Advice on Retake GMAT 620 to 700

Question

Hi, 
I would really appreciate an advice on how to improve my score from 620 q42 v34 IR 5 to 700 level. My first try was 600 q36 v35 IR 4
1) Between my first and second tries I have studied for two months with Manhattan guides, OG and beatthegmat daily email programme. I have studied for 2 hours after work every week day and 6 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. I took the last two weeks off of work and studied 8 hours every day. 
2) My latest mock test were all gmatprep 1) 700 q44 v41 (took with no prep after a month of rest)2) 650 q48 v31 ) 610 q43 v31 (had a severe migraine, I don't know why I even bothered to start that day) 4) 660 q44 v36 IR 7
3) On a test day: I have slept for 7 hours, work up early could not fall asleep but it is normal for me before a test day. Trip to the test center was about an hour, nothing in particular to report. I did verbal first, I was doing well on RC but CR were really difficult. I had to guess on last three questions. Then I took a break, drank a protein drink and went back three minutes before the end of a break. This is when the problem started - I could not resume, the system asked for admin credentials. I have waved to an administrator, but she was busy with other students. I had to go out to bring her in. All this took time and I have lost 1 minute on my quant plus added stress. I had to guess on last four questions. I took a break but spent only 3 minutes walking around because I was afraid the logging in problem repeats and it did. This time I have asked the administrator to go with me right away, so she managed to insert her credentials on time. IR was fine but I had to guess on last three questions. Normally I did well on IR with no rush in the end. Administrator did not want to record this incident, she said it is not a big enough deal but I have reported it to gmac and waiting for their review of the case. I did not report this to the school I have applied because I don't know how Gmac decides on this, but if I would be granted a re-take, do you think it is worth sending the admission committee an email, although the deadline has passed?
I would really appreciate your suggestions on what should I do to reach 700 score?

Thank you for your time!

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi Angrierbird, Welcome to GMATCLUB. Around 3 months is good enough to improve your score. It's a good thing you have taken GMAT once. You now know your weaknesses and can work on them. If you are willing to study dedicatedly for that period, you are sure to achieve your goal. I think you need to solidify you base and adopt a proper technique to answer the questions. I believe you may benefit from taking a GMATPREP course. If you are willing, there are some great GMAT prep companies that can help you with your preparation. In order to make an informed decision I would highly encourage you to go to their websites and try on their free trial and decide for yourself which one do you like better. You try out free access to EmpowerGMAT, Magoosh and TTP as they have great reviews on GMATCLUB. If you are looking for a good course in verbal, I would highly encourage you to consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas. I must add that if you are particularly looking to discover and improve on your weak areas in Quant; a subscription to GMATCLUB tests is the best way to do that. They are indeed phenomenal and will not only pinpoint your weak areas but also help you improve on them. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practice tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice. Lastly, you can check out a very interesting article by Mike McGarry from Magoosh detailing a 3 month study plan https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-g ... -students/. You will find it very helpful as it gives out a study plan as per your needs. Hope this helps. All the best.

Angrierbird · Answer

Thank you for taking time to reply and your tips. Actually, I took gmat twice, as I wrote my first score was 600. Prior to the first attempt, I have studied with Economist programme but did not find it very useful in the end. I find that the questions in the Economist prep are much easier than the real deal. 
1) Do you think there is any chance I could spend less than three months to up my score? 
2) Is it advisable to take a short break before continuing with the study process or is it better to push through, while I have a momentum? I find it quite funny that my best score was actually after a month's break between studies.

Thank you in advance!

souvonik2k · Answer

Hi
As I can see from your score you need to improve on Quant. Your Verbal score is good and you have to keep it up. For Quant, I would suggest to take a subscription to the Gmatclub tests. As you have already completed the MGMAT guides, I assume you know the theory well and need practice now. So, Gmatclub can provide you good practice questions that are on par or higher than the actual test.
Regarding your case of reporting the issue, please let us know on GMAC's decision. I think incase you are given a retake and score higher then you can send the higher score to the schools.
Hope it helps. All the best.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Angrierbird,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. The issues that you described likely would have hurt most Test Takers under those circumstances. That having been said, they aren't necessarily the only factors that impacted your Scores - 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.

Before we discuss any of those issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

1) Can you go into a bit more detail about your application plans? Have you already submitted your application to that one School (or did you just submit your GMAT Score?)?
2) Are you planning to apply to any other Schools? If so, then which ones - and what application deadlines are you facing?

You might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Angrierbird,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Given how things were leading up to your GMAT as well as at the test center, I’m not surprised that your GMAT score was lower than the scores of your practice exams. That said, since you were able to score 700 only one time on practice exams, you likely need to put in some more work to achieve your 700+ score goal.

To improve your GMAT score to a 700 level, go through GMAT quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer question types with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to around at least 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.

For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, then carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.

Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see, types that you would rather not see, and types that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in two minutes or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.

