Need help badly

Question

Today , I gave gmat exam and score just 530. This was my second attempt. I was scoring between 600 to 650 in mocks. Did not expected this low score: 42 in quant and 20 in verbal. Was scoring between 30 to 35 in verbal in mocks. Dont know what happened during exam. Disappointed, but dont want to give up. Please tell me how to improve in both verbal and quant now.

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear kunal20 , I'm sorry to hear about your struggles and I am happy to respond.

First, I will recommend this blog, which addresses your immediate situation quite directly: Lower on the Real GMAT than on Practice Tests If you can integrate the recommendations in that blog and the linked blogs, you will be in much better shape for a retake. You clearly need to be make BIG strides in verbal. This will take more than ordinary GMAT practice. Above and beyond any GMAT specific practice, I would recommend an hour of reading. Read hard challenging material in English on topics that are unfamiliar to you. See: How to Improve Your GMAT Verbal Score Here's a three-month study schedule for someone in your situation: 3 Month GMAT Study Schedule (Verbal Focused) Here are some free flashcards: GMAT Idiom flashcards GMAT Math flashcards If you were to sign up for Magoosh, you would qualify for our score guarantee . We have 200+ lesson videos, to prepare you in depth for every part of the test. Here's a video on SC: Substantive Clauses Here's a free DS question: Triangle problem Here's a free CR question: Apologizing to Crime Victims When you submit your answers to those questions, the following page will have a complete video explanation of the question. Each one of Magoosh's 1000+ GMAT practice questions has its own VE: this immediate feedback on each question is exactly what you need to make rapid progress. Even if you decide not to sign up for Magoosh, I hope you get everything you can from that free blog. There's a lot of content on that blog that can help you. Let me know if you have any questions. Mike

adkikani · Answer

kunal20

Sorry to hear about your drop in score. I would request you to go through  this  post and know if any of the reasons resonates with your experience.

Hope this helps!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi kunal20,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) How have you scored on each of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for each)?
4) Did you take the FULL CAT each time (with the Essay and IR sections)?

Goals:
5) What is your goal score?
6) When are you planning to retake the GMAT?
7) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
8) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Best Books 1. Manhattan GMAT Quant Guides 2. Manhattan GMAT Verbal guides or Aristotle Verbal Guide for CR critical reasoning bible is best book with 300+ pages of comprehensive Data Strategies Start with Quant, learn the concepts tested on GMAT. After learning, practice your learned section with timed practice. You can also take quizzes to meet the pace of GMAT. 1 Month for learning concepts and 15 days of practice and same with the verbal. When completed all the concepts learning and handsome practice. Take full lenght CATs, know your estimated score. Analyze the result with Correct/incorrect questions, pacing analysis trace your mistakes and learn from them, make an error log to know your mistakes in the previously attempted questions Best Mocks 1. Official GMAC (50+50$) 2. Manhattan GMAT (49$) 3. GMAT Club Quant CATs (80$) 4. Veritas CATs (49$ but you can buy at 15-20$ During sale period) Good Luck Cheers

KungFuGmat · Answer

kunal20  hope you are well. I am sorry for the score. Don't worry. There can be a hundred and one reasons for scoring low in GMAT. There was a great article by @Vertias Prep's Dr David titled beautifully "How to score lower than you deserve on GMAT". This article highlights the fact that sometimes in order to maximize scores, students try to tackle questions above their ability. Say you are at 600 and you try to solve 700 level questions. You may be able to do it but in 5 minutes. That one right question eats your score. And you may end up scoring 550 rather than the 600 you deserve. In fact, I read that you could get one question in 5 wrong on both sections and still score a 700.

Second area I think matters is section order. Sometimes one is nervous on exam day. And let's face it, we all are nervous. But some of us deal better than others. If you are nervous and jump directly to quant or verbal instead of AWA, you might take 5 minutes to settle down. And lost important points up front. This may impact your score. Another possible reason is thinking about a question you did wrong or an entire section after you completed it. These 3 things impacted my scores on mock. And on exam day by avoiding these three errors I did a lot better. And I scored higher than all my mocks. My last score the night before was 590. And on test day I scored 640, thanks to Allah.

One of these may explain why you did not perform well. Or they may not. The best way to check this is by ordering ESR.  egmat  has an excellent article on analyzing your ESR report. I know it is not public. But if someone from the EGMAT team could share that methodology or the crux of it here, it would help many.

Best of luck for your next attempt. And remember the NASA value... Failure is not an option. 
To your success!

