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Sawan Kumar
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Hi Sawan Kumar,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. Your Official Score is remarkably similar to the practice CAT Scores that you reported back in January (here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/plan-256823.html#p1991509). When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as when you took your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once? Had you seen any of the questions BEFORE (re: on a prior CAT, in an online forum or in a practice set)?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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Hi sawan Kumar,

The drop in your actual test score as compared to your mock scores is definitely worth delving deeper into.
1. Were there any questions in the mock tests that you had already seen or solved earlier?
2. Apart from being rushed, was there anything else during the test that resulted in the low score?

You seem to have taken a lot of mock tests and looks like your preparation has been more around the mocks. To understand your preparation better, I would like to know a little more about your preparation.
1. How did you study? Which resources did you use?
2. What is your approach while solving questions? Do you follow a well-defined process or randomly start solving the question?

TIMING ISSUE IS AN INDICATOR OF FAULTY PROCESS

Timing problem is mainly because of the process you follow to solve the question. When you follow an inefficient process, you will either take more time to solve it or answer it incorrectly. In order to avoid such surprises during the actual test, it is essential that you follow a reliable and repeatable process. Your approach to solving questions should be methodical so that it doesn’t change based on the difficulty level of the question.

    • Chintan gave too many mocks in his first attempt and ended up getting only a 630. In his second attempt, he realized his mistake, followed a methodical approach, got his fundamentals strong and improved to a 710. Click here to read his de-brief.

    • Murali (740) started his GMAT journey only by practicing questions from OG. Soon realized that it requires a methodical approach to ace GMAT. Click here to read his amazing debrief.

ATTEND THE FREE WEBINARS (CR AND ALGEBRA) TO LEARN A METHODICAL APPROACH

We are conducting free webinars on CR and Algebra this weekend to help students like you with strategies to ace the respective sub-sections of GMAT

Regards,
Aditee