Score 700+ in GMAT Prep Tests but MUCH lower in real tests - need help

Question

Hi all,

I have consistently scored 700 - 720 on six GMAT Prep mock tests, always get 49+ more on Quant and 38+ on Verbal. However, my real test results have been very disappointing. After GMAT 1 660 (Q48 V34), I took a month to brush up my techniques and revise all concepts, I scored 620 (Q47, V28) today. I'm really gutted as this time I feel more prepared and confident and now I am not sure why the actual results diverge that much from my mock tests. As Round 1 deadlines are approaching, I am desperate for a 700+ score right now and just registered for the next test in two weeks.

This is going to be my last chance before Round 1 deadlines and I really want to do well. Hope to get some precious advice from all of the GMAT assasins out there. Much appreciated!!!

Ashley.

DisciplinedPrep · Answer

AshleyTr  - Welcome to GMAT Club forum!

I am sorry to hear that you could not achieve your target GMAT score. However, I do not want to sound difficult, but improving your test score from 620 to above 700 within a 2-weeks timeframe is nearly impossible. You may want to purchase the ESR from the current attempt and look carefully for areas of weaknesses. A 620 score tells that you already know most of the concepts, if not all. At this point in time, all you need to do is fix every weakness area by practicing religiously and following a clear strategy to approach each question type.

mangamma · Answer

Sorry to hear a low score than expected. First take a ESR and do analysis topic wise. then change your practice. All the best. You will rock.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi AshleyTr.

Whatever you are doing to prepare for verbal is not working, and your experience is not uncommon.

Many people get on the wrong track on GMAT verbal or start using methods that don't really work and see their verbal scores decrease rather than increase.

To make matters worse, often, verbal practice materials prepare students to answer the verbal questions that appear on the GMAT Prep practice tests while not really teaching students how to answer GMAT verbal questions in general. So, what happens is that you take a GMAT Prep test and score pretty high in verbal, and then you take the real thing and score much lower.

So, to increase your verbal score, you have to change your perception of what GMAT verbal tests and change what you are doing to prepare for verbal.

Overall, to score higher in verbal, you have to learn to see more of what's going on in the questions, you have to learn to execute better, and you have to increase the level of the sophistication of the thinking you bring to bear in answering verbal questions. To achieve those aims, among other things, you'll have to do a lot of untimed practice and careful analysis of verbal questions.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Ashley,

First off, your initial 660/Q48 is a strong Score, so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

Based on your Official Score, you have an opportunity to pick up points in BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections, so retesting makes a certain amount of sense. 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:

Studies:
1) Were both of your Official GMATs taken a Test Center or was one an At-home GMAT?
2) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?
3) What study materials have you used so far?
4) 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)?

Goals:
5) What is your overall goal score?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

AshleyTr · Answer

Thank you everyone!! Please see my other post below.

AshleyTr · Answer

Thank you all so much for your precious input  DisciplinedPrep   mangamma   MartyTargetTestPrep   EMPOWERgmatRichC . I have purchased my ESR score (can't seem to attach the link here so pasted the summary in blue), did some analysis and figured out that the weakest section that jeopadized my Verbal performance was RC. I got CR 51 RC 20 and SC 32. I would definitely need to take some time to revise my strategy on RC, doing a bit of untimed practice first to get what went wrong and analyze carefully.

EMPOWERgmatRichC  please see below my answers to your your questions. I would really appreciate if you could shed some light on my ESR and my revision.
Studies:
1) Were both of your Official GMATs taken a Test Center or was one an At-home GMAT?  I took both of them at a Test Center. I do not think my anxiety level increases at the test venue but I had insomnia the day before the second test and ended up sleeping for roughly 5 hours. I think that the lack of sleep did affect my performance although I did not feel any fatigue during the test. 
2) How long have you studied? How many hours do you typically study each week?  I have been studying since March for at least 2 hours everyday. There were a few days I did not study due to work but for the last two weeks before the recent test I did increase my study time to 3-4 hours a day. 
3) What study materials have you used so far?  I use OG and ManhattanPrep, mostly OG. I also attempted a lot of questions of different level on GMATClub forum. 
4) 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)?
 Before first attemp (June 22)
- GMATPrep 1 (May 09): 700 Q48 V46
- GMATPrep 2 (June 14): 700 Q49 V36
- GMATPrep 3 (June 07): 710 Q49 V37
- GMATPrep 4 (June 18): 720 Q48 V41
Before second attempt (Aug 18)
- GMATPrep 5 (July 26): 710 Q48 V41
- GMATPrep 6 (Aug 11): 720 Q49 V40

Goals:
5) What is your overall goal score?  My goal is to score 700+ 
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?  I am applying R1 to Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia so a 700+ GMAT score is very critical for my ambitious target R1 schools.

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.

