XilefD
Hello my fellow GMAT warriors,
I would appreciate some input from the more experienced members of this board regarding my situation:
I started preparing for the GMAT 4 weeks ago. Before I started I did my first official PrepTest and scored 620 (Q42/V34) and was quite relieved since my goal is 700+ and I assumed this would be achieveable from this starting point, also considering I have quite a lot of time.
So I did 4 weeks of only Quant training and took my second PrepTest to measure my improvement. To my surprise not only did I improve in Quant (to 46) but also quite heavily in Verbal (to 40) and thus scored a solid 700. To make things even more strange, I finished the Verbal section 10 minutes earlier and could have been even faster since I was quite distracted from some craftsman working in my house.
To wrap things up: Do you guys have any idea how this is possible? I didn't do any preparation for Verbal besides reading English fiction books. However, I have been reading a lot for the last 6 months so this is not a new habit.
How would you proceed? My original plan was to do a 4 week preparation for Verbal starting tomorrow and then review everything and take the official test end of August.
Thank you very much in advance.
I really appreciate this forum and its highly committed members!
It's always great to see a 700 on a GMATPrep early on. Your initial performance in quant was just about average, so the familiarity with basic concepts (and question formats) you got from those 4 weeks of study probably helped you improve from 47% (Q42) to 62% (Q46). Your verbal score increase was more impressive (72% to 91%) because it is usually harder to get better at the top end of the scoring scale. I don't think you got a 91 purely by luck, so that score could mean that you just underperformed on the first attempt, which is expected (given that it was your first test).
Some things for you to consider now:
1. You should check for consistency: stick to your study schedule. Prep is usually about "smoothing out" performance/scores (reducing variability).
2. Find out how strong your RC is: check your accuracy in RC. Your reading regularly is a good sign, and it is possible that you're stronger at RC than most other test takers.
3. After (1), re-evaluate your target score: you shouldn't stop at 62 in quant, and you should check where a little extra prep in verbal can get you.
4. Maintain test-taking discipline: all tests should be taken under exam conditions (test environment, no pausing, making sure all questions are "new"). You should also ensure that you are analyzing every question you're doing (and recording patterns in an
error log).