allanjoseph97 wrote:
I will start by talking about my GMAT journey so far. I had taken GMAT in 2019 with little Preparation. I scored a Q40 and a V28, with a final score of 600. I understood that I need to prepare well for the exam. I took a short break and started my preparation in august 2020. It took me almost 8 moths. I spent most of my time Learning Sentence correction, Critical reasoning and RC. Once I felt that I had a decent grip on these Verbal topics. I started my quant preparation. Eventually I was confident enough to give mocks.
I purchased the mocks from
Expertsglobal. In the First 2 mocks I Got 710, In the third mock I got a 680 and in the remaining 3 mocks, I got 700, 710 and 740 respectively. My quant score varied from Q43-Q49 V43 was on a very bad day. and Verbal Varied between V38-V43. I also Gave GMAT prep Mocks 1,2 and 3 I got a 710 in mock 1 and 2(these were repeat mocks as I had given them in 2019 and scored 630 and 640) and a 720 in mock 3. I was confident about my performance and I opted to give the online exam on May 11th.
The exam was weird. Quant was nothing like what I have seen in the mocks. It started out tough and I managed to complete it with 5 minutes in my hand. Verbal was a mixed bag, Sentence correction was extremely tough, CRs and RCs were alright.
But I ended with a 610 for my score. I got a Q36. Verbal was bit better, I got a V37, somewhat In line with what I usually get. I feel that I overlooked many traps that are laid out through the quant problem.
The worst part is that there is no option to get an Enhanced score report for the online exam.
I feel devastated and clueless. I feel extremely low because my quant performance. I am an Indian engineer who graduated in 2019.
I am thinking of switching to GRE preparation after one more shot at GMAT in 2 months
I would be grateful If someone can guide me out of this grave situation
Hi allanjoseph97,
Sorry about how things went with your GMAT. Please go through the article below to understand the probable reasons for the drop in the score.
Q43-49 is too big a range to predict your score. The inconsistency in your score reflects that there is some flaw in your approach. There could be times when you can somehow get the answers by solving using the options. But, the same might not happen during the actual test. So, it's important that you follow the right process to solve questions during the mocks and the test.
How to proceed further?
As the drop significantly happened in Quant, lets focus on Quant for the time being. Q36 indicates that you are still having a few conceptual gaps and are struggling big time with the application of concepts. It makes sense to start your Quant preparation from the scratch as there are chances that you will miss out a certain topic if you only work on your weak areas.
The right way to prepare for Quant is:- Learn the concepts of a topic
- Learn the right methodology to solve questions of that topic
- Practice questions of that topic to solidify your learning (Do not time yourself at this stage)
- Move to the next topic only if you get decent accuracy
- If not, revisit the concepts and make sure to understand everything perfectly this time
- Once you are done with all the topics, you can start taking timed quizzes
This time, make sure to analyze the solution of every question you solve. If there is any difference between your approach and the right one, make sure to note down it down and learn the right method.
I'm not really sure how you prepared for this attempt. If you did not use any standard resource, make sure to study from one. Just practicing questions doesn't help you improve your score. Make sure to choose a resource which can help you with:
- Concepts
- Methodology (Most important)
- Questions to practice
- And their detailed solutions
- Study plan
The resource you study from has to make your prep a lot more structured and has to help you focus on the right aspects. You can check out the
free trial of
GMATWhiz to understand the structure of the preparation.
And it doesn't make sense to switch to another test just because you couldn't perform well on GMAT. Every test has it's own challenges and you can definitely score well if you prepare in the right way. I can definitely help you with the study strategy if you can provide me with the details of
- your current study strategy
- your weak areas in both Quant and Verbal
- your approach of solving questions
A zoom conference call would be a better way to analyze your approach of solving questions. That way, I can identify the flaw if there's any and then suggest you the plan of action. Please use the link below to schedule a call with me.
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17 Apr 2021, 08:31
