Bombed on my 2nd Attempt - Need help or advise

Question

I had my first GMAT attempt last year in-centre, 07th Oct 2020 scored a 680 (Q49, V33, IR6, AWA5) after 2 months of preparation.
I went through the application cycle last year and could not secure a seat.

This year started my preparation in the month of march and went exhaustively through basics and practiced a lot.
Scheduled my exam by 28th May 2021 in centre - got cancelled due to COVID & re-scheduled it on 07th July in-centre - again cancelled due to COVID.

So decided to take online version, scheduled it on the same day 07th July (today) scored a 660 (Q50, V30, IR5). During my preparation took various mocks including official, some of them listed below:

(1) Veritas Free Mock - 3rd April 2021 - 620 (Q46, V30)
(2) MGMAT Free Mock - 13th April 2021 - 680 (Q47, V35)
(3) eGMAT Mock - 23rd May 2021 - 670 (Q48, V33)
(4) GMAT Whiz - 16th June 2021 - 640 (Q50, V27)
(5) GMAT Exam Prep Mock 3 - 22nd June 2021 - 700 (Q50, V34)
(6) GMAT Exam Prep Mock 1 - 27th June 2021 - 740 (Q50, V41) (Retook - after almost a year)
(7) GMAT Exam Prep Mock 4 - 02nd July 2021 - 730 (Q51, V37)

In 2 official mocks (3 & 4), I did not see any questions repeating from my preparation. I prepared a min. of 10 - 12 hrs/week from 1st week of March until now. I expected to cross the 700 barrier (90% percentile) and nothing more (just 20-30 marks more from my previous attempt). I rested well in the past week, kept my mind clear to face the D-Day.

I exhaustively practiced entire OG 2020, Verbal Review 2020, Quant Review 2020, Advanced GMAT Book (bought all of these, so practiced them in online mode to match testing environment). Apart from these, watched many youtube videos and attended webinars by prep companies. Used MGMAT materials - Foundations, Sentence Correction. Only one section where I was not so consistent is SC (all other sections my performance were pretty consistent). I almost took all my mocks in the afternoon around the same time as actual.

I am frustrated as my scored reduced from my first attempt. My application deadlines are just 1 month away now. What should I really do? Is it advisable to retake the exam. If retaking is it worth to take in next 17th day. What should I do in these 2 weeks time ? Else I should accept my defeat and move on with life? Pretty bad shape mentally.

ULiDe · Answer

To add, before my previous attempt last year when I took official mocks 1 & 2, I scored 720 (Q51, V37) and 670 (Q49, V33) . So in sum, this test is the lowest I got in official / official mocks, that too after putting in 4 months of hard preparation with lots of sacrifices..

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Posted from my mobile device

RetaketheGMAT · Answer

Hi ULiDe

With so much study, most likely your issue isn't your knowledge level of core quant and verbal content. I'm almost certain that your issue is how you are attacking questions.

In test strategy can make a big difference: as much as 50 to 75 points (I've seen those kinds of jumps with clients who only worked on their in-test process and didn't do any additional content study).

We offer a FREE 90 minute Readiness Assessment session that determines where you're falling short specific to your target score. It covers both quant and verbal and is live with an expert GMAT coach. When there are critical process shortcomings, they can be fixed much faster than knowledge gaps (ie in a matter of weeks).

Let me know if you're interested. I'd be happy to set it up right away so you can make a smart and more informed decision about your potential to hit your target score within the next few weeks.

ULiDe · Answer

I would be happy to get any sort of help. Let me know how to connect. But, after a day or two to get my mind out of this mishap.

TiffanyMprep760 · Answer

Hello ULiDe,

I'm a GMAT instructor with Manhattan Prep; I've helped a lot of students facing challenges similar to yours.

I can certainly understand your frustration. However, you can make significant progress in a few weeks, particularly as it seems that you've hit higher verbal scores somewhat recently.

