Guidance on study plan (710 to 750+)?

Question

Hi

I'm looking for a second opinion on areas I should focus on.
I've sat the GMAT twice, both with scores at 710.
Started studying start of this year, and took a break at end of April due to pickup in work intensity. Total time invested is ~200 hours of prep.
Want to score 750+, and have scheduled both a GMAT online and in person exams for next month (17 and 29 July respectively). Have scheduled two exams to mitigate the possibility of a COVID lockdown requiring a rescheduling, as well as to hedge against limited in person testing days.
Only study materials used are OG 2021 (done all questions), and little bits and pieces of the 2021 Verbal Review, Quant Review and Official Advanced.
I do have a heavy workload to manage against, but am willing to focus on the areas to get the score I want.

Performance History:
14/02/2021: GMAT Prep 1 - 760 Q50 V42 IR5 (after maybe 70 hours of study)
21/02/2021: GMAT Prep 2 - 750 Q49 V44 IR8
31/03/2021: GMAT Prep 3 - 750 Q50 V40 IR8
01/04/2021: GMAT Exam (In person) - 710 Q44 V42 IR8
22/04/2021: GMAT Prep 4 - 760 Q50 V44 IR7
24/04/2021: GMAT Exam (In person) - 710 Q50 V35 IR8

Recollections:
First GMAT Exam on 01/04/2021 - 710 Q44 V42 IR8
- order was Q, V, AWA/IR
- had minimal sleep night prior, exam was early morning
- writing implement was terrible, and completely threw off my Q performance
- the combination of test centre procedures, poor writing implement did not allow me to settle until maybe half way through my Q
- Q - definitely blew it in the first bit before recovering
- V - didn't have too many issues

Second GMAT Exam on 24/04/2021 - 710 Q50 V35 IR8
- order was AWA/IR, Q, V
- decided to put AWA/IR first to give me time to settle in
- exam was late at night, might have been too late?
- Q - had to guess the last few but otherwise ok
- V - seemed actually quite easy throughout, was very surprised by much worse score.

Both ESRs are attached for viewing - would love to get your insight on areas to focus.
Any advice you can provide is greatly appreciated!

Many thanks!

MathRevolution · Answer

Hello aom12,

Your current GMAT score is exceptional!
You can surely achieve your target score of 750+.

You can schedule a Comprehensive counseling session for 30 mins with one of our experts: https://calendly.com/mathrevolution for detailed advice on your study plans and also discuss your ESR.

We appreciate your time and patience in reading this reply.

Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

Success is within your reach.
Good luck!

Math Revolution Team

Russ19 · Answer

Hi,

Contacting with an expert such as  MartyTargetTestPrep  might give you a better insight into the strategies required for your next attempt.

Good Luck!

IanStewart · Answer

I looked at your two ESRs, and your testing history. First, the Q44 ESR is so unusual that it's clear there was something unrelated to your ability going on (you'd never see the timing/hit rate data in the second quarter of that section in particular under normal circumstances), so that score doesn't seem meaningful at all. So I wasn't surprised to read that an external factor affected your performance. You're clearly at a Q50 level now. From your study history, if I didn't know your score, I'd strongly suggest using material that teaches Quant concepts, to supplement the official problems, but you're already scoring Q50 without that. If you were to make some genuine improvement in Quant, that will most likely only increase your overall score by 10 points.

If you're aiming for a 750+, it's really the Verbal score that will make the difference. From your testing history, you appear to be at a V42 level right now. So if you could take a test tomorrow, and get your typical Q and V scores, you're already at your target. The main thing to do is to work out why you had the outlier V35 score, and do what you can to ensure you don't see another outlier on your next test. Looking at the ESR, your V35 test was strange. You say it felt easy, and that's because it was, unusually so. Some tests are, though, and when a test has mostly easier questions, you need an exceptionally strong hit rate to get an exceptional score. You did extremely well in fact up until the final quarter of the test, and you were probably on pace for a V42-V44 entering that stage. It was only the performance at the end of the test that hurt your score. What is unusual about that last quarter is that your hit rate, considering the questions were not above your level, was much lower than expected despite the fact that you had nearly 3 minutes to spend on each question. Often a weaker performance at the end of a test occurs because someone is rushing, but you were in the opposite situation. You'll know better than me if this explanation is plausible, but my guess is that, considering you did Verbal last, you might have been getting tired or losing focus at that point, after 3 hours of testing. If fatigue will affect your Verbal performance that significantly, that suggests you should not be doing Verbal as the last section of the test. The section order you chose for your first test seems preferable to me than the one you used on your second test, at least if you think you might have suffered from fatigue on your last attempt.

It is very hard to improve on extremely high Verbal scores -- there really aren't any prep materials that are aimed at V42-level test takers. You've been doing the right thing by focusing on official practice questions (they are much closer to the real thing than anything else you might use), and I'd suggest continuing to do that. I'd also expect if you took a test tomorrow you'd score somewhere in the V40-V44 range, so you really just need to make sure you perform normally on your next attempt.

If you did want to spend some time working on Quant, all of the prep materials I've developed were written specifically for high level test takers. In particular, if you need additional realistic high-level practice problems, I've prepared four long problem sets full of very challenging questions. Feel free to contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com if you might be interested in buying any of those, but as I said, any Quant improvement you make will only lead to a small overall score improvement.

Based on everything you've posted, I think you can be confident of reaching your goal score - you just need to have a normal test day. Good luck!

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Guidance on study plan (710 to 750+)?

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