Retake Strategy: Score 700 (Q49, V35) to Target 760

Question

Hi all,

I gave my GMAT 2 days ago getting a score of 700 (Q49, V35) which came as a shock and slight disappointment to me because I had been scoring 750 consistently in the GMAT Prep Mock tests. On average my quant score was 50 and verbal score was >= 41
My GMAT experience and analysis of the ESR suggests that I probably wasn't able to manage the time well (SC, RC and CR scores were 79, 55 and 84 percentile - again a shock because RC was my strong suite in mocks)

Materials that I had used for preparation was e-gmat quant and verbal courses; and I had taken a total of 4 mock tests before the exam (730, 740, 750, 750).

Could you please help me understand my mistake and suggest a strategy to achieve 760+ in my next attempt. I'm planning to attempt again in 2-3 weeks from today.

udaypratapsingh99 · Answer

If you have already scored 700 and even 750 twice in test, then I'll suggest you to be more focused on test series this time, as your concepts are already strong. Join any test series, attempt maximum no. of test. Only move to next text once you've analyzed previous one thoroughly. 
Another thing I'll suggest, take at least gap of one month if your college application deadline allows. One thing more, I don''t think, at this point, any coaching institute can be of much help.
You can always ask for any more specific help.
Don't forget to press KUDOS.

IanStewart · Answer

If you scored in the 730-750 range on four official diagnostic tests, then your level right now is almost certainly very close to 740. It's common for people to do worse than expected the first time they take the real test - often people are nervous, taking a test in an unfamiliar environment, etc. Those issues don't usually have the same effect on a retake, because you'll be more familiar with the test day experience. So if you'd be happy with a 730, you probably don't need to do anything - just take the test again, and you'll very likely get there. If your target is a 760, and you've never seen a 760 on a diagnostic, you'll need to make some genuine improvement to have a good shot at that score (you'd still have a shot regardless, because you might get lucky with some of your guesses, but it isn't likely). With a bit more work on higher level Quant questions, you can probably consistently score Q50, but it will be your Verbal score that makes the biggest difference. It's impossible to give much useful advice about how to improve your Verbal without a lot more information about your strengths and weaknesses, and about how you're approaching that section now, but at the least it sounds like your pacing in Verbal is sometimes inconsistent. If you could improve on that (by practicing a good pacing strategy on official practice tests) you should find your Verbal scores are more stable.

DisciplinedPrep · Answer

700 is a great score on the GMAT and hence congratulations for entering the 700 club. First, you should share your ESR report with the experts in this forum to understand where you went wrong in the first attempt. I have been in the same boat; I consistently score 750+ on all practice CATs but ended up scoring a 720 on the actual GMAT. That said, do not hastily book an appointment because some areas might take longer to improve and thereby a 60 point score increase might be difficult in merely 2-3 weeks time. Congratulations again.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

HI dviyanshk,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. The good news is that despite a drop in verbal, you scored really well in quant, so nice job! That said, to improve to 760, you’ll need to significantly raise your verbal score, and you should improve your quant score to 50+. So, here is some advice you can follow to improve in both verbal and quant. Let’s start with verbal.

Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning, for example. 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. 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 go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken the Argument 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, if anything, you would have needed to know in order 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.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as The Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.

Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects.
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.

To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

Although your quant is stronger, you can follow a similar process for that section. For example, if you are reviewing Number Properties, be sure that you practice 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. As with your verbal practice, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of a particular type. Again, 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 verbal and quant materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best verbal  and  quant 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. Good luck!

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