Is 540 a good score on Kaplan practice test?

Question

Yesterday I gave Kaplan practice test and scored 540 Q41 V23

I had thought of doing 8 questions in 15 minutes, but I was not able to apply my test strategy

n verbal when only 5 minutes were remaining I was on question number 25. The strange part is in the first week of July I gave Manhattan free mock test and scored 520 Q33 V28. In between these two mocks tests I did RCs from Veritasprep, Manhattan RC, and did RCs from this forum. My RC accuracy fell from 52%(Manhattan mock) to 26%(Kaplan mock). I had just started SC 10 days ago but had 38% accuracy in Kaplan mock. The other strange thing is CR, in MGMAT mock I got only 1 CR right and in Kaplan mock test I had 50% accuracy in CR, even though I had not done a single CR question in between the two mocks. In MGMAT I had run out of time and was not able to attempt the last question. Coming to Quant, between these two tests I had done only 2 topics in quant: 1. Statistics (25% accuracy in Kaplan mock)- might because I had not revised the topic for 10 days 2. Number properties (67% accuracy in Kaplan mock) Even in quant, I was bad with timings in Kaplan mock test. When 5 minutes were remaining I was on question 25. PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND WHERE I AM GOING WRONG. ANY SCORE BETWEEN 650-700 IS GOOD FOR ME.

Toffelfabriken · Answer

My opinion is that since you seem to be somewhere in the beginning of your prep, getting a 540 is a sign that a 650 should be possible, provided you put in the time and effort needed to make the improvements you need.

I would begin by asking what kind of material you've been using for studying. It sounds to me like you may be struggling with some of the basics, so there may be some gaps in your understanding of the basic concepts. Also, it sounds like you're struggling with time management, which you will want to improve to get a 650+ score.

My suggestion is that you check out the Manhattan books for things like quant and RC. You should be able to brush up on the fundamental stuff there, and pick up some strategies to become more efficient at solving certain types of questions. For SC and CR, I would recommend giving the Powerscore SC Bible and the Powerscore CR Bible a go. While I haven't used them personally, I have heard a lot of good things about these books, and they should help you get a better understanding of how to approach these questions.

Also, while learning to solve a new type of question, I would also recommend checking out the  GMAT question bank  to find relevant questions to practice on. Also, spend time reading the expert solutions to these, because that can help with picking up more effective ways of solving questions.

When it comes to time management, first of all make sure you time yourself when doing practice questions. Some of the Manhattan strategies will also help with solving questions faster. Additionally, you will want to get comfortable with doing many questions in a row. For this, the Official Guide can be helpful, as it's a handy way of getting a steady stream of questions without pauses. Again, be sure to time yourself, so you know whether you're taking too long to solve certain questions. Lastly, a handy tip for catching up when you're lagging behind is to try to find a question you are fairly certain you've got the correct answer to, and to then immediately guess on the next question. The idea is that you save 2 minutes, while hopefully not getting two wrong answers in a row, which would be more punishing than if the wrong answers are more spread out.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi AnushkaPatel961,

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 in total? How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?
3) Are these the only 2 practice CATs/mocks that you have taken? If there were others, then on what dates did you take EACH of those CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
5) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

AnushkaPatel961 · Answer

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback. I would like to highlight certain points.
Firstly, I have taken GMAT once in December 2019 and scored 490 Q39 V21. In these attempts, I had hardly prepared for 50 days, had completed OG with 60%-70% accuracy, and had enrolled in a local coaching center for the basics.
Then I restarted my preparation in May, did the quant strategy guides from MGMAT, and had hardly touched verbal and MGMAT was my first mock when I restarted my prep. The quant result(Q33) was not up to the mark, taking into consideration the time and effort I had given. I have completed the MGMAT RC strategy guide after the MGMAT mock and have started with SC. I have no idea from these two mock tests in which area I am strong.
I get intimidated with the clock ticking in the reverse and I get anxious due to that. I can understand concepts, but I am not able to apply it to practice with a timer.
Please guide me on what to do and how to do it?

AnushkaPatel961 · Answer

Thanks for your valuable time and effort.
Answers to your questions.
Studie:
1) I had started my GMAT prep in Sept. end 2019 took GMAT once in Dec and scored 490 Q39 V21 and had only done OG with 60%-70% accuracy. Afterward, I restarted my preparation in May first week. In a week I typically give 56 hours to 70 hours.
2) I have completed the MGMAT quant strategy guide and RC strategy guide. Currently, I am doing the MGMAT SC strategy guide.
3) Yes, after I restarted my prep I have taken only these 2 mocks in a gap of 20 days.

Goals
4) As soon as possible, maybe in September because I want to start with my CFA preparations.
5) I am planning to apply for Fall 2021 intake. And I am targeting top Candian Universities.

Thanks you.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi AnushkaPatel961,

Thank you for providing some additional information. Honestly, you are putting in many study hours, but things just aren’t coming together for you. Thus, moving forward, you may consider following a more linear and sctured study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

If you are learning about Number Properties, you should develop as much conceptual knowledge about Number Properties as possible. In other words, your goal will be to completely understand properties of factorials, perfect squares, quadratic patterns, LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, and remainders, to name a few concepts. After carefully reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions, practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. 
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

Follow a similar routine for verbal. For example, let’s say you start by learning about Critical Reasoning. Your first goal is to fully master the individual topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken The Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice, so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and instead focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and thereby comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect Reading Comprehension answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. Keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be easy to read. So, to better prepare yourself to analyze such passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. 
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects.

Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not really a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning the grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice until you start to see the differences that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to take the time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off, and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses . You also may find it helpful to read the following article about  The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT .

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi AnushkaPatel961,

To start, you have to be careful about confusing "quantity" of study with "quality" of study. I have never asked anyone to study 40+ hours a week - and while it's great that you might have the available time to study that much, with that number of study hours, you would run the risk of 'burning out' before Test Day (and that may have already happened). If you are going to try to study that much, then I suggest that you take one hour "off" for every two hours of study. For example, you could study for 2 hours, then stop for an hour, then study for another 2 hours, then take an hour off, etc.

Assuming that you took your recent practice CAT in a realistic fashion that matches-up with what you will face when you retake the Official GMAT - and that your current 'ability level' is a 540 - then raising a 540 to the point that you can consistently score 650+ will likely require at least another 2 months of consistent, guided study - and you will have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. Since it is now August though, you will probably need to study through the end of September to hit that Score - so you might need to consider pushing back your planned Test Date.

In addition, if you know which Schools you plan to apply to, then you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile and plans. Those Experts should be able to answer your Admissions questions and help define the specific areas of your profile that could use some improvement.

There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

1) Do you know the specific Round 1 and Round 2 application deadlines for each of the Schools that you plan to apply to?

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

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