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi kunal20, Please do not be discouraged. Kindly go through the concepts first and solidify your base in Quant and Verbal. I believe you may benefit from taking a GMATPREP course. If you are willing, there are some great GMAT prep companies that can help you with your preparation. In order to make an informed decision I would highly encourage you to go to their websites and try on their free trial and decide for yourself which one do you like better. You try out free access to EmpowerGMAT, Magoosh and Optimus Prep as they have great reviews on GMATCLUB. Also for verbal, I would highly encourage you to consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas. You can also try out the Foundation of GMAT Math by MGMAT and MGMAT Strategy guides as they are phenomenal and cover the entire syllabus really well.I must add that if you are particularly looking to discover and improve on your weak areas in Quant; a subscription to GMATCLUB tests is the best way to do that. They are indeed phenomenal and will not only pinpoint your weak areas but also help you improve on them. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practise tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase the latest version of OG and the verbal review for some great additional practice. Here is a link that will help you with your decision. https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... 68383.html Lastly, you can check out a very interesting article by Mike McGarry from Magoosh detailing a 3 month study plan https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-g ... -students/. You will find it very helpful as it gives out a study plan as per your needs. Hope this helps. All the best.

kunal20 · Answer

I have been studying from last 6 months. I went through MGMAT SC , CR bible ,OG 2016 and other materials. 
My Mock CAT scores
1)MGMAT CAT 1 15/10/17- Score 570
Verbal - 30
Quant - 39

2)MGMAT 2 1/11/17 - Score 610
Verbal - 34
Quant - 40

3)MGMAT 3 12/11/17 Score - 650

Verbal - 36
Quant - 43

4) GMAT PREP 1 - 590
21st Nov

Verbal - 29
Quant - 42

I did full test only once but I gave QUANT - VERBAL - IR- AWA in real exam 
. I wanted to apply to round 2 in december, but all dreams shattered. want to retake the exam as soon as possible, may be within 2-3 months. 
Target score 700+.

kunal20 · Answer

Thank you all for responding. I feel a little better now. Will go through all your posts and decide how to proceed further. Will beat the gmat one day.

Thank you all

akadiyan · Answer

Hello  kunal20

Please find below few points i believe IMHO will help you in your preparation

Step 1: Analysis
The first step in analyzing is understanding the problem. So Please order your ESR if not yet done to have better understanding of your score. ESR will help you in understanding what went wrong and where. This would help designing your study plan.

Step 2: Strategy
Along with the concepts , the test taking strategy is also very vital in GMAT. GC has loads of information pertaining to test taking strategy.

For example please look into the blog "GMAT Prep Software Analysis and What If Scenarios" in GC.

Step 3: Study Plan
Leading course providers all provide study plans. Please have a look into their plans and select one of them that suit you. What is important is to have a plan. 
 Magoosh  and @EmpowerGMAT both offers good study plans and you can choose the one suits you.

Step 4: Preparation
Consistency is the key. Its better not to have any gap in preparation to keep the momentum going. Also PRACTICE is very important. During the learning phase , try to attempt a few practice tests for Quants / Verbal sections. For Quants GC Club is the best. GMAT Club has question directory by difficulty level for each PS , DS , SC, CR and RC. They are very useful to gauge current level.

Try to solve all OG Questions in both Quant and Verbal.

Also subscribe to GC - QOTD.

Step 5: Practice Tests
Take standardized full length mock tests.  mgmat  and  Veritas  tests have good reviews. But GMATPrep questions is the one closest to real exam.

All the best for your GMAT Exam

kunal20 · Answer

Hi  mikemcgarry , Thank you for replying. I scored 42 in quant bcoz I had access to Magoosh's subscription for 1 year, And I must say your videos were very helpful in building my concepts in quant. Now I want to improve from 42 to 49-50 in quant. I ordered ESR and found that I did not
do too well on last set of questions because of lack of time. I need to improve a bit in algebra and sometimes I take too much time solving
tough questions. And in Verbal, I am not consistent. Sometimes I score 80 percentile in RC, sometimes 40. Same with CR, but my accuracy 
in CR ranges from 40 - 70 % in exams. But When I randomly try solving CR questions, I get mostly correct. In SC, I am ok but need to improve more. I got stuck in my real gmat exam in 2-3 questions, as I got confused between two answer choices and was finding difficult to pick any 1 of them.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi kunal20,

Since you mentioned that you did not take the FULL CAT except once, I have a few additional questions about how you took your CATs:

1) Did you take them at home?
2) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
3) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
4) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: in an online forum or in a practice set)?

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

kunal20 · Answer

1) I took the CAT's in our society's library. No disturbance. Calm place.
2) Not at the same time becoz of some unavoidable reasons.
3) Yes, I did pause few times.
4) No never took any manhattan cat more than once. All questions were new. Gmat prep, I took more than once but after 6 months, and I hardly remember one or two questions.

But I feel I was not able to give 100% in verbal section due to lack of focus. I dont know what happened , but it was taking me longer time than usually I do to comprehend the stuff: RC, and CR. Dont know what happened but was not able to focus as much as I did in quant section.

kunal20 · Answer

Can anyone suggest me how to improve in Quant from score 42 to 49-50. And should I focus on 1 section at a time (Quant first) and achieve target score in quant, then move on to verbal. Or doing both sections simultaneously. Though, I am planning to read fictional books as suggested by bb in his posts to improve in RC,SC. Pls suggest. I am also attaching my ESR. Thanks

Attachments

File comment: ESR
kunal Choudhary_309184977_ESR.pdf [434.53 KiB]
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victor rogulenko · Answer

I would advise to work on quant first, maybe to 47-48 at least, and then switch to verbal. Staying focused really helps, at least it helped me. 
Reading fiction books as a supplement is a great idea

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