Took MGMAT CAT after roughly 1 month of studying and gained only 10p

Question

Dear gmatclub community,

I started studying for the GMAT roughly 1 month ago and took a diagnostics test on my first day of study and got 41Q 28V (570) using Test 1 of OG GMAC CAT. Today I wanted to track my progress and since I have purchased the 6 MGMAT CATs I took the first one instead of my second official one. I received 580 38Q 31V in my MGMAT CAT today.

I am quite confused since I have learned a lot and also put in the hours. Furthermore, I have implemented strategies from the Manhattan guides in my second attempt. I did not even know these concepts when I took my official CAT prep test and received 570.

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to proceed? Also is the MGMAT test comparable or is my improvement not measured by the test since it appears to be harder overall?

Thank you so much.

Best,
SAARGMAT

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi SAARGMAT,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. I realize that you were hoping for a pretty sizable score increase on your second practice exam; however, keep in mind that you’ve been studying for ONLY one month. So, the reality is you can’t expect your test score to go up by that much in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, I’d hold off on taking any further practice exams until you've completed the “learning phase” of your GMAT prep. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Also, you may find it helpful to read the following article:

The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT

StaySafe · Answer

you should not be scared about your verbal score in manhattan prep CAT. manhattan's verbal is considered more harder than official verbal. V31 is from V28 is definitely a good improvement.

Russ19 · Answer

Hi
It is easy to secure a better score in quant, so you can think of an online platform. The link below lists the video explanations to all the quantitative problems in the Official Guide to GMAT. It will immensely help you to resolve quant problems.
https://gmatquantum.com/official-guides/

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi SAARGMAT,

The MGMAT CATs are generally regarded as being a little tougher than the Official GMAT, so this recent CAT Score is not necessarily a 'bad' thing. That having been said, back in May, we discussed how GMATers who use a book-heavy study plan tend to get "stuck" at a particular score level - and it's possible that that has happened to you too. That having been said, since you've been studying for just 1 month, you shouldn't expect to have 'mastered' any aspects of the GMAT just yet. If you're looking to make some changes to your Study Plan, then doing so earlier rather than later would be the better choice.

"Review" is an exceptionally important part of the GMAT training process; your ability to define WHY you're getting questions wrong is essential to defining the areas that you need to work on (and the specific things that you need to 'fix'). As such, I'd like to know a bit more about your last CAT. While a full Mistake Tracker would provide a lot more information, there are some basic questions that you should be able to answer (and the more EXACT you can be with your answers, the better):

After reviewing each section of this recent CAT, how many questions did you get wrong....
1) Because of a silly/little mistake?
2) Because there was some math/verbal that you just could not remember how to do?
3) Because the question was too hard?
4) Because you were low on time and had to guess?
5) How many Verbal questions did you 'narrow down to 2 choices' but still get wrong?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

SAARGMAT · Answer

Oh okay. I thought that only quant was harder that is kind of a relief

SAARGMAT · Answer

Thanks for sharing this looks insane!!

SAARGMAT · Answer

Hi Scott,

I have identified some areas to improve my knowledge via the CATS and the OG problems using the mprep navigator which gives decent analytics. I will review the chapters in the mprep guides and do the problems related to each topic in the OG after finishing each chapter. Would you suggest something else or does this approach make sense?

SAARGMAT · Answer

Hi Rich,

yeah I remember. I think that the MGMAT test is harder and maybe my score did improve a lot more than indicated. I will take my next one probably at the end of this month or so.

I am making various mistakes. Sometimes I miss a plus or minus sign on quant so yeah I make silly mistakes from time to time.
For some topics like rates and ratios I forgot some basics and also the strategies can be improved from the mprep guides since I rarely use them and just read about them once. I am rarely low on time, but that might be because I dont know how to do the problem and then I guess. For verbal it is hard to tell.

I can send you my mprep navigator analytics (based on my OG problems done so far) or my XLS OG Error Log if you would like to take a look? Maybe you can make some suggestions based on that?

Best,
SAARGMAT

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi SAARGMAT,

Yes - if you send me that information, then I'll be happy to review it for you. We still ultimately need YOUR analysis though. The questions that I asked in my last post were specific, but your responses were rather vague. You probably do know a lot more about how to answer GMAT questions than you did a month ago, so defining WHY you got all of those questions wrong is essential to determining what you should focus on going forward. For example, there's a big difference between getting a bunch of Quant questions wrong because you made some silly mistakes (but otherwise could have gotten the correct answer) and getting a bunch of questions wrong because you honestly did not know how to solve them.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

See how this goes for now. If you find that you need to switch things up, reach out, and we can discuss a plan.

SAARGMAT · Answer

I have pm'd you Scott as I would like to personally elaborate on the most efficient way to proceed given my goals.

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Took MGMAT CAT after roughly 1 month of studying and gained only 10p

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