Q44 twice, can somebody help me figure out what I'm doing wrong?

Question

Last month I took the official exam for the first time and I scored 690(Q44,V40), I decided to retake it since I managed to score higher in my practice CATs...

So I took my second official exam last week and I scored 690(Q44,V40) again! I got a 740(Q47,V46) in my last practice CAT 3 days before the exam, so I am naturally quite disappointed and I absolutely want to retake it...

I bought the 2 Enhanced Score Reports, which I'm posting attached (first exam on the left, second on the right). Do you guys have any idea why I can't get a higher quant score even after a month of quant preparation? Did this happen to any of you?
I used MGMAT and an online course already...

I would be very grateful to anybody who could give his honest opinion on what I'm doing wrong and on how I could finally improve!

Enhanced Score Reports for the quant section (in case you can't see the attachments): https://postimg.cc/KKv78p0V
https://postimg.cc/2bpmTnRk

Attachments

Screenshot 2019-05-09 at 10.55.32 AM.png [ 1.87 MiB | Viewed 2513 times ]

Screenshot 2019-05-09 at 10.10.25 AM.png [ 1.34 MiB | Viewed 2502 times ]

Enhanced Score Reports for the quant section (in case you can't see the attachments): https://postimg.cc/KKv78p0V https://postimg.cc/2bpmTnRk

TheUltimateWinner · Answer

michele98 
Is your quant score biased anyway? I mean- did you study any question from GMATPrep mock before this mock (740(Q47,V46)?

What do you mean by this? Are you talking about "interact" or "taught by Manhattan course tutor"?

michele98 · Answer

No I haven’t, all the questions were new for me.

I used just the MGMAT books and a separate online course, which was pretty much useless imo...

Posted from my mobile device

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi michele98,

Sorry to hear about your experience. From your ESR, I can see you are having difficulties solving Geometry and Percent/Rates/Ratio problems which might be bringing your scores down. It would be wise to spend some time on improving these topics before giving your exams again.

I must add that if you are particularly looking to discover and improve on your weak areas in Quant; a subscription to GMATCLUB tests is the best way to do that. They are indeed phenomenal and will not only pinpoint your weak areas but also help you improve on them.

Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas.

Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practise tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that.

I would also encourage you to purchase GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice.

Hope this helps. All the best!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi michele98,

You seem to be well positioned to score high on the GMAT. At the same time, despite your scoring a 740 on your practice exam just a few days prior to your GMAT, I think that, since you scored Q44 on both your official exams, it’s clear that you still have quant weaknesses that are getting exposed on test day. That said, I want you to be very careful about falling into the trap of focusing on micro-details based on your ESR and thus misdiagnosing your weaknesses. Since your ESR is based on only 31 quant questions (a very small sample size), it may not give you a complete picture of what to focus on going forward. For example, although it may seem that you are rock solid in Equal/Inequal./Alg, you can’t know for sure right? Perhaps you saw questions that fit your skill set well or had some lucky guesses in those topics. Furthermore, there is no way to know HOW MANY questions you were given from those topics, right?

A few things do seem clear. For one, your ESR seems to indicate that you are not strong in GEOMETRY or RATES/RATIO/PERCENT. So, by becoming super-strong in those areas, you would likely score a few points higher in quant.

Overall, we know that your quant score currently stands at 44 So, to improve your quant score (once and for all) you need to go through GMAT quant 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 and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions 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.

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 quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant courses .

You also may find it helpful to read the following article about  how to increase your GMAT quant score .

Please reach out with any further questions.

Let’s do this!!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi michele98,

Back in early April, I posted the following message to your post in the Shared Experience sub-forum; since there was no follow-up, I'm not sure if you ever read it. The basic ideas are still the same though:

------------

Based on your CAT Scores and Official Score, you're clearly a really strong critical thinker - which is great. However, it sounds as if you are treating the Quant section of the GMAT as a "math test", while it is NOT that at all. It's actually a big 'critical thinking test' that requires lots of little calculations as you work through it. Thus, to score at a much higher level in this section, you need to become more of a 'strategist' and less of a 'mathematician.'