Without actually seeing your practice exams, I can't offer a comprehensive analysis. However, it seems that your verbal score is very inconsistent.

Based on that, it seems that you KNOW what behaviors you need to use to be successful, but you don't use them on every verbal question or in every verbal section you attempt. My guess is that you face issues with the following: 
1. Using a good process to approach each type of Verbal question (RC, SC, CR) and making sure that you use this process for EVERY question. 
2. Timing. Although I can't be sure, it seems that you are likely managing timing well for some practice exams, but on others you are likely either rushing or lagging. Sometimes students don't realize that it's equally harmful to have a lot of time left at the end of a section as it is to run out of time. Having time left means that you likely left some points on the table. To manage timing, you need to think periodically about what question # you're on and how much time you should have left approximately. If you're within about 2 minutes of ideal timing, you're doing well!
3. Triaging. Some questions are just not meant for you to answer. Maybe they're simply too difficult or they test a topic that is a weak point for you. You need to practice assessing three things immediately for every problem that you see: 1) How difficult does this problem seem? If it's too difficult, be prepared to bail. 2) What is this problem testing? Is that one of your strengths or weaknesses? 3) Is this a problem that you should try to solve or one that you should simply guess on? You will decide this based on the answers to questions #1 and 2, as well as how much time you have left.

Focusing your practice on these areas would likely help you immensely.

Finally, it seems that testing anxiety likely played a role, as you experienced a much lower verbal score on your official exam than on practice exams. Practice some calming exercises to help with this. I recommend that my students meditate before they take official or practice exams. I also suggest that they pause and take a mini-break in the middle of a difficult section. Plan a question about mid-way to simply guess on and use about 1-2 minutes to sit quietly and recharge. This is particularly helpful if you're noticing that you do better in the first half of the verbal section than in the second half.

I hope that this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Happy Studying, 
Tiffany

IanStewart · Answer

There's very good reason to think you'd get a much better Verbal score on a retake (and the same Q score), even if you made no improvement at all, so you should definitely give the test another shot. When you get a test day score lower than all your diagnostic scores, that is either because you performed differently (you were more tired than usual, or experienced test anxiety, or something else was different on test day) or it's because you were unlucky or just had a bad day. From your test day Quant scores, it doesn't seem plausible that you suffer from any pronounced test anxiety, and from your official Verbal scores (I wouldn't pay much attention to the scores from third party tests), it looks like you're at least at a V35 level, and this one test was an outlier. If you have some time before a retake, you might try to improve your Verbal ability further, with high-quality official practice, and by analyzing any errors you've made to see if you can learn from them. But it's almost certain you'll get a better score if you retake in two weeks even if you don't improve your fundamental level.

The GMAT is not, especially at the higher difficulty levels, a test of strategy (as long as you're using good pacing strategy), so my personal recommendation would be not to spend much time on that. Good luck!

The GMAT is not, especially at the higher difficulty levels, a test of strategy (as long as you're using good pacing strategy), so my personal recommendation would be not to spend much time on that. Good luck!

ULiDe · Answer

Thanks, I booked my in-centre exam in 2 weeks. Hope to make the difference this time. I did not have much of text anxiety when I approached verbal. After a successfull and confident QUANT. Only difference, I was informed not to read questions out loud. I have this habit of reading out (not loud out but murmuring kind of reading). Not just GMAT, my general reading habit. I had to control it & approached silent reading. But will it be a reason for my score this bad ? This is the one reason I could come up, trying to analyze what went wrong 
? Will I have similar restriction incenter based exam as well ?

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ULiDe · Answer

I do agree that my Verbal section performance is inconsistent with other prep tests. But in official mocks, I never scored below V34. I prepared exhaustively this time for each section within Verbal. I practiced a lot of question, even solved CR & RC from LSAT (2 paper only) and stuck to GMAT official material only for last 3 weeks. My hit rate in Advanced official question Book, RC/CR is close to 80% while SC its closer to 50%.I didn't expect to score too high. I would have been happy with a 710 too.