For Verbal section my scores are CR 51, RC 20 and SC 32. I have always quite confident about RC (typically get +80% correct during my practice) but messed up in the real exam. I did spend a lot of time practicing CR and SC yet I still see there is definitely scope to improve on SC. For Quant, 0% correct for Geometry is alarming, considering I did not struggle to solve the Geometry questions during the real test. 
 
 VERBAL

QUANT
• Your Quantitative score of 47 is higher than 60% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean
score for this section is 40.38.
• Your performance on Problem Solving questions was equivalent to a score of 44. Your score is better than 48% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.39.
• Your performance on Data Sufficiency questions was equivalent to a score of 48. Your score is better than 63% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.32.
• Your performance on Arithmetic questions was equivalent to a score of 49. Your score is better than 71% of all subsection
scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.55.
• Your performance on Algebra/Geometry questions was equivalent to a score of 44. Your score is better than 48% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.23.
• Your performance of 0% on Geometry questions is considered Very Weak.
• Your performance of 75% on Rates/Ratio/Percent questions is considered Above Average.
• Your performance of 50% on Value/Order/Factors questions is considered Weak.
• Your performance of 100% on Equal./Inequal./Alg. questions is considered Very Strong.
• Your performance of 90% on Counting/Sets/Series questions is considered Strong.
• You completed 31 questions in the Quantitative section.
• You responded correctly to 71% of the first set of questions, 86% of the second set of questions, 43% of the third set of
questions and 71% of the final set of questions..
• The average difficulty of questions presented to you in the first set of questions was Medium, the average for the
second set of questions was Medium High, the average for the third set of questions was Medium High and was
Medium High for the final set of questions.
• The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 1:49, the average time for the
second set of questions was 2:38, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:57 and 1:58 for the final set of questions.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Ashley,

I've sent you a PM with some additional notes and questions.

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

Toffelfabriken · Answer

It might be worth looking into using other resources. The OG is not there to teach you all the tricks that let you solve questions quickly. A mistake some people make is trying to learn by trial-and-error, using the OG. On the GMAT, this does not work and ends up wasting time and prep resources. It seems like you need to find better strategies for verbal. Check out  this list  for some ideas on where to find those. For example, little things that can help with RC include having a solid, consistent note-taking strategy, to ensure you get as much understanding as possible out of your initial reading of a given passage.

AshleyTr · Answer

Hi guys,

It's Ashley again. I just took the GMAT again today, two weeks after posting on GMATClub crying for help. After taking all of your advice, I decided to really focus on improving verbal. I did not do a lot of new questions but instead reattempted past ones and thoroughly analyzed all of my mistakes. As I was traumatized by the low RC score last time, I made sure to practice two 700-level and one 600-700 level passages everyday. Before I always just took one day off from work before the exam but this time I asked for 3 days off to not be stressed out by emails and work calls, then relaxed the day before by watching The Holiday with my flatmate, did yoga and ate really well.

And guess what? I got a  720  with Q48  V41  today. Yes I managed to jumped from  V28  to  V41  in TWO WEEKS!!!! The test taking experience this time was so different. I did Quant first then forgot to submit the answer for the last question so I felt a bit down already. Then for Verbal I fell like things were falling apart as I saw the questions got much harder along the line. And at some point when I started to take note for a very long Reading passage, all the markers decided to run out of ink. I freaked out as it took forever for the test centre supervisor to give me a new pen. Then I progressed through the rest of the Verbal feeling like I have lost my mind and time was running out so quickly. I ended up making "educated guesses" for the last 4 questions. At this point I felt devastated since I read somewhere on the forum that the last 5-10 Verbal questions are very important to get a high score. Having no more hope, I decided to just do the first 8 IR questions then quickly finished the AWA just to get it over with. And when a score of 41 popped up I could not believe in my eyes. It is a miracle!!!

I just want to thank you so much for all of your advice and help, especially massive gratitue to  EMPOWERgmatRichC . for helping me identifying my weak areas and suggesting the course of action. A greater increase in Quant will be nicer but a 100 score jump from 620 to 720 in 15 days is amazing for me. From my experience, it is doable if you have the right approach and are really determined. Getting enough sleep, exercising and eating well is really crucial for your test day performance too. I never spent more than 3-6 hours studying everyday during those two weeks but made sure to divide them into 1.5hr sessions with 8 min breaks.

I'm still mentally exhausted after the exam so not writing much now but hope to share my experience in more detail should you have any question. Again thank you very much fam!!

Toffelfabriken · Answer

Would you look at that! Great to hear that you were able to turn it around so quickly and get such a high score. Congratulations.

I second this. It is often overlooked how much your performance can be affected by something like being stressed or not sleeping enough.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

How fun, Ashley.

We're so glad to hear this news.

Nice job putting it all together, even the yoga.

wjry · Answer

Wow, congratulations AshleyTr ! Your story is motivating. I’m waiting on my GMAT online results and hoping for a 700+ score. My practice tests have been in the 700s and I really hope to be pleased with my score. Thanks for sharing your story

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