Strategy to improve my GMAT retake score ?

Question

I gave my GMAT in October 2020 and scored a disappointing 580 with V22, Q48, and IR 6. I was scoring in the range of 700-760 during my mocks but somehow I messed up in the actual exam. Now I am planning to start the preparation for my retake, what should be my strategy to score beyond 750 within 2-3 months time?

shameekv1989 · Answer

Hey, sorry to hear that. That's a huge gap. I have been in the position and I improved by focusing more on the strategy than the concepts. I knew I had my concepts in place just needed the right execution.

You have to figure out your weakness as well. Is it time or is it the concepts? Focus a lot on mid-level questions than on hard ones. You will be able to get away with a 700 even if you miss a hard-level qs but not the same with 600-700 or sub-600 level qs. You also should take the mocks in the most realistic conditions. You have to develop the nerves to cruise through those 4 hrs of GMAT exam.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi amangupta96,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

1) How long have you studied in total? Before your GMAT in October, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) On what dates (or approximate 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)?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

If you took your GMAT at a Test Center, then 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

MathRevolution · Answer

Hello amangupta96,

GMAT Club is one of the great platforms to get information about the GMAT official test, Study plan, Section wise instructions, etc.

Your current GMAT score is shaky. You can schedule a Counseling(https://calendly.com/mathrevolution/1-on-1-session) session for 30 mins with one of our experts to have detailed advice on your current study plans.

With my GMAT tutoring, guidance, and counseling experience, we have to accept the fact with a pinch of salt that diagnostic/ mock test scores are above then what one should expect in a real test. There is often dropping in the score. Some students have even experienced a drop of 100 pointers. It is one of the realities, and your preparation should not sideline this fact.

A couple of things that can be a noticeable barrier to your scores would be some or all of the below.

• Not detailed knowledge of GMAT Math pattern and Question types
• Inefficiency by using time-consuming Conventional method to tackle DS and PS questions still
• No expert support (maybe) who can tutor, analyze, and guide you during your learning
• Lack of many updated questions and practice in the recent exam trend
• Not well aligned with time to solve questions.

Precisely, there has to be one end-to-end solution encompassing all the points mentioned above. We also want to understand your approach to solving PS and DS questions. You can try our free diagnostic test https://www.mathrevolution.com/diagnostic/dtExamMember and receive a comprehensive study guide by topic. This test will clearly help you understand your weak areas.

Your study plan will now change as you are already ready with the vital concepts and their application. The diagnostic test report will give us detailed insight into various topics and your performance. After an in-depth analysis, we will draw out the category of the topics you are already better at and those where you need more improvement. Also, we will be able to compare your performance while solving the PS and DS questions.

Also, make a note of various possible combinations to achieve a score of 700+. The possible scores will help you track your performance after taking the mock or practice test. It will also help you maintain balance in both the sections, and you will always be in a great position to allot the study hours to a specific area accordingly.

We recommend that you learn the Variable Approach for solving DS questions and the IVY approach to solve PS questions to improve your accuracy and save time while solving the question types.

The most important thing for you will be learning and commanding the Variable Approach for DS questions and IVY Approach for PS questions. These approaches are the robust self-designed time-saving techniques that will help you learn efficiently, thus raising your score in the quick nick of time.

Register with MathRevolution https://www.mathrevolution.com/member/signup to get access to our 7-day full on-demand course (27 topics, 490 subtopics, and 1,500 questions) for free trial lessons.

700+ level questions https://www.mathrevolution.com/gmat/questionbank are separately available, too. Start with the learning of the concepts. Make a habit of taking notes during the initial learning of the concepts.

After registering, you will have access to the practice section. Initially, try solving the DS and/or PS questions from very easy and easy category questions on the topic(s) you have learned. You may also connect with one of our experts to get one of the best tutoring supports, which will help you understand the topic(s) and solve questions and learn how to manage time and accuracy.

Adding to the same, mastery of the Variable Approach to solve DS questions and the IVY approach to solve PS questions would add a feather to the cap. Below is the useful link we will recommend you visit on GMAT club to experience DS and IVY approaches' power.

Ultimate Q51 guide: https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-ultimate ... l#p1613600

Breakdown of GMAT math questions and types: https://gmatclub.com/forum/overview-of- ... l#p1641411

To prepare for Verbal, you can access many study materials from Crack Verbal, e-GMAT, and other test-prep experts for Verbal. You may also refer to Aristotle Grail for sentence correction and GMAT power bank for CR question types. There are also many free materials available in the GMAT Club.

In the end, make sure you have an error log for every day, and you may connect with one of our experts to learn the hard concept and approaches. Keep checking your performance by attempting as many mock tests as possible.

Regular tests will reflect the positive change in the score, and hence, your confidence will boost up. Gradually, with the help of mock tests, you will be able to compete with time and hence will be able to learn time-management.

We appreciate your time and patience in reading this reply.

Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

Success is within your reach.
Good luck!

Punit Joshi
Math Revolution Team

EducationAisle · Answer

You really need to give us more information Aman...your sources of preparation, your duration of preparation, your weaker areas in Verbal, and your ESR.

Since you are considering a reattempt,  this article  will help.

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Figuring out what happened during your exam would be useful.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi amangupta96,

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 V22. 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 it helpful to read the following articles:

how to score a 700+ on the GMAT

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Aman,

Did you introspect the reason behind the drastic drop in the score? I would suggest you to do that because that will give you the answer for your question. Make sure you don't repeat the mistake that is responsible for your score to drop. 2-3 months is an ample amount of time.

If you need any advice, you can always get in touch with me. We can have a detailed discussion on what went wrong in the last exam and what needs to be done to make sure that doesn't repeat. You can get in touch in with me using the below link.

Click here to schedule a call

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