Need help reaching the Elite score - 760 from 730

Question

I recently scored a 730 (Q50, V38, IR7) Though it is a decent score, given my demography - Indian Male, IT and the schools I am targeting, I need at least 750 to make my case (this is what I have been told by my consultant). This was my 5th attempt, and I thought I would be winding up GMAT prep once and for all. But unfortunately it seems there are some more miles left to go in this journey

My GMAT progress has been something like below: 1. 710 (Q49, V36), September 2020 (Online) 2. 690 (Q46, V38), September 2020 3. 680 (Q48, V35), December 2020 4. 720 (Q50, V38), July 2021 5. 730 (Q50, V38), August 2021 Mock Scores: 1. Veritas Prep Mocks 1-5: 710 (Q50, V38) 2. GMAT Mock 3: 760 (Q51, V41) GMAT Attempt 4 - 720 3. Veritas Mock 6: 760 (Q51, V44) 4. GMAT Mock 4: 770 (Q51, V44) GMAT Attempt 5 - 730 From the above stats, it seems I am stuck with a V38 and not able to progress further. In my 4th attempt, in which I scored a 720, I learned that RC is my area of weakness and hence spent the next 3 weeks mastering RC and scored a 730 with a 85th percentile in RC. But this time CR took a hit, as I took too much time for RC and as a result CR percentile dropped to a 65th. One positive I could see from my ESRs is that I have maintained above 94th percentile in SC. 5th attempt - 730 Describing my experience on the D-day here, so that experts can help me realise where I actually went wrong and help me rectify my mistakes. Since I have been to the same centre 3 times prior, I had no surprises there. I reached the centre on time. The invigilator even recognised me as I was there 3 weeks before

I was logged-in and assigned a station very close to the door(this might have been the deal breaker). During my 4th attempt I had explicitly asked the Pearson professional to assign me a station away from the door, so that I will be less distracted by the frequent opening and closing of the door as candidates move in and out of the testing are. But unfortunately this time, the testing area was already full and I was assigned the only station close by the door. Nevertheless, I asked for ear plugs and tried to reduce as much noise as possible and tried to concentrate. I tried not to think about all these external factors and to concentrate on the task at hand - score a 750. As I have always been comfortable with Quant, I chose the Quant -> Verbal -> IR -> AWA order. Quant Everything went perfectly fine with Quant. I was always on time and even ahead of time while solving questions. While I was attempting the last question, I had 4 minutes left on the clock. So, I thought I will relax myself and prepare for the dreaded Verbal section that is about to come up next. I thought I had easily scored a Q51, but on analysing the ESR it seems I got a couple of easy ones wrong. Also, as I could see from the ESR I was getting very difficult questions around 25 question mark, a question that was 6 lines long word problem with a lot of data. I knew right away that I was doing well, and attempted to solve the question as I had the luxury of being ahead on time. After solving for a while, I realised I may not be able to get the answer right. So, I just selected an educated guess and moved on. Rest of the section went very well. The dreaded Verbal I started the Verbal section well, and the first 2 quarters felt alright to me(It seems I got all of them right as I can see it in the ESR). The third quarter was where I got 2 difficult RCs, worded more than 500 words with 5-6 paragraphs. The questions were also difficult and this is where I kinda lost the plot with time management. Due to the RCs I was left with 5 minutes for 6 questions, and I had to rush through a couple CR questions, which I think I didn't get them right. I could only get the SC questions in them right, and had to blind guess CRs as a tradeoff. In the end, I see that this string of 5 wrong answers cost me a whole lot than I expected. I had a near perfect run upto the 27th question but faltered after that. Is it really fair that the final 5-6 questions brought my score down to a V38. I can't believe that.

IR and AWA I knew I didn't have the perfect finish to Verbal, but was hoping for a V40 as I knew I did the initial 3 quarters well. IR and AWA were a breeze and I didn't feel much difficulty there. Now, I am not sure whether I should retake the GMAT again for the 6th time(though I feel I can score better, but I am exhausted and time is running out for R1). Experts please advise !! bb GMATNinja ScottTargetTestPrep VeritasKarishma AndrewN

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

For Verbal, I've taught students "solving approach" which is something to consider working on. If, however, your issues are more related to fundamentals (i.e. parallelism on SC), it may be helpful to focus on them a bit more.

Might be helpful to see what kind of score combos may get you a 760.

All the best.

Might be helpful to see what kind of score combos may get you a 760.

All the best.

AndrewN · Answer

First of all Gokul20 , I am honored to be named alongside such company. I have taken a look at your ESRs, and there are a couple interesting points I would like to touch on: Verbal should not be a dreaded section of the test for you. No one who can answer every question correctly for half the test is poor at the task. Sure, you might be more comfortable with Quant, but by no means is Verbal a liability. I suspect that if anything, you are having trouble letting go and trusting your initial reads. Fact-checking takes time, and doubting affects your mental state on not just the question in front of you, but also on subsequent questions. (This downward spiral of doubt can produce huge swings in performance.) You will have to work on trusting your methods, even if you are unsure about a particular question. I am reminded of a wonderful post by GMATNinjaTwo in which the author discusses overcoming his own mental hurdles, including his aspirations of achieving a perfect score, by letting loose, so to speak. I think you could perform better if you would embrace the challenge that Verbal provides you. To follow up on that previous point, both ESRs show that the questions in the Verbal section did not jump in difficulty after the halfway point, a common trend among high-scoring—even perfect-scoring—candidates. I am looking at a few separate ESRs as I write this. In other words, you can take comfort in knowing that once you have crossed the halfway mark, the hardest questions (on average) are probably behind you. Your Quant performance "by fundamental skills" could not be any different between the two tests. In short, when you are only missing four questions or so across the section, you can be confident that you are strong in each general category. Also, I have to disagree with you that you missed "a couple of easy ones." Easy for you, perhaps, but the question difficulty graph shows otherwise: two Medium-High questions. I suspect you fell prey to making assumptions or latching on to a trap answer (since DS was stronger than PS). Moreover, you missed the first off-the-charts Hard question I have ever seen: Screen Shot 2021-08-10 at 11.19.31.png I suppose there is some luck involved in the exact questions you are fed, but I have seen Q51 ESRs in which test-takers have missed a question or two, including one such ESR from earlier this year, that did not have any questions like the one shown above. Perhaps there is some truth in the rumors that the test seems to be increasing in difficulty—again, depending on whether you happen to be the person who sees such difficult questions. In short, I do not think anything is holding you back conceptually from reaching great heights on the exam. I suspect that your timing issues stem more from some psychological component than from any particular problem with your technique. Thank you for thinking to ask me for my input. I hope my thoughts may prove useful to you. Good luck! - Andrew

