How to decide if you're ready for the exam.

Question

Hi
I've been preparing for the GMAT since mid November 2021 and am confused if I'm prepared and if I should just go and give the exam. 
My Mock scores are as follows (all given in the past 10 days) -
1. GMAT Official 1 : 720 (Q49,V41)
2. GMAT Official 2 : 700 (Q45,V41)
3. Manhattan Prep Test 1 : 730 (Q49,V41)

I have purchased the remaining tests on Manhattan and MBA and plan to take them within the next week starting tonight.

Quant is what gets to me sometimes, I've never been very fond of the subject or good at it but I've worked hard on it during my prep. Silly mistakes are what are cost me - missing out on the stem where it's specified X is an integer or is positive or the range asked is of positive numbers and I calculated it for the whole series and so on.
 
My initial plan was to take the exam end February / first week March and submit my applications in R3. (Applying for MiM to UK/Europe). My dad suggested that I should take the exam around 20th of Feb with the view that if it goes according to plan then great and if not, I can give my second attempt in the first week of March as I had initially planned. If I were to stick to my original timeline, I might not be able to give it again (if need be) because of deadlines etc.

Deferring by a year or to R4 is not really something I'm consider or even want to consider. I've read multiple times on how 15-16 days between attempts are not really sufficient for improvement and how practice tests can just be false positives with actual test scores dropping by more than 50-60 points as compared with mocks. However confident and optimistic I should be and even partly am, part of me keeps fearing about the worst that can happen and that it will.

I wanted to get some advice from all those here on how should I approach this, if what my dad suggested makes sense and what should I focus on as I get closer to test date.

Thanks

IanStewart · Answer

The official diagnostic scores are the ones to trust -- those tests are essentially identical to the real thing. So it sounds like you're around a 710 right now. There's variance on any test, because sometimes you have to guess, and some days you're luckier than others, so assuming you'll perform normally under test conditions, you can expect to score in the 680-740 range most of the time.

I don't know what score you need, but if you'll be happy with a 650, you're not likely to need more than one attempt, unless you're concerned you might be affected by test day stress or something like that. But in general, it's always best to leave yourself time to take the test again, just in case you have a very bad day, or there are technical issues. And if you need a 700+, you'll raise your odds a lot if you can take the test twice instead of once. So your dad's suggestion seems like a good one.

As for how to prepare, it's really hard to improve on Verbal scores as strong as yours, and if you were to do anything for Verbal, you'd want to practice exclusively official questions, trying to learn a few things from questions you find challenging. Your Quant scores appear to be more variable (based on limited data!) but that would make sense if you're prone to careless errors -- getting easier questions wrong hurts a lot on the GMAT, and if you sometimes make careless errors on easy questions, sometimes not, your scores will fluctuate more than normal. Figuring out how to minimize the number of careless errors you make should be a priority. Unfortunately it's impossible to give good advice about just how to do that, without knowing a lot about how you're approaching GMAT math, and why you're making careless mistakes. Sometimes test takers need to develop better habits (sometimes that just means writing legibly), sometimes test takers need to slow down and either reread questions or double-check their work in those situations where they know they're liable to make a mistake, sometimes test takers need to learn better methods so they can save time on some questions to devote to checking their work on others, and sometimes test takers are using awkward methods that require more steps than necessary, which increases the number of opportunities to make a mistake. If you can work out when and why you're making careless errors, you might be able to work out how to notice and fix them. Good luck!

AG1999 · Answer

Thanks for your advice, Ian. Your suggestions about approaching Quant have made me aware of areas I didn't even know I was possibly overlooking and how to improve them. Will most probably go for the first attempt soon and ride out the confidence I've gained from these mock scores

.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi AG1999,

I'm curious to know, how did your next official GMAC practice exam go for you?

AG1999 · Answer

I attempted the Manhattan Prep CAT 2&3. I read that those are comparatively tougher and wanted to challenge myself (especially in quant). 
Scored 660 on CAT 2 and the exam completely destroyed me - was unable to attempt the last quant question and had to guess my way through the last 3-4 questions in an attempt to save time. There were a few questions which I knew how to do but there was no way that I could solve those in 2-3mins. Devastated, I tried to make up for it in verbal and in an attempt to make no mistakes I over analyzed even simple questions and just ended up wasting more time in verbal. Scored 8 in IR if it's any consolation.

I went over the questions multiple times and some concepts, took the 3rd CAT just a few hours ago and scored 720 but Q45. Was able to finish the questions on time but messed up a few calculations and made consecutive errors. Verbal was challenging but nothing out of the ordinary except one RC passage that sent me into a twist. Scored V42 as I was able to answer the last 12 questions correctly and aced SC.

Planning to take the 3rd official mock tomorrow and I guess that would be a fairly accurate estimation of my ability. Will share the score on this thread. Just a little low on confidence as of now but making efforts to improve.

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