Not the debrief I was hoping to write - From 710 to 650

Question

TL;DR - my GMAT score nosedived. I kinda know why, but do I really?

Background: Indian Male, Non-Engineer (perhaps the only wise decision I ever made). WE: Consumer Goods + Non Profit

I started my GMAT journey back in 2019, gave my first ever official mock, 0 prep, not even sure what GMAT sections look like and scored a 640 - V40, Q37. I knew right off the bat I have to work on my quant skills. I pretty much forgot about GMAT after this. Though I did sign up for a GMAT "coaching center" but never really paid any attention. Cut to April 2020, back home and lockdown in India; started seriously preparing for the exam. Took up  egmat  (their SC course is god-level) and after much dilly dallying, irregular prep, multiple reschedules attempted my first ever test-center exam in January 2021 and scored a 710. V38,Q48 and cherry on the cake - AWA 6/6. I had studied for this attempt seriously but in pieces spread across multiple months and never really consolidated my learnings. Infact 5 days before the actual tests, all I did was 5 Expert Global Mocks and my scores varied between 680 - 740.

This attempt led me to believe that with little more concentrated effort and refinement in my test-taking strategies I would be able to hit the - no point for guessing, every Indian Male's wet dream - 730-740 levels. And boy, was I wrong?

In May (after the treacherous wave 2 in India), I restarted my prep seriously. This time I focused primarily on comprehension: subscribed to NYT, read it regularly for atleast 20 minutes a day, practised LSAT passages and LRs (average accuracy ~80%), practised quant from GMAT Club tests and solved 8 Expert Global mocks (scores ranging from 720-760**). Maintained an error log but never really revised it rigorously (a clear area of improvement). And boom - test day today. I scored a 650 - V28(!!!), Q49 and IR 8/8. All my sectional scores improved but Verbal crashed. I also know my SC (particular grammar rules) and certain topics in quant can be polished. But it doesn't justify me crashing down to the 50th percentile on Verbal.

Now, I kinda think I know why this happened?

- 7 days before my actual test, I logged into my Expert Global account, and to my utter horror all my scores had been revised, from 760 to 730, 750s had become 710. I was later explained that this is change in algorithm' "Scoring algorithm re-calibrated...Mostly, expect up to +/- 30 points correction". Now I really don't meant to diss at them but you can imagine my shock; while I never took these scores to be representative of the actual but I did believe I am operating at a certain level, and suddenly I found that assumption quashed. I gave myself a bunchload of pep-talk(s) and scored 700, 690 in my next two attempts.  ExpertsGlobal5

- On my last mock, a day before the actual test, I scored a V34 (I have never scored below a V37 save for one attempt where I left 5 questions). And this is where it gets murkier. I was just not able to accrue meaning, comprehend what is written on the screen. I had to read, twice, thrice to understand and in some cases still failed. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED WITH ME. And this is exactly what happened today in the actual test. I started with verbal and 5 questions in, I knew this attempt is bombed. I decided to remain calm and try and recover as much as possible. And I did, Q49 for me has been a big breakthrough considering I started at Q37. But I really couldn't do it in verbal. At least not today. And this is what has baffled me. I don't know why this happened. It's not stress. I have been calm through the process. I did not panic at all. I did not freeze. I just couldn't comprehend what's o the screen. Anybody here with a similar experience?

- Also my test appointment got automatically canceled 10 days before the date but then I managed to find another appointment just 2 days later. I don't think it's a contributing factor. But clearly karma is not on my side here, haha.

- What is even scarier? Is there something else at play which I am missing? OR Was it JUST a bad day? And what do I need to do to recover? With R1 deadlines around the corner I am kinda desperate for high quality high ROI advice on what do I need to do.

Any GMAT Expert or member of this community, if you can help me or share any piece of advice - please do! I am willing to share an additional information including my ESRs over email. I am really counting on this wonderful community to help me recover from this debacle.  bb   GMATNinja   bb   Bunuel   DmitryFarber   scott

hanowaswiss · Answer

I know all you wonderful SC assassins will find a bunch of errors in my post. But I am literally recovering from this shock. Pardon my blasphemy

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi lakshitjain,

First off, your prior 710/Q48 is an outstanding Score, so you can comfortably apply to any Business Schools that interest you. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Depending on the Schools that you plan to apply to, 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/

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:

1) Over the last 3 months, how many hours did you typically study each week?
2) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
3) 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

bansalgaurav · Answer

I salute your perseverance !!!   A lot of hard work and time invested !!!! Though I'm not a subject matter expert, in my humble opinion you invested more than the required time in mocks and less analysis or working on your weaker sections. In my opinion, too much dependence on mocks plateaus your score. At the end, it's all about mastering your weaker areas with the ability to attempt Hard questions consecutively in the final exam, within time.
No matter what, I request you to connect for a short discussion, if possible so that I can learn from you and avoid certain pitfalls!!! I'm very sure you can help many avoid mistakes that you did.

My Brief !!!
- I did give a GMAT in 2010 and failed miserably in verbal. Never gave a reattempt, and did MBA from India. Now I'm preparing again for the GMAT for my second MBA. This time I've taken a pretty unconventional approach for preparation. I can see it working for me and notice a lot of improvement in my verbal accuracy.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi lakshitjain,

Hi Connor,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your 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 V28. 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.

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 articles:

how to score a 700+ on the GMAT

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?

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