You can work on verbal in a similar manner. Let’s say you are reviewing Critical Reasoning. Be sure that you practice a large number of Critical Reasoning questions: Strengthen and Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, find the Conclusion, Must be True, etc. As you go through the questions, do a thorough analysis of each question that you don't get correct. If you missed a Weaken question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize what the question was asking? Did you skip over a key detail in an answer choice? Getting GMAT verbal questions right is a matter of what you know, what you see, and what you do. So, any time that you don't get one right, you can seek to identify what you had to know to get the right answer, what you had to see that you didn't see, and what you could have done differently to arrive at the correct answer.

So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GMAT or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GMAT is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in the time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.

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 my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions. Good luck!

Angrierbird · Answer

Thank you for taking time to review my story and good tips! I will post an update here, when I hear back from GMAC.

Angrierbird · Answer

Hi Rich, Thank you for your time and useful tips. 1) I have submitted an application to INSEAD despite the score. I was taking GMAT on a day of the DL for submission and did not have time to re-take. I have very good references, unusual background, steep career growth and over 11 years of international experience (studying/living/working). Moreover, I do not belong to a competitive pool. This is why I would have been pretty satisfied with 650-660 on an exam day. However, given it will be my third try I feel that I would need to show a real jump. 2) I am not going to apply to other schools this year. If I get a rejection, I plan to retake GMAT and reapply in a year. If - by any miracle- I get through, I would need to re-take GMAT before July, 22nd to get a stronger case for scholarships. 3) As for my practice exams, I gave them both at home and at the library. I did quant and verbal parts with 8 minute breaks but left out IR until the last two exams as was instructed in beat the gmat 60-days guide. During my actual exam, I chose the same order as I did during practices - Verbal, Quant, IR, AWA. I always guessed on last three-four questions in each section. In addition to that I practiced with OG's web portal in exam mode. I would say that, since it was not my first attempt, the only surprising thing was the problem with an access to the exam on both of my breaks. I can't think of anything else, really. 4) Thank you for the useful tip, I have purchased the ESR. I would really appreciate if you could help me analyse it!

Is there any way to share it with you?

Angrierbird · Answer

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed review. I will make sure to include these techniques into my practice. 
My performance on the verbal part confuses me a bit. When I practice timed verbal sessions with OG's official testing practice website, I get 100% to 90% accuracy on SC, RC and CR. However, this does not happen during the exam (mock or real). As per my ESR, my performance per section is CR - 38, 78%, RC -38, 80%, SC - 29, 54%. I am not sure why SC dropped so significantly. Do you have any suggestions on how to fight this?

Thank you!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Angrierbird,

Rather than wait to see how INSEAD's Admissions Committee responds to your application, it would make sense for you to continue studying - although if you want to take a few days off to clear your head, then that would probably be fine.

To properly plan out this next phase of your studies, I'd like to see your ESR. You can feel free to PM it to me directly.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

HanoiGMATtutor · Answer

Angrierbird , you need to email the school right away to ask if they will consider an updated score. I have found that some schools may allow 2 weeks to submit a new score. Next, you want to get right back to studying so you do not lose the momentum. Reserve a GMAT appointment in 2 weeks if possible - the cost of a GMAT appointment is nothing compared to the cost of your business school education. Next, hire a reputable tutor to help you right away - you do not have much time, so every day, every hour counts. Having an experienced tutor to hear your case and give you customized guidance and track your progress is much more helpful than getting general advice from a forum.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Would you like some general advice on how to improve your Sentence Correction skills?

Angrierbird · Answer

Yes, thank you! I would greatly appreciate that.

Angrierbird · Answer

Thank you for looking into my query and your advice.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects. 
 
Regarding what you know, to be successful in Sentence Correction, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.
 
This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending less than two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.
 
There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and none of those reasons are that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answers were always the ones that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey meanings that make sense. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to put in the necessary time to see the differences between answers and to figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could do differently to extend your streak.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Good luck!

Angrierbird · Answer

Dear Scott,

Thank you for the detailed advice. I do try to look for logic and details rather than skimming and have 90%to 100% accuracy in SC in my OG practice and Scholaranium. I always time my practices and try not exceeding 2 minutes. However, during the test conditions this accuracy just disappears, I start to doubt my logic, overthink and end up choosing the "second best".

UPDATE:

GMAC has reviewed my case twice and made a final decision. First, they have rejected my claim and said that I did not lose any time. After that I have called the test center to ask if they have provided the information on test day disruptions. Test center administrator confirmed that she has informed GMAC and remembers very well that I have lost indeed more than 1 minute due to the fact that the system froze in her computer and somehow logged me out. 
After that, I have re-contacted GMAC and my case was escalated further. The final decision was that I get to re-take Gmat at a reduced price of 60 USD.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Glad to hear that GMAC is letting you retake the GMAT at a reduced cost. When is your actual exam?

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