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paulakincaid2018
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EMPOWERgmatRichC
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Hi paulakincaid2018,

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. If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) On what dates did you take each of your CATs and what were your Scores on each (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)? While assembling this data be a tedious task, this type of information helps to define patterns and potential 'procedural' issues in your schedule over the last several months.

2) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
3) Did you take them at home?
4) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
5) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
6) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. 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 (and what you should work on to score higher). You don't have to purchase the ESR for both of your Exams (just the most recent one would be fine). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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Hi paulakincaid2018,

I’m sorry to hear how things have been going with your GMAT. Before providing specific advice regarding your score drop, I’d like to learn a little more about your situation with the GMAT. Once you provide us with the score breakdowns and dates of your practice GMATs, I can provide some detailed advice.
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Hello everyone. Thank you for your encouraging words. It's definitely been a rough couple of days mentally for me. This really has me upset. But I tried to find most of my practice tests with dates and breakdowns and I have included them below. Please see those as well as my ESRs from my canceled score of 520 and my score of 540. I removed personal data from the PDFs. If anyone has suggestions on certain tests to go back and review (which I have already reviewed them all but I will gladly do it again to see which concepts were my weak points) and taking the GMAT ESRs into consideration, please let me know.

PK
Attachments

File comment: 2nd GMAT Enhanced Score Report
NOV21stESR.pdf [479.23 KiB]
Downloaded 63 times

File comment: 1st GMAT Enhanced Score Report
NOV1stESR.pdf [489.5 KiB]
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File comment: Picture of all of my practice and real tests with breakdowns
Screen Shot 2018-11-27 at 1.58.18 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-11-27 at 1.58.18 PM.png [ 312.02 KiB | Viewed 1824 times ]

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Hi paulakincaid2018,

To start, the process of taking (and reviewing) a CAT requires a significant amount of energy and effort - and takes time to 'recover' from. This is one of the reasons why you typically shouldn't take more than 1 CAT per week - and your last CAT should be taken about 1 week before Test Day. In the 9 weeks before your 1st GMAT, you took 18 CATs which is about DOUBLE the number of CATs that you should have taken. As such, there's a reasonable chance that you experienced some 'burn out' on Test Day (and you might not have properly recovered before your 2nd attempt).

Before we discuss the data in your ESRs, I would like to know a bit more about your CATs. While I don't expect you to describe each of your CATs in detail, I would like to know whether there were any general patterns about how you took your CATs:

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
3) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
4) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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Hi, Rich! Thank you for the response.
1) in the beginning, I was not taking the entire test. I always have my order represented in verbal-quant-IR-AWA.
2) the practice cats that I took were started any time between 9am and 11am. The times did vary slightly. The best time I perform test wise, is starting roughly around 10:00am. The only times the real GMAT tests are offered at the testing center are either at: 8am, 12pm, or 3pm. For my first GMAT in the testing center, I took it at 8am and the second GMAT was at 12pm (noon). I personally like testing early in the morning better.
3) no, I did them all the same: I skipped my 8 minutes breaks and never paused the exams or did anything differently than I would have for the real exam.
4) no, I did not retake any practice tests or run into any questions that I had previously answered.

The reason why I continued to take so many practice tests was because I didn’t want to forget the feel of the pacing or take a chance on forgetting any material that i might have learned. (Or any tricks)

Let me know what you think.

PK

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paulakincaid2018
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Sorry if I confused anyone with posting under my old GMAT account. Apparently when I used the GMAT Club app on my phone to respond in the forum, it was logged in to my old GMAT Club account. When I got married, I switched all of my accounts over to my new email and for GMAT club, I had forgotten that I actually created an account versus just viewing the forums as a guest. I actively use the paulakincaid2018 account so if anyone has any messages, you can send it to that account. :)

PK

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