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pikachu
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stuck in my gmat score 01 Feb 2013, 17:47
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I have given 3 MGMAT CAT exams so far and it seems like I am stuck in a score range and can't manage to get out of it. Any ideas how I can break the barrier and improve my performance. Here is the timeline of my tests and the scores I got for each test.

First Attempt: Took a blind test at manhattangmat.com to see where I stood in early Nov 12 as I had been out of school for quite some time now. I got a Q37 V30 with 560 as the overall score. :cry:

Second Attempt: Almost a month after the first attempt again at manhattangmat.com. In between I had started reading the MGMAT SC and CR guides and did a very quick review of the Quant. I got Q36 V29 with a score of 540 :cry: :oops: . Seeing the score drop by 20 points was very disappointing and I started to panic.

Since I had bought the entire 9 book set, 5th edition, from MGMAT I buried myself into them and reading them trying to understand the concepts and its application. I have been out of school for more than 11yrs and have a full time job. So I was mostly reading after a day of work and weekends. I picked up steam during the Christmas and New Year Holidays and started feeling good about the progress I was making. At the same time I would try and solve SC or CR questions on gmatclub. I lost 10 days in January due to an emergency. But when I got back I picked up the books again. I decided to retest myself and see where I stand again. So gave a 3rd test.

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT. I am planning to take the exam before end of Feb 2013.

Third Attempt: Almost after 2 1/2 months of studying I was feeling little more confident and gave my 3 test at manhattangmat.com. I scored Q37 V29 with an overall score of 550 :cry: :evil: . Smack in the middle of the earlier two attempts.

Now my hopes have really been punctured and I am wondering if I can ever break this barrier and score higher. I cannot enroll in an online or a course due to various constraints and need to self study. Ideally I would like to score in the high 600 to low 700 range for my target school. Any ideas that can help me would be great.

I have started to look at the logs from all these 3 tests and trying to find out what I did wrong. I am doing that as well with all the questions I am attempting from the OG '13 and discovering few things about myself like I am getting equal % of right answers in all 3 categories in the verbal in all 3 test as an example. If folks are interested I can upload my error log from the 3 MGMAT exams to see if they have any more ideas in what areas and how I can improve.
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GMAT 1: 660 Q48 V34
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stuck in my gmat score 02 Feb 2013, 11:22
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pikachu
I have given 3 MGMAT CAT exams so far and it seems like I am stuck in a score range and can't manage to get out of it. Any ideas how I can break the barrier and improve my performance. Here is the timeline of my tests and the scores I got for each test.

First Attempt: Took a blind test at manhattangmat.com to see where I stood in early Nov 12 as I had been out of school for quite some time now. I got a Q37 V30 with 560 as the overall score. :cry:

Second Attempt: Almost a month after the first attempt again at manhattangmat.com. In between I had started reading the MGMAT SC and CR guides and did a very quick review of the Quant. I got Q36 V29 with a score of 540 :cry: :oops: . Seeing the score drop by 20 points was very disappointing and I started to panic.

Since I had bought the entire 9 book set, 5th edition, from MGMAT I buried myself into them and reading them trying to understand the concepts and its application. I have been out of school for more than 11yrs and have a full time job. So I was mostly reading after a day of work and weekends. I picked up steam during the Christmas and New Year Holidays and started feeling good about the progress I was making. At the same time I would try and solve SC or CR questions on gmatclub. I lost 10 days in January due to an emergency. But when I got back I picked up the books again. I decided to retest myself and see where I stand again. So gave a 3rd test.

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT. I am planning to take the exam before end of Feb 2013.

Third Attempt: Almost after 2 1/2 months of studying I was feeling little more confident and gave my 3 test at manhattangmat.com. I scored Q37 V29 with an overall score of 550 :cry: :evil: . Smack in the middle of the earlier two attempts.

Now my hopes have really been punctured and I am wondering if I can ever break this barrier and score higher. I cannot enroll in an online or a course due to various constraints and need to self study. Ideally I would like to score in the high 600 to low 700 range for my target school. Any ideas that can help me would be great.

