ankurgupta03 wrote:
Hey Mike,
I am a
Magoosh premium account user. I have scored a 710 (Q 50 V 35) on the GMAT, the prior one being 700 (Q 50 V 34).
In the Practice tests, I was consistently scoring in the range of 730 - 760 with 710, 760 on the GMAT prep, 3 740s and one 760 on the Veritas and 730 on
Magoosh CATs.
The lowest verbal score I got was 39 I think and went uptill 44, and Quants was always stuck at 50.
I am an Indian IT guy and want to get into ISB. I was called for the interview, but then was dinged. I had a feedback session with the ISB ADCOM and the feedback I was given was that, since I am from a very competitive applicant pool, I should consider raising my GMAT score.
I am really perplexed as to what to do and in need of some serious guidance.
Regards,
Ankur
Dear Ankur,
I'm happy to respond.
First of all, understand that it is natural that one's real GMAT is a little lower than the practice GMATs. You see, when you are taking a practice test, no matter how well you simulate the real conditions, at some level, you absolutely know it is not for real: if you fail it, that may be disappointing, but it's only a private failure. When you take the GMAT, every cell of your body knows that it's real, and the the consequences are real. That raises stress, which diminishes performance.
Here's a series of articles about stress management:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/overcome-g ... y-breathe/https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/beating-gmat-stress/https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/the-gmat-b ... g-picture/https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/zen-boot-c ... -the-gmat/That will help you both on any future GMAT, in business school, and in your career.
You need to improve your verbal. GMAT materials alone are not enough for this. You need to read English every day, for at least an hour a day, over and above any GMAT preparation. Read hard challenging material in English. If you want to go to business school, you already should be reading the
Wall Street Journal every day and the
Economist magazine from cover-to-cover every month. Read academic textbooks in English, in all subjects. For more reading suggestions, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-reading-list/Also, you need to expose yourself to English as much as possible --- not the English of others who have learned English as a Second Language, but the English of native speakers. Find TV or radio new programs, and listen to English as much as possible. You have to improve your English so that no one can even tell that you are not a native English speaker. All this will improve your GMAT Verbal performance.
On all GMAT Verbal question,
always read the explanation. If it's a
Magoosh question,
always watch the VE. Keep a meticulous
error log, writing down exactly why you got each question wrong, and review the
error log periodically.
I assume you already know about the
Magoosh Idiom flashcards:
ps://gmat.magoosh.com/flashcards/idiomsIf you do all this, I think you will see big improvements on your verbal score. At the same time, realistically, I think it's important to have more than one option in mind for business school. Shoot for your dream, but also research other places, in India or in Europe or in the United States, other places that would be acceptable.
Does all this make sense?
Mike