In the actual test, SC was pretty different from any official prep material / mocks. RC was on similar lines but not even a single main point Q and majority is inference based, CR was filled with strengthen Qs, which was quite easy to me. For Time Management perse, 1st 2 Quarters, I was within +/- 1Q from my target and sailed half way pretty good (though not expected). In 3rd Quarter there was one lengthy and tough RC consumed a little more time and even I let go of 1 question here. Last quarter, I need to pace up a bit to cover additional 3/4 Q. But this was pretty much happened in mocks as well. I couldn't attribute this to low score. To sum up, after completing the section I never thought I did this worse. I expected scores to be better atleast a V35.

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bb · Answer

Hi Ian,

You feel perhaps verbal test taking skills are perishable or you think it is like a bicycle? You can easily refresh in a short period of time and retake the test?

I would theorize that there is a bit to both and there’s a certain floor but for a high score, it requires a meaningful refresh after a break. However, I don’t track people as closely as you may have a big curious on what you see in reality.

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IanStewart · Answer

That's a well-studied issue in education, so there's no need to speculate about it! It depends how a person has studied. When people study by memorizing, they lose what they've learned quickly. When people study by understanding, they retain what they've learned for a long time. So when a test taker has, say, memorized a long list of situations in SC that call for the subjunctive, that test taker is likely to need to spend a fair bit of time relearning things after a break. If instead the test taker has understood what the subjunctive is for, and thus knows when to use it without memorizing a list of 'command verbs' and such that call for it, that test taker will probably not need much review at all (just a quick reminder, usually). This principle is even more applicable to Quant, and it's one reason I teach Quant by teaching conceptual understanding (there's an even more important reason, though: the GMAT is truly testing conceptual understanding at the higher level of the test, and you can't get top scores just by memorizing formulas and applying methods by rote, so I teach that way because it achieves the best results).

But none of this is relevant to the test taker who started this thread - when I said that test taker could walk into a test center tomorrow and very likely get a V35+, I was taking account of the V37 the person had on an official diagnostic from less than a week ago.

IanStewart · Answer

I'm not sure precisely what protocols are in place in test centers right now, but pre-covid, you'd typically be in a room with a small number of other people taking computer tests of one kind or another, and would not be allowed to make any noise. So if when you're 'reading aloud', you are vocalizing sounds at all, I'd imagine you'll be instructed to stop, unless you're the only person there. Someone who has taken an in-person test in the last couple of months will know better than me how these things are working now, though. Whether your score was affected because you had to read differently I can't say for sure, but I'd suspect it's possible -- if you're forced to use an approach during the test that's different from what you've used throughout your prep, that would often lead to underperformance. The good news is that means there's one clear thing you can work on now (reading silently), something that you can certainly improve at, and something there's good reason to think will help.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. The good news is that you scored really well on quant, right? That said, I understand that you are not satisfied with your verbal score, so the question we need to ask is why you scored so high on your practice exams but lower on the real GMAT.

Assuming that you took your official practice exams under realistic testing conditions, the results show that, on a good day, you are capable of scoring higher than V30. Thus, it’s quite possible that nerves, stress, tiredness, or a combination of all three negatively affected your test-day performance. However, it’s also possible that you have some lingering weaknesses that were exposed on test day. Although I’m unsure of how you prepared, it’s possible that, in your preparation, particularly in verbal, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on the actual GMAT. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, for you to hit your score goal, your preparation, particularly for verbal, probably needs to be more complete, meaning that you have to go through the various types of GMAT questions carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills.

For verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, you will get stuck guessing between two choices or be surprised to find that you incorrectly answered questions that you thought you answered correctly. Becoming more skilled in this way takes carefully analyzing all of the answer choices to lots of verbal questions to develop an eye for the logical differences between the choices. In other words, you have to go beyond answering practice questions and reading explanations to doing deep analysis of questions to learn to see everything that is going on in them.

You also may find it helpful to read the following articles:

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