Score not moving above 650, official mock scores upto 740 :(

Question

Hello experts,

Although I am extremely upset while I type this post, it is extremely crucial to get an understanding on this from the experts.

I have written GMAT two times now, almost 3 months apart. My scores have been 640(Q49 V28) and 650(Q49 V31).

I will be very honest - the first official mock I wrote before my attempt 1 was 660, and the second was 700. I understand 2 scores are not sufficient to make a generalization, and so I understand that my first score of 640 was my real standing at that point.

However, in these 3 months, I wrote 12 mocks of Experts Global (highest - 760 and lowest - 660, average - 720) just so that I learn to manage time and try different strategies. In the final 2 official mocks i gave a week before my second attempt, i scored a 720 (Q49 V38) and 740 (Q50 and V39).

I am just unable to figure out what goes so wrong in my final exam that I score 80-90 points below my mock scores. I do know I am the kind of person who takes a lot of pressure, and I am trying to work on that aspect too. But in no other exam has pressure affected me so hard.

I have ordered by ESR and will be able to provide more insights on what exactly went wrong but I will be really happy if all of you experts could guide me. I really feel I am capable of scoring atleast a 720 but on the exam day, I somehow end up under performing to a major major extent.

Thanks already,
Utkarsh

RJ7X0DefiningMyX · Answer

Hi Utkarsh,

Sorry to hear about the D-Day debacles (I would not have wanted to use the word, but given you'd scored a 760, I can understand how disappointed you must be now).

As much as Experts Global might claim to be the closest to the official test, there's really no source to 'verify' their claim. No one in this world has EVER been able to crack GMAC's algorithm(s) on the GMAT.

So I'd suggest you give as many official GMAT prep exams as you can, and basis the average scores that you get in those, you could get an idea of what's your 'actual' GMAT standing. Remember, not Manhattan, Not Kaplan, not Veritas, not Experts Global or any other test company under the sun, BUT ONLY GMAT PREP (the official ones).

Give a couple of those tests over this weekend and you'd have a better idea on the next steps.

utkarsh1604 · Answer

Hi sir,

Thanks a lot for taking out time and responding to this.

To be honest, I have exhausted all the 6 official GMATPREP mocks. In the last mock that i gave, mock 6, i scored a 740 (Q50 V39). I will admit that one of the RC's that came, I had seen it before and knew the answers to it. But that cannot be the reason of a drop from 39 to 31.

Now that I dont really have any official mocks left, not even many official questions, what should my strategy be? What should I do?

Thanks again,
Utkarsh

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Utkarsh,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. 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 potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long did you study before each of your Official GMATs? How many hours did you typically study each week?
2) What study materials have you used so far?

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
5) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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). Since you purchased the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you. You will need to post at least 5 times in the GMATClub forums before you can attach your ESR to any posts or PMs. You can also feel free to email me your ESR directly.

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi utkarsh1604,

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 650. 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.

To hit your score goal, your preparation probably needs to be more complete, particularly for verbal, 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. 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 verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, as you experienced, 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.

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!

HanoiGMATtutor · Answer

Sorry to hear,  utkarsh1604 .

There are many factors that can affect your performance on test day. When your mind is still fresh, what do you recall from test day? How did you feel throughout the exam? How confident did you feel walking into the test site? How did you feel the day before? What did you do the day before? Did you trip over certain questions? Were there particularly difficult RC passages?

The answers to the questions above in addition to the ESR will help us diagnose your case better.

Score not moving above 650, official mock scores upto 740 :(

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