Sad after 4th attempt. Blocked during the test days. Help!

Hi,

sorry for the low score. After reading your post, I feel that these (any one or more) might be the reasons for your low score:

1. Mock tests were not taken in exam conditions.
2. In mock tests, you got the questions you already knew.
3. In the actual exam you guessed too many questions due to time pressure
4. You might have been too slow in the first few questions which might have impacted your score
5. You were too nervous or stressed during the exam
6. There are conceptual gaps in the preparation which might not have been identified during preparation and mock tests. These gaps showed up in the real exam

Maybe preparing from a master in India is a good idea. You could also go through OG verbal and gmat prep questions and revise all the concepts and master them to get a good score.

Rgds,
Santora

Were you spending too much time on the first few questions? Were you spending too much time (more than 2. 5 mins) on one question?

It could be good idea to learn from gmat gurus in India. Hopefully they can teach you how to let go the causes of mental block during test

Posted from my mobile device

Hello guys,

Thanks a lot to all of you! It is very nice that the community is so willing to help.

I will answer all of you in this post so we can join all the opinions and information. I will answer in blue.

Rich,

Studies:
1) Since June, how many hours did you typically study each week?
Juan: Around 8-10 hours per day, resting one day a week. Two out of this days I was doing one mock test. I know it may be a bit too much and actually I had a bit of anxiety because I was not resting enough.
2) What study materials have you used over the course of ALL of your studies?
Juan: Kaplan GMAT book. OG19, Manhattan prep SC book and SC. CR bible, GMAT math book and Gmatclub forums.
3) On what 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)?
Juan: I took the mock tests tuesdays and saturdays each week and my average was 680(Q49V36). I write below the last 10. all of them experts global mocks.

11 Oct. 650(Q48V31)
17 Oct. 740 (Q48 V42)
21 Oct 620(Q45 V31)
28 Oct 700(Q48 V37)
31 Oct 640(Q49 V28)
04 Nov 700(Q49 V36)
11 Nov 630(Q46 V31)
21 Nov 670(Q49V32)
28 Nov 680(Q46 V38)
30 Nov 700(Q47 V39)

I will also send you my ESR in a private message, I cannot post it in here (not sure why).


Goals:
4) What is your overall goal score?
Juan: I was targeting a 700+, but obviously, the higher the better
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
Juan: I should apply not later than March.
6) What Schools are you planning to apply to?
Juan: In this order: INSEAD, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley

Business conquerer,

Definitely I agree with your last sentence
There are plenty of services in India such as E-GMAT, Jamboree etc that can serve your purpose, Then there's T.I.M.E and others
I can see the crux of your issue
You are certainly having issues with the official prep
Timing must definitely be an issue as verbal needs more time
Could you tell me which B-schools You're targetting, try to PM me as I get a lot of notifications and it is difficult to see every man I have replied to

Thanks mate! I took a look to Jamboree and tomorrow I will talk with them via Skype. I I would not mind to go to India for a couple of months and study the GMAT there in a fast course. Will also take a look to T.I.M.E. as you suggested. I am pretty sure is a matter of confidence.

I will also send you a private message

Chondro48,

Were you spending too much time on the first few questions? Were you spending too much time (more than 2. 5 mins) on one question?

Juan: It does not seem so in my ESR. I had a very bad CR(22% correct....) and a very bad first part of the test in Quant(29% correct)

It could be good idea to learn from gmat gurus in India. Hopefully they can teach you how to let go the causes of mental block during test

Juan: Thanks! Any advice? People recommended Jamboree and T.I.M.E.

Hi Juan,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT.

Assuming that you took your official practice exams under realistic testing conditions, the results show that, on a good day, you are capable of scoring higher than 590. Thus, it’s quite possible that nerves, stress, tiredness, or a combination of all three negatively affected your test-day performance. However, it’s also possible that you have some lingering weaknesses that were exposed on test day. Although I’m unsure of how you prepared, it’s possible that, in your preparation, particularly in verbal, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on the actual GMAT. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, for you to hit your score goal, your preparation, particularly for verbal, probably needs to be more complete, meaning that you have to go through the various types of GMAT questions carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills.

For verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, you will get stuck guessing between two choices or be surprised to find that you incorrectly answered questions that you thought you answered correctly. Becoming more skilled in this way takes carefully analyzing all of the answer choices to lots of verbal questions to develop an eye for the logical differences between the choices. In other words, you have to go beyond answering practice questions and reading explanations to doing deep analysis of questions to learn to see everything that is going on in them.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal 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.

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!