I have started to look at the logs from all these 3 tests and trying to find out what I did wrong. I am doing that as well with all the questions I am attempting from the OG '13 and discovering few things about myself like I am getting equal % of right answers in all 3 categories in the verbal in all 3 test as an example. If folks are interested I can upload my error log from the 3 MGMAT exams to see if they have any more ideas in what areas and how I can improve.
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Hi pikachu,

For the score you want you have to target quant around 45+ and Verbal 34+ with a total score of 650+. Have you taken GMATPrep test, if not then do so today or tomorrow. It would give you a much realistic picture of your level right now. A score of 600 means that you have got most of the basic concepts in place and now you have to identify your weaknesses and increase your level.

If you take your test on 28th you have approx 4 weeks. MGMAT books are really good. You first develop sound basics by going through the MGMAT guides and reviewing the exercises at the end of each chapter. Study the concepts, do easy questions, figure out what concept a question is testing and what is wrong in all the incorrect answer choices. Do not worry about the time that you are taking while solving questions when you are solidifying the concepts. Even if you take 10 - 15 for a single question, go for it. Then spend double that time in analyzing the solutions. Do this until you reach the 600 barrier, once you start scoring around 600, it means you have got the basic concepts in place. Then go for the harder questions, moreover you will start getting harder questions in Computer Adaptive Tests such as GMATPrep.

If you are not able to reach a level of 600 after 3 - 4 weeks of studying basic concepts, I would then suggest you to reschedule the test.

Vercules,
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pikachu
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stuck in my gmat score 03 Feb 2013, 11:41
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Vercules
pikachu
I have given 3 MGMAT CAT exams so far and it seems like I am stuck in a score range and can't manage to get out of it. Any ideas how I can break the barrier and improve my performance. Here is the timeline of my tests and the scores I got for each test.

First Attempt: Took a blind test at manhattangmat.com to see where I stood in early Nov 12 as I had been out of school for quite some time now. I got a Q37 V30 with 560 as the overall score. :cry:

Second Attempt: Almost a month after the first attempt again at manhattangmat.com. In between I had started reading the MGMAT SC and CR guides and did a very quick review of the Quant. I got Q36 V29 with a score of 540 :cry: :oops: . Seeing the score drop by 20 points was very disappointing and I started to panic.

Since I had bought the entire 9 book set, 5th edition, from MGMAT I buried myself into them and reading them trying to understand the concepts and its application. I have been out of school for more than 11yrs and have a full time job. So I was mostly reading after a day of work and weekends. I picked up steam during the Christmas and New Year Holidays and started feeling good about the progress I was making. At the same time I would try and solve SC or CR questions on gmatclub. I lost 10 days in January due to an emergency. But when I got back I picked up the books again. I decided to retest myself and see where I stand again. So gave a 3rd test.

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT. I am planning to take the exam before end of Feb 2013.

Third Attempt: Almost after 2 1/2 months of studying I was feeling little more confident and gave my 3 test at manhattangmat.com. I scored Q37 V29 with an overall score of 550 :cry: :evil: . Smack in the middle of the earlier two attempts.

Now my hopes have really been punctured and I am wondering if I can ever break this barrier and score higher. I cannot enroll in an online or a course due to various constraints and need to self study. Ideally I would like to score in the high 600 to low 700 range for my target school. Any ideas that can help me would be great.

I have started to look at the logs from all these 3 tests and trying to find out what I did wrong. I am doing that as well with all the questions I am attempting from the OG '13 and discovering few things about myself like I am getting equal % of right answers in all 3 categories in the verbal in all 3 test as an example. If folks are interested I can upload my error log from the 3 MGMAT exams to see if they have any more ideas in what areas and how I can improve.


Hi pikachu,

For the score you want you have to target quant around 45+ and Verbal 34+ with a total score of 650+. Have you taken GMATPrep test, if not then do so today or tomorrow. It would give you a much realistic picture of your level right now. A score of 600 means that you have got most of the basic concepts in place and now you have to identify your weaknesses and increase your level.

