Critical Reasoning questions similarly. Your job is to do what? To get through questions quickly? Not really. Your job is to get correct answers.

So, first you have to learn to get correct answers, generally at least 10 to 15 in a row consistently, and more in a row would be better. Doing so is your job, and if it takes you fifteen minutes per question to get correct answers consistently, then so be it. Only after you have learned to get correct answers consistently can you work on speeding up. Working quickly but not doing your job is useless. Better to work slowly and learn to do your job well. You can be sure that with experience, you will learn to speed up, and then you will still be doing your job well, i.e., getting correct answers consistently.

Finally, a key aspect of getting correct answers to Critical Reasoning questions is noticing the key differences between trap choices and correct answers. Trap choices can sound temptingly correct but don't get the job done. The logic of what a trap choice says simply doesn't fit what the question is asking you to find. So, to get better at your job, learn to see the key differences between trap choices and correct answers.

To improve in Reading Comprehension, you need to focus on understanding what you are reading. When you incorrectly answer Reading Comprehension questions, it’s partly because you didn’t truly understand what you read, right? Thus, you likely have to slow down in order to (eventually) speed up. At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking as much time as you need to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.

Another component of understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you are taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.

One final component of Reading Comprehension that may be tripping you up is that RC questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, a key part of training to correctly answer RC questions is learning to notice the differences between trap answers and correct answers. You have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly.

Regarding the mental side of the exam, here is an article that you may find helpful:

How to Eliminate GMAT Test-Day Anxiety

I’m here if you have any further questions.

Good luck!

Hi Scott,

Thank you for taking the time to give me such detailed advice. I truly appreciate it.
You're right about CR - I did run through the practice questions fairly quickly (and got most of them correct in practice). I guess during the real exam the stress and anxiety did not leave me with any clear strategies to eliminate wrong answers.
I'll take a crack at doing things slowly while practicing for my next attempt.

Thank you for the article on test day anxiety - It was a fantastic read and really resonated with me. I've bookmarked it to reread through my practice for my third attempt.

Best regards
PratU27

I'm happy to help! Feel free to reach out with further questions.