How is 645 (Q80 V85 DI80) for 1st GMAT (official) practice exam score

Question

Hi everyone,

I started prepping around a month and a half ago using the GMATninja free YT videos and the 2024-2025 OG. I have not covered all the topics yet, and have completed roughly 30% of the OG. For the past two days, I had been trying a couple of questions on GMAT Club.

Today I gave my first mock test, one of the official practice exams on GMAC. I scored 645 (Q80 V85 DI80). My target is 730+ and I am planning to take the test in the first week of June.

Please advise whether this is a reasonable improvement goal given the time frame, and if I need to refer to any additional or paid resources as well. I wanted to get a clear picture of my position before I spend any money.

MartyMurray · Answer

645 is a good place to be at this point. At the same time, scoring 730+ takes near flawless performance. So, it's a little hard to say whether another two months will be sufficient for you to get to 730+. It could be sufficient, but you may find that getting the last 40 points or so takes a fair amount of work.

A key move you could make is to switch from doing questions in the OG to doing questions topic by topic on GMAT Club. Practicing that way will work better for topic mastery. Also, there aren't many hard questions in the OG, and you need to practice with many hard questions to achieve your target score. So, using the many hard questions on GMAT Club will help you succeed.

For more detail on how to score 730+, see these posts.

How to Score 705+ on the GMAT

How to Ace the GMAT Using the Streaks Method

MBAGuide · Answer

Hi aditis15

Your verbal and integrated reasoning seem solid (V85, DI80). Try to optimize your quant accuracy and timing. You could maintain error logs to avoid repeating careless mistakes (for both quant and verbal) , and this may help to get significant gains in the short time you have before your next test. If you feel anxious about the quant section, try taking more Q mocks to get comfortable. Don’t forget to go over your mistakes after each mock and check whether you have really grasped the concepts. You would be surprised how often the exact same types of problems trip people up again unless the underlying concepts are fully mastered. Your target score is quite ambitious. think about the schools you are aiming for and double-check whether you are putting too much pressure on improving your score while giving less focus to other parts of your application.

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aditis15

Hi everyone,

I started prepping around a month and a half ago using the GMATninja free YT videos and the 2024-2025 OG. I have not covered all the topics yet, and have completed roughly 30% of the OG. For the past two days, I had been trying a couple of questions on GMAT Club.

Today I gave my first mock test, one of the official practice exams on GMAC. I scored 645 (Q80 V85 DI80). My target is 730+ and I am planning to take the test in the first week of June.

Please advise whether this is a reasonable improvement goal given the time frame, and if I need to refer to any additional or paid resources as well. I wanted to get a clear picture of my position before I spend any money.

Archit3110 · Answer

congratulations for score... its a good for 1st attempt.. all the best with applications

ExpertsGlobal · Answer

Hi  aditis15 ,

645 is a good score on your first mock; that said, here is how you should go about your prep from here:

1. Consolidate your concepts
Revisit all the conceptual material you’ve covered so far and work on strengthening it. If you are still struggling with certain topics, consider investing in a solid prep course. Keep in mind: while the official material is excellent for practice, it’s not designed for teaching concepts from scratch.

2. Re-attempt all previously incorrect questions
Review your mistakes from earlier practice. Understand why you got them wrong and how to avoid those errors going forward.

3. Practice with a new set of high-difficulty questions
Use either official sources or reliable third-party material to build deeper familiarity with challenging questions.

4. Practice consistently over the next few weeks
Every couple of weeks, go back and re-attempt your earlier incorrect questions. Continue revisiting weak areas in your conceptual understanding along the way.

By diligently following these four steps over a few focused weeks, you’ll likely find yourself performing at a significantly higher level.

All the best!

– Experts’ Global Team

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi aditis15,

A 645 on your first official practice exam after just six weeks of prep is a strong starting point. That's not a score you need to panic about. It's a score you can build on.

Let me give you an honest breakdown of where you stand and what it'll take to reach 730+.

Your timeline 
You're looking at roughly 8–9 weeks until the first week of June. An 90-point improvement (645 → 735) in that window is ambitious but possible, with a few conditions. It requires consistent daily study (ideally 2–3 hours minimum), structured topic coverage, and smart practice test usage. Students who make jumps like this typically aren't just doing more problems, they're studying differently as they get closer to their target.