If you take your test on 28th you have approx 4 weeks. MGMAT books are really good. You first develop sound basics by going through the MGMAT guides and reviewing the exercises at the end of each chapter. Study the concepts, do easy questions, figure out what concept a question is testing and what is wrong in all the incorrect answer choices. Do not worry about the time that you are taking while solving questions when you are solidifying the concepts. Even if you take 10 - 15 for a single question, go for it. Then spend double that time in analyzing the solutions. Do this until you reach the 600 barrier, once you start scoring around 600, it means you have got the basic concepts in place. Then go for the harder questions, moreover you will start getting harder questions in Computer Adaptive Tests such as GMATPrep.

If you are not able to reach a level of 600 after 3 - 4 weeks of studying basic concepts, I would then suggest you to reschedule the test.

Vercules,
Show more

Hi Vercules,

Thanks for the advice. I will go ahead and give the GMATprep in the next few days. Do you have any suggestions as to how quickly I can identify my weakness areas. Right now I am just wandering all over the place. The error logs I have kept shows that in the CR portion I need to focus on inference questions, which BTW also was showing up as my weakness in RC. For SC I need to focus on parallelism. But I am not sure yet how do I go about for Quant. Any thoughts.
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Vercules
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GMAT 1: 660 Q48 V34
GMAT 2: 750 Q49 V42
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Schools: Kenan-Flagler '15 (A) McCombs '15 (I) Tepper '15 (M) Kellogg '15 (I) HBS '15 (D) Wharton '15 (D) Stern '15 (WL) Simon '15 (A)
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stuck in my gmat score 03 Feb 2013, 12:07
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Hi pikachu,

First, if you haven't done yet, you need to study all the concepts in Quant and Verbal. Then only the tests would give a realistic picture of your weaknesses. For quant also you should go through the MGMAT books and solve and analyze the OG questions. MGMAT has divided the concepts in to basic and advanced. As you are around 37 in quant, the best approach for you would be to first do all the basic chapters (along with the OG questions mentioned at the end of each chapter). Once, you have finished the basic stuff from MGMAT, go for the Advanced concepts + OG questions. If you do this, I am sure that you will see a minimum 5 (max 10+ :-)) point increase in your score.

If you are still in the studying the basics stuff, the do not spend a lot of time analyzing your weaknesses. Just make a note of the questions that you get incorrect and revisit them later.

To sum up

Take first GMATPrep test to know your current level and set intermediate goal (say 600+ or 620) --> Study all the basic quant concepts + OG --> Study all the advanced quant concepts + OG --> take MGMAT practice tests + analysis of all questions and identify what you got incorrect, if you reached your intermediate goal then increase it to say 650 --> do more questions in weak areas and build speed --> take another test and so on .... ---> actual GMAT

As I said in my earlier post, before doing anything take one GMATPrep test to set your intermediate and final goals.

Vercules
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stuck in my gmat score 04 Feb 2013, 13:50
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Enjoy the process of becoming better at GMAT. You are focusing too much on the end result - GMAT score and not on the process. You have been studying for 2 months with little improvement. Would suggest you to not give a full length test for the coming two months. It may sound crazy but this would take the pressure out of the system. How would you prepare for a boxing match ? first you master one move, then another and so on. What will happen if you try all moves at once. You would remain forever at the starting level. Hope this makes some sense.
First focus on either quant or verbal.Would say Quant as that is relatively weak and easier to improve by large amounts. Finish OG13 and MGMAT Books/Total GMAT Math twice. This would take 1 month. Then focus on SC for 2-3 weeks practicing quant 4-5 hours/week to keep in touch. Then give a full length tests. Read the debrief below for more description on the boxing/body building analogy.


https://www.urch.com/forums/just-finishe ... post152529
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stuck in my gmat score 04 Feb 2013, 14:50
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Have you considered just taking a break on GMAT and trying GRE?
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stuck in my gmat score 04 Feb 2013, 15:02
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downfeath
Have you considered just taking a break on GMAT and trying GRE?
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take a pause from the exam and Go for Gmat. forget about GRE in my opinion (strictly personal, but reasoned)
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