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Gokul20,

Although I am unsure if you decided to retake the GMAT, if you do decide to move forward with a retake, to improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you have 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.

vv65 · Answer

"...2 difficult RCs, worded more than 500 words with 5-6 paragraphs. The questions were also difficult and this is where I kinda lost the plot with time management.... "
Your diagnosis seems right. If you hadn't had to rush in the last quarter, you would have had a 47+ score

"Is it really fair that the final 5-6 questions brought my score down to a V38"
Fair or not, that seems to have happened. Actually, it could be fair: given equal levels of accuracy in the first 3 quarters, someone who has enough time for the 4th quarter deserves a higher score than someone who does not. Right?

But I do think you were rather unlucky!
One of the two long RCs was certainly an experimental test passage that did not contribute to the score. Someone who receives easy experimental questions gets a big advantage, and vice versa. Difficult, time-consuming experimental questions can mess up a GMAT attempt.

This has something I've seen: a student's ESR showed that she spent an average of about 1:30 per verbal question. But she insisted that she had to rush through many questions because she was running out of time. The missing time must have been used for experimental questions, which are ignored in the ESR

Posted from my mobile device

KarishmaB · Answer

I don't see any reason for you to retake. You have a score more than 700 (comfortably) and more than 80 percentile in both Quant and Verbal. Plus a great IR score. There is nothing else you need from GMAT. You have already ticked all the boxes. A 760 will not make any material difference to your application but another bout of prep will take away precious time from the application process. Only if you get a 1, 2 or 3 on AWA do you need to think about retake. You can discuss more about this in a free consultation from our admission consultant here: https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#-sc ... valuation/

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Gokul20,

First of all, 730 with a Q50 is a solid score to secure. Congratulations! I doubt you need to retake the GMAT as such. Let me share my insights on this.

Bschools generally follow a holistic approach for the Admission criteria. The Adcoms look at your overall profile and not just the GMAT score in isolation. So, remember, it’s the overall profile that counts. Your chances of getting into a good B-school cannot be determined by any single factor such as your demography- an Indian male from IT background. You then need to take into consideration the various other factors such as target schools, programs, overall profile. So, even if you improve your score to 750 or above, you still might not get the benefit if you don’t have a good profile as per the Adcoms. On the other hand, if your profile is good, then again there is no need to add 20-30 points anyways. The idea is that if you are below average in one area, you can compensate in others. For example, you can work on your essay(s) to give an edge to your application.

However, the call is completely yours. If you still want to give it a try, I can help you with your Verbal prep.

The possible reason for struggling with time management in case of RC: 
Talking about the reason behind struggling with time management, you are likely taking more time to solve RC questions. The reason for this might be you are taking too long to read a passage or you might be going back and forth to the passage for every question. This happens when you don’t use the right reading strategies. Students often read the passage from a detail perspective and stuff themselves with the details. And once they come across an inferential question or a main point question, they cannot answer it and they read the passage again to find the answer. This would often lead to the wastage of time.

You may find this link helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjZUplucYeM

For GMAT Verbal, it is very important that you follow the right methodology and the logical approach. Your focus has to be on eliminating four incorrect choices rather than choosing the right one. The key is to develop a solid understanding of the concepts that are typically tested on the GMAT and master the process skills that are required to solve GMAT questions. Only then, you will be able to smartly avoid the traps set by the test makers and avoid taking too much time in solving questions.
  For SC – Follow the meaning based approach.  
 For CR – Focus on Scope Analysis and Framework driven Pre-thinking.  
 For RC – Involve yourself in the passage and understand why the passage is written and not just on what’s written.

This should help.

Feel free to reach out to me in case you have any more queries.
 
If you wish to discuss this over a call, you can schedule a free consultation call using the below link. Considering the effort you have put, I would really like to know the concerns and help you.

Click here to schedule a call

	Manhattan Prep: $99 Bonus Score Higher on Your GMAT Exam. Guaranteed.
	Target Test Prep - Save up to $599 $400 Discount + $99 Bonus GMAT Club Tests
	e-GMAT: 60% Off on GMAT Focus Get to 735+ from any starting point
	Magoosh increases your score, guaranteed - 15% off ALL Magoosh GMAT plans with code GMATCLUB15 + Free GMAT Club Tests.
	Experts' Global - ~~$1720~~ $960 End-to-End GMAT Prep + App Support: 150+ Videos, 2000+ Questions, 15 FLTs +
	GMATWhiz - $299 ~~$499~~ Experience the course through a free trial.
	GMAT Club Tests - Free Included with every course purchase of $149+ View all deals

Need help reaching the Elite score - 760 from 730

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards