Not a glamorous debrief - 660 (Q45,V35)

Question

Not a glamorous de-brief but then what else you can expect with a username like that. Huh. Anyways, I am sharing this to come back to this in some time, when hopefully, I would have achieved my score. I need a 760 (Indian, Male, Engineer, IT) for my target schools. Hopefully, I can stay long enough in this fight to achieve it else who knows - Life goes on, will try something else.

So, I took the GMAT exam today and scored 660(Q45, V35). I prepared for about 5 months. Did all that was suggested by experts: error logs - constant revisits, review questions, and practice. But I don't want to talk about that. It's not an interesting thing. The interesting thing happened about a week back. Interested, Read about it here : https://gmatclub.com/forum/mistakes-acknowledge-embrace-and-tackle-367303.html#p2847834 My GMAT Official Mock scores : July 17 - Mock 1: 640 (Q49, V27) July 31 - Mock 2: 650 (Q49, V31) August 7 - Mock 3: 650 (Q50, V28) August 14 - Mock 4: 620 (Q49, V26) August 26 - Official Test: 660 (Q45, V35) When I saw the score, my eyes went to cumulative and it said 660. Expected. Then I saw Verbal as 35 and Quant as 45. I let out a smile as I saw those scores. Took 10s to take it in and have been thinking about the score for some time. The last 2 weeks have been quite interesting. I have thought a lot about different stuff and have got a better understanding of what GMAT is all about. One of the interesting things that happened was that I realized - what practice means? I have written a small post on that if interested read this : https://gmatclub.com/forum/reasoning-behind-the-lazy-advice-practice-and-you-will-improve-367304.html#p2847848 I will try for Round 2, so thinking of taking the test again during the last week of November. Any suggestions on how to move forward or just encouragements. All welcome. One Last thing: I was at the Pearson Vue Gurugram Centre - It's awesome. Take care, Stay safe.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi L0S3R,

660 is a nice start!

To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need 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.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find my article with more information regarding  how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

VirFortis · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep

Thanks for the detailed response. I had done self study for my first attempt and had followed a similar method as you described here. Recently, I have realized that my progress was stagnant because my prep was not structured enough and didn't involve a constant check on my strengths and weaknesses.

For Quant, it's weird because, I scored well in my mocks and in my analysis found that I used to do one of the following mistakes: calculation mistakes, improper pattern recognition, and misreading a question. Conceptually, I didn't see any gaps. And I tried to work on those, but evidently, I am missing something and the combination of the above mistakes would have taken me down in the official.
For Verbal, I identified SC as an area of weakness, which I tried to resolve and have started to get 80-85% accuracy. CR and RC take a lot of time. I agree with your point to identify - the missing elements in the thinking to drive away from a correct answer and towards a wrong one. I have done that to some extent, but there is still some work to be done there. Again, a structured approach to the prep might work here.

I realize, from a GMAT perspective, I am at a good starting point and can benefit from moving from here in a structured manner - in form of some TestPrep that can analyze my weak areas and nudge me towards improvement. Doing it all by yourself, with a gruelling job is exhausting.

Anyways, I am going to take a week off to clear my head. Then let's see what future holds.

Thanks once again for the detailed advice.

Stay safe.

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi L0S3R,

To start, a 660/Q45 is a solid performance. While it's understandable that you want to retest, it's worth noting that the 760+ score is the 99th percentile - meaning that 99% of Test Takers never score that high (regardless of how long they study or the number of times that they take the GMAT). Thankfully, NO Business School requires a score that high - so it's important to realize that the score that you "want" and the score that you "need" are not the same thing. Regardless, you have a great opportunity to pick up points in BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. In the interim, taking a little 'time off' from your studies is fine. The next phase will require that you make some fundamental changes to how you 'see' (and respond to) the Exam, so having a clear head will likely make that whole process easier.

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) What type of study routine have you been following? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
3) You listed 4 CAT results, but were those the only ones that you took? On what dates (or approximate 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 and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

Since you took your Official GMAT at a Test Center, 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 on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

VirFortis · Answer

Hi  EMPOWERgmatRichC

Thanks for taking the time to respond and being generous enough to offer your insights and guidance.

First, answers to your questions :

1) What type of study routine have you been following? How many hours do you typically study each week?
 Ans: Till last week, I had been studying 2-3 hrs per day over the weekdays and 5-6hrs over the weekends. Typically, I go through my notes, topics that I need to work on for that day and then practice. During the week-day sessions - I am typically able to do 10Qs per day. It takes me a lot of time to do analysis and making notes (I maintain a OneNote for this). Over the weekends - it's either Mock tests + Review or more problem-solving. 
2) What study materials have you used so far? What “brands” of CATs/mocks have you used?
 Ans: For Quant - I have gone through the Manhattan books and GMATClub Math Book; For verbal - I went through Powerscore CR Bible and Manhattan SC books. The mocks that I took were all official mocks.  
3) You listed 4 CAT results, but were those the only ones that you took? On what dates (or approximate 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)?
 Ans: I had already mentioned the required details in my original post. 
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?
 Ans: I am planning to apply in Round 2.
B Schools that I am targeting are - Harvard, Standford, MIT Sloan, CMU Tepper, Michigan Ross, NYU Stern(Tech MBA)

Additional Points :

I am an Indian male who is an engineer by profession working for the past 7 years in IT as a software developer. I am from an over-represented pool. Yeah, I have some sports, some extracurricular and some leadership experience along with some giving-back-to-society experience. But, I cannot prove anything and by the look of it, everyone from India applying for MBA, in my target schools, already has all of it and are way better. Even a 760 doesn't guarantee me an interview in most of my target schools, but the score for sure gives me a better chance to at least get an interview. Less than that and the ad-com would not bat an eye before they push my profile away saying "Already have one like you". So, from my research, for my profile, getting a 760 on GMAT is important. If I cannot get it, I am willing to let the pursuit of an MBA go, but for now, I fight.

I agree that I need to change how I approach the exam, this time around to not only break into 700 but confidently achieve my target score. I have already done a lot of analysis on my initial approach and found a few faults - the major one being - not having a structured system to do the analysis of my strengths and weaknesses and working on them one by one, level by level. Because I managed the complete thing on my own - I somehow fluffed or maybe I was a bit lazy or impatient to move forward just because I used to get questions right. Need to work on each type of question, with different level of difficulties for each topic. But doing that on your own can be exhausting at times. So, I am still thinking on how to approach this further. Any suggestions or guidance in this regard would be helpful.

I have just received my ESR. While going through it, I noticed a weirdly surprising thing - In Quant it says, I have attempted 30 questions, though I am sure, I selected a choice for Q31 but didn't press Next. Or maybe, I didn't attempt at all. Not sure, anymore. It all seems a blur now. Wow!

Please find my ESR attached. Please help me with the analysis and provide your valuable insights and guidance.

Thanks again. Stay safe.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

I'm happy to help!!

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