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Hello all!
Hope your GMAT-studies are going well.
I just returned from my first re-take and I am just... well, baffled. I took the GMAT the first time in December 2019 and scored 700 (Q45, V42) and figured I could do much better on quant because that's what I had been doing on my two mock exams. Scheduled a re-take for this August back in late June and started studying again. Purchased additional mock exams and scored 720 (Q49, V39), 760 (Q48, V47), and 730 (Q48, V41) in that order (had not seen any of the questions in these before). During my studies between June and August, I sincerely felt like I learned a whole lot of new concepts and improved my overall ability.
Well to the point: scored 680 today (something like Q44, V39) and was completely devastated. I seriously cannot point out where I flunked in the test, just overall felt like I got really VERY ATYPICAL, cheeky, and lengthy, but not conceptually difficult questions on quant but thought I did OK. Does anyone have a similar experience? Am I just a bad test-taker? Can't really blame any external factors: got a good night's sleep and had time to exercise before. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that the GMAC analyses my mocks and throws the types of questions I'm worst at me so that I have to spend another $250 dollars or so on the test.
Seriously don't know what to do here. Kind of need a better score but I have now exhausted practically all practice material and thought I really knew how to take the test. Was not expecting anything below 720...
Thoughts/experiences would be kindly appreciated.
Hope your GMAT-studies are going well.
I just returned from my first re-take and I am just... well, baffled. I took the GMAT the first time in December 2019 and scored 700 (Q45, V42) and figured I could do much better on quant because that's what I had been doing on my two mock exams. Scheduled a re-take for this August back in late June and started studying again. Purchased additional mock exams and scored 720 (Q49, V39), 760 (Q48, V47), and 730 (Q48, V41) in that order (had not seen any of the questions in these before). During my studies between June and August, I sincerely felt like I learned a whole lot of new concepts and improved my overall ability.
Well to the point: scored 680 today (something like Q44, V39) and was completely devastated. I seriously cannot point out where I flunked in the test, just overall felt like I got really VERY ATYPICAL, cheeky, and lengthy, but not conceptually difficult questions on quant but thought I did OK. Does anyone have a similar experience? Am I just a bad test-taker? Can't really blame any external factors: got a good night's sleep and had time to exercise before. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that the GMAC analyses my mocks and throws the types of questions I'm worst at me so that I have to spend another $250 dollars or so on the test.
Seriously don't know what to do here. Kind of need a better score but I have now exhausted practically all practice material and thought I really knew how to take the test. Was not expecting anything below 720...
Thoughts/experiences would be kindly appreciated.
27 Aug 2020, 07:46
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To expand on the quant-experience:
Kind of surprised because I got 3-4 PS-questions that had the lengths of long CR / passage in RC -- which I have seriously never encountered in any practice question (out of > 1000) or mock exam. Not that I consider this unfair or anything, I just think it's weird. Guess I missed that spot...
Kind of surprised because I got 3-4 PS-questions that had the lengths of long CR / passage in RC -- which I have seriously never encountered in any practice question (out of > 1000) or mock exam. Not that I consider this unfair or anything, I just think it's weird. Guess I missed that spot...
27 Aug 2020, 08:22
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I've occasionally heard people describe their test in a similar way (reporting that they saw longer-than-expected Quant question stems), so that can happen, but it's unusual. If you retake, which I'd certainly recommend because there's a lot of evidence you can get a much higher score, it's not likely you'll see a similar number of very long questions. In fact, you might have seen longer questions because you weren't scoring as well as you usually do, and therefore weren't seeing questions that were as hard as you usually see -- I find they often make medium-level questions longer or more computationally intensive than high-level ones, so that the time you spend reading and solving a medium level question will be similar to the time you need to think properly through a hard one.
Any one test score is affected by luck. That's partly true because most test takers need to guess at some questions, and guesses can go well or go badly. But it can also be true because of content balance. If you're better at some question types than at others, you might have good luck and see a lot of questions you're good at, or bad luck and see a lot of questions you're weaker at. The test has no way to know what you're good or bad at, so if you felt on test day that the test was giving you "types of questions I'm worst at", you simply experienced bad luck on that test.
The good news is, bad luck isn't likely. Roughly neutral luck is the most likely situation, and good luck is as likely as bad. From your recent diagnostics, you appear to be a Q48/V42 level test taker, roughly. If you could take a real test tomorrow, you'd probably get a score very close to that. That's assuming you perform on the real test in a similar way to how you perform on diagnostics. The discrepancy between your diagnostic and test day scores is large enough that I'd be a bit concerned about that. One thing you could check: was your first test score (the 700) in line with your diagnostic scores? If so, and if you have no explanation (fatigue, anxiety, distractions, etc) for the anomalous 680, then it's probably just the result of bad luck. But if your 700 was also lower than your diagnostic scores, you might want to reflect on your test day performance, and ask whether you might be doing something differently. If you're rushing because of adrenaline, or making careless errors because of stress, say, then that will be an important thing to address before a retake. But if you think your test-taking is fine, I don't think you need to do all that much before trying again, if you'd be happy to see a Q48/V41, say.
And I have prepared a lot of Quant material specifically for test takers near the top end of the scoring scale, so if you're looking for a good supply of realistic challenging practice questions, feel free to send me an email at the address in my signature.
Any one test score is affected by luck. That's partly true because most test takers need to guess at some questions, and guesses can go well or go badly. But it can also be true because of content balance. If you're better at some question types than at others, you might have good luck and see a lot of questions you're good at, or bad luck and see a lot of questions you're weaker at. The test has no way to know what you're good or bad at, so if you felt on test day that the test was giving you "types of questions I'm worst at", you simply experienced bad luck on that test.
The good news is, bad luck isn't likely. Roughly neutral luck is the most likely situation, and good luck is as likely as bad. From your recent diagnostics, you appear to be a Q48/V42 level test taker, roughly. If you could take a real test tomorrow, you'd probably get a score very close to that. That's assuming you perform on the real test in a similar way to how you perform on diagnostics. The discrepancy between your diagnostic and test day scores is large enough that I'd be a bit concerned about that. One thing you could check: was your first test score (the 700) in line with your diagnostic scores? If so, and if you have no explanation (fatigue, anxiety, distractions, etc) for the anomalous 680, then it's probably just the result of bad luck. But if your 700 was also lower than your diagnostic scores, you might want to reflect on your test day performance, and ask whether you might be doing something differently. If you're rushing because of adrenaline, or making careless errors because of stress, say, then that will be an important thing to address before a retake. But if you think your test-taking is fine, I don't think you need to do all that much before trying again, if you'd be happy to see a Q48/V41, say.
And I have prepared a lot of Quant material specifically for test takers near the top end of the scoring scale, so if you're looking for a good supply of realistic challenging practice questions, feel free to send me an email at the address in my signature.