The biggest risk factor is that you've only covered about 30% of the OG and haven't finished all the topics yet. That means you likely have meaningful content gaps, especially in Quant and DI, which are where most of the score gains at this level come from.

What your section scores tell you 
Your Q80/V85/DI80 percentiles suggest a fairly balanced profile, which is good news. You don't have a single section dragging you down dramatically. But to reach 730+, you'll need all three sections to move up, and Quant and DI tend to be where structured prep makes the biggest difference.

Verbal at the 85th percentile is solid for this stage. Pushing that higher will likely come naturally as you work through more CR and RC passages, since those question types reward repeated exposure and pattern recognition.

What I'd recommend for the next 8 weeks 
 
 Finish covering all the core topics first. This is the most important thing. Gaps in foundational topics (number properties, inequalities, rates, probability, DS logic, and the various DI question formats) will cap your score regardless of how many practice problems you do. Don't rush, but be deliberate. Prioritize understanding over volume. 
 Use the OG strategically. Since you have the 2024–2025 OG, work through it by topic, not sequentially. After you study a concept, immediately practice OG questions on that topic. Review every wrong answer carefully and figure out whether you missed it because of a content gap, a misread, or a timing issue. That distinction matters. 
 GMAT Club questions are fine as a supplement but shouldn't be your primary practice source at this stage. The quality varies, and the difficulty ratings can be inconsistent. Official questions (OG + the official practice exams) are the gold standard for calibrating where you actually stand. 
 Save your remaining official practice exams. You get six total from mba.com. Space them out, ideally one every 2 weeks as you get closer to your test date. Don't burn through them early. Each one is a data point you can't get back. 
 When you take your next practice test, pay close attention to timing. At the 730+ level, most students' issues shift from "I don't know this" to "I spent too long on that." If you find yourself spending more than 2.5–3 minutes on any single Quant or DI question, that's a signal to guess and move on.
  
 Do you need paid resources? 
Honestly, it depends on how the next few weeks go. The GMAT Ninja videos and the OG are solid free resources, and plenty of students have scored 730+ using free or low-cost materials. The key question is whether you're able to self-diagnose your weaknesses effectively and build structured study plans around them.

If you find after another 3–4 weeks that your practice test scores are plateauing, or that you're consistently struggling with the same topic areas despite studying them, that's when a structured course becomes worth the investment, not because free resources are inadequate, but because a good course sequences the material for you and forces you to address gaps you might skip on your own.

For now, I'd suggest focusing on thorough topic coverage and taking your second official practice exam in about 2–3 weeks. That score will tell you a lot more about whether your current approach is working or whether you need to adjust.

You're in a reasonable position. The gap is closeable, but it'll require focused, consistent work and honest self-assessment along the way. Keep going.

Edskore · Answer

645 on your first official mock after 1.5 months is actually a solid starting point, especially since you've only covered 30% of the OG. There's still a lot of ground to cover that will move your score.

The 730+ goal by June is achievable, but you'll need a structured push over the next 8 weeks. A few things I'd prioritize given your situation.

First - finish the OG, but work through it by topic rather than page order. When I was prepping, I noticed a huge difference between random practice and doing all of, say, Rate/Work problems in a cluster before moving on. The GMAT reuses patterns constantly. You won't spot them if you're hopping around.

Your subscores (Q80/V85/DI80) are fairly even, which is good news. The jump from 645 to 730+ usually doesn't come from being great at everything equally, it comes from identifying your specific error types and fixing those. For each practice question you get wrong, it's worth asking: was it a concept gap, a misread, or a time crunch that forced a guess? Different diagnoses need different solutions.

On paid resources - you don't need them yet. GMATninja's free content is genuinely strong, and the official mocks are the most reliable practice material available. I'd wait until you've worked through most of the OG before investing in anything paid. If you stall around 680-690 after that, then it makes sense to supplement.

Take another official mock in 3-4 weeks after finishing more content. Your first mock score is less informative than where you land after actually covering the material. That second mock will tell you much more about what needs work.

Good luck - the trajectory here is solid.

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How is 645 (Q80 V85 DI80) for 1st GMAT (official) practice exam score

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