Low GMAT score - need advice

Question

Attempted GMAT exam today after 1yr preparation, got 520

For my preparation, i mostly practiced questions in Official Guide & Verbal Review 2017, 2018, 2019 editions. In addition, for Verbal, made notes from the Experts replies in this Forum .. Scaled score I got : Quants: 48 Verbal: 15 IR: 2 very disappointing score for me, Experts, can you please guide how to improve the scores..

Thanks, PSB India

TopTierMBA · Answer

Hello dear,

Kudos to you on taking the plunge ! Yes its disheartening to get a low score in GMAT, but fret not. Failures are the biggest teachers.

For starters, I will suggest a few ideas to improve on your score:
1.  Keep the prep short and focussed:-  It seems you have taken almost a year to prepare for the exam. GMAT tests the very basics of quant and verbal, and aspirants need to develop a skill in several new concepts. Its best if you do a 2-3 months of focussed preparation and then take the exam rather than prepare over a long duration. If the lead time to exam is too long, you will forget concepts as you grab new ones.

2.  Analyse and improve:-  Analyse viz. break into parts, your score. You mentioned a 520 overall score with 48 on Quants and 15 on Verbal. 48 on Quants is pretty decent score. You need to drill down deeper on your verbal section performance, and see the section wise performance in terms of accuracy, score, etc.
The score of 15 preliminary suggests that you need to work on basics. For non-native speakers of English, the verbal score is often the laggard, but there are ways to fix it.
After you have analysed the section-wise performance, focus on improving accuracy first and then on speed. Remember that speed will come to you once you have a good grasp on concepts and hence have good accuracy.

3.  Get the first impression right  In GMAT, the score is affected by performance in the initial few questions. Since its an adaptive test, the performance on your first few questions on the exam determines the difficulty level of questions you receive. Keep this in mind when re-attempting.

4.  Second time is better  Remember that aspirants usually improve on a repeat attempt because of various aspects like familiarity with the exam format, lower anxiety, etc. So you will definitely do better on the 2nd attempt.

5.  Verbal strategy  Since your verbal section needs some attention, I would suggest you focus on building basics such as grammar. You can use GMATClub free resources, or Manhattan Prep guide books (CR / SC / RC). Practicing OG is recommended 15 days prior to the exam. Before that you need to practice from other sources.

All the best.

Cheers !
TopTierMBA

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi PSB, Welcome to GMATCLUB. You should study for around 4 months to improve your score. It's a good thing you have taken your 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 official GMAT question from mba.com 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.

kiran120680 · Answer

You got decent score in quant.
I dont know how you are preparing for verbal but you can try egmat verbal course to imrove your verbal score.
I heard Magoosh also one of the best source to improve verbal

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi PSB,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. First off, great job with quant! Q48 is a very nice quant score. Regarding verbal, since you scored V15, it’s clear that you need a significant increase in your verbal score in order to improve your overall GMAT score. With that said, do you want some general advice on how to improve your verbal skills?

PSB · Answer

Sure Sir, need your valuable advice on how to improve Verbal part and time required to spend..

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi PSB,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not turn out better. The OG books are great sources for practice questions, but they're not designed to teach you Tactics, patterns or the little 'secrets' behind the GMAT - for those, you'll need Course-oriented materials. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) What type of study routine have you followed over the last year? Did you take any 'time off' from your studies? How many hours did you typically study each week?
2) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

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

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

PSB · Answer

Hi  EMPOWERgmatRichC  team, Thanks for your reply. Please find my details below.

1) What type of study routine have you followed over the last year? Did you take any 'time off' from your studies? How many hours did you typically study each week?
 -- When i started my preparation in Last year January, i rigorously studied for 4 months (Week day - 1 hr, Weekend - 5-6hrs), Due to work, couldn't focusly study for 3-4 months. Last three months, again seriously prepared (Week day - 1-2 hrs, Weekend - 5-6hrs).

2) On what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
 -- I havn't taken any mocks. But one week before exam, i tried to mimic my test day by solving OG, Verbal questions at the same time as my actual exam.

Goals:
3) What is your overall goal score?
 -- aimed to score around 700.
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?
 -- im 10+ exp in IT, plan is to apply a good school in CANADA, not sure im eligible to apply with my score (520).

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi PSB,

To score at a high level on the GMAT, you have to have a variety of skills (more than just content knowledge) and the only way to properly assess whether you have those skills or not is to take FULL-LENGTH CATs under realistic conditions AND at regular intervals. Taking those exams helps to define some the 'weak spots' that you might need to work on - including pacing, endurance, focus, note-taking, stress, ability to 'let go' of a question, etc. Since you did not take any CATs/mocks during your prior studies, you ultimately had no idea what your 'ability level' was. With this 520/Q48, we can work up from here.

Raising a 520 to the point that you can consistently score 700+ will likely require at least another 3 months of consistent, guided study - and you'll have to make significant improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. Given the additional study time that you will likely need, applying for Round 1 later this year (in September) would likely make the most sense. This timeframe would give you plenty of time to continue studying and work on any other aspects of your application that might need some improvement.

1) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

PSB · Answer

Hi  EMPOWERgmatRichC  , Thanks a lot for the info.
going forward, i plan to study 2hrs on each weekday, 12hrs on weekend(Saturday+Sunday)..

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi PSB,

If you can commit to 20+ hours a week of study, then you could potentially improve a great deal over the course of the next few months. Given everything that you've described, I think that you would find the EMPOWERgmat 3-Month Study Plan to be quite helpful (and that Study Plan includes all of the Official GMAC practice CATs). We have a variety of free resources on our site (www.empowergmat.com), so you can 'test out' the Course before setting up an Account.

If you have any additional questions, then you can feel free to contact me directly at any time.

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

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

I’m happy to help! I’ll start with CR.

When studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you incorrectly answered a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice Reading Comprehension, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the New York Times, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. 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.

Low GMAT score - need advice

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