Many Business Schools view an Applicant's Quant Scaled Score as an indicator of how that Applicant might handle the 'academic side' of the Program - and a Q44 won't impress anyone. Highly-Competitive Programs (and especially Finance Programs) place a heavy emphasis on the Quant Scaled Score. With a Q44, you likely know most (if not all) of the math just fine, but you made some little mistakes as you worked through the section and you missed out on LOTS of 'strategy-based' points. This is meant to say that by focusing on Quant Tactics, you'll be better able to increase your GMAT Score AND better impress how Business School Admissions Officers will view your potential to handle the Program.

-------------

While the data that you've provided provides some vital information about your performances, I'd need to see the FULL ESR for each Exam to get a better sense of how you 'respond' to the overall GMAT (and how that might be impacting your Quant performance). If you would rather not post that information publicly, then you can feel free to PM or email me your ESRs directly.

Beyond that, before I can offer you any additional advice, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) On what days did you take each of your CATs and how have you scored on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
2) What application deadlines are you considering?

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

IanStewart · Answer

Unless I missed it, I think you left the most useful part of the ESR off, the pacing breakdown. That breakdown gives you the context you need in order to understand the "Percent Correct (First/Second/Third/Last)" splits. In test #1, for example, you had 29% right in the Third section of the test, which is roughly what you'd get by near-random guessing. But without timing information for that section, it's hard to know what that 29% means; if you spent 0:30 per question there, then your hit rate is exactly what you'd expect. If instead you spent 2:30 per question there, then something went wrong during that part of the test.

If you perform the same way on several GMATs, your scores will usually be very similar, with some natural variance because of luck (because sometimes your guesses work out well, sometimes not, and because sometimes the question types work out in your favour). If you were consistently scoring Q47+ on official diagnostics, then two Q44s on test day would be, probabilistically speaking, unusual, unless you did not perform normally on test day. If you were affected by test day stress, or implemented your pacing strategy differently on test day than on your diagnostics, for example, that would explain your scoring discrepancy (and is one reason why it would be interesting to see your pacing splits). And if there is some reason you aren't performing 'normally' on test day, identifying and addressing that reason is very likely the only thing you need to do. Your test day scores will then almost certainly be in line with your official practice test scores.

That said, in my experience, people with Verbal scores as high as yours are almost always capable of Q49+ if they learn math the right way. You must have outstanding logical and conceptual reasoning abilities to score that well in Verbal, and those abilities are what the Quant section is testing, just in a different way. If you did want to aim for a top Q score, I'd suggest using resources that help you develop your conceptual fluency -- if you know the best way to think about each of the basic math concepts on the GMAT, you can answer anything. Ignore resources that focus on 'strategy' instead of concepts; those resources might be useful for test takers at a lower level than yours, but what prep companies call 'strategy' isn't helpful at your scoring level or above -- that is, except for pacing strategy, which is critically important. If your ESR indicates you're having difficulties with pacing, then that should be one of the easiest things for you to address. Just be sure you're getting reputable advice about how to pace yourself optimally.

As for content, it's hard to judge from an ESR breakdown how strong you are in different topics, not only because the sample sizes are tiny, but also because the ESR nowhere accounts for question difficulty. If you only get 50% of your Geometry right, but if all of your Geometry was 700-level, then that's actually not bad at all. But in your case, the discrepancies by topic were consistent and larger than normal, so they probably are meaningful, and you should emphasize the weaker topics in your study. You might also want to study those topics in a new way, since what you've done so far doesn't seem to have worked - if you've been studying Geometry from books that teach a lot of formulas, for example, you might instead switch to a book that teaches only the few formulas you genuinely need, but which teaches you how to 'think geometrically', so that you easily recognize which geometric facts you'll need and know how to use them when you see a new geometry question.

Good luck!

bebs · Answer

Hello,

Congratulations on scoring 690 twice even though you are not happy with the results. Since quant seem to be the issue, I will recommend that you give Target Test Prep a trial. I have been telling everyone who care to listen that the quant section on the real test is a bit tougher than on the mock tests even though the same concepts are tested on both exams (real and mock). TTP’s course is really detailed, but you can use the shorter study plan if you don’t have a lot of time to devote to the comprehensive study plan. TTP offers a 5-day trial for $1, so you can use take that opportunity to check for yourself.

You can PM me if you have further queries.

Best wishes.

bb · Answer

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Q44 twice, can somebody help me figure out what I'm doing wrong?

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