Real GMAT score much lower than mock scores. Retest strategy request

Question

Hello,

I have taken the GMAT thrice:
1. Offline, Nov 2019 - 660
2. Offline, Dec 2019- 670
3. Online, July 2021 - 690 (Q48 V35)
4. Online, August 2021 --- need AT LEAST 700 (730+ would be ideal)

Sharing the average mock scores for the following platforms, I took about 20 mocks for my last attempt (3rd attempt, July 2021):
1. GmatPrep - 750 (range 740-770, took all 6 mocks)
2. ExpertsGlobal - 730 (range 700-770, took 6 mocks)
3. Manhatan - 700 (range 660-740, took all 6 mocks)
4. VeritasPrep - 720
5. eGMAT- 770

Problem:
I feel like I am familiar with pretty much all relevant concepts hence the decent mock scores but somehow I am not able to replicate the same in the real GMAT.

Exam analysis:
The last attempt was in ideal test conditions, took it online, no distractions, felt like just another mock, and thankfully didn't have ANY exam anxiety/performance pressure whatsoever.
Took the test in Q, V, IR, AWA order. After the quantitative section, i was filled with confidence as i felt i knew most the answers, although, had to rush towards the end as I was short on time.
In the verbal section however, I felt a little short on time so was rushing in the latter half of the exam. Further, was not able to confidently answer CR questions (inference and assumption) and some RC questions as well.
Unfortunately, ESR is not an option for online gmat.

Next steps and prep already done:
I will be taking the exam once again on 22nd, please advise how can I breach the 700 mark. I am not sure which stone have I left unturned. I have exhausted all OGs, GMAT prep mocks and question bank, pretty much all other mocks (left with about 7 from experts global). I have taken a coaching from TIME Institute, and have solved their question banks as well.
My strategy was mainly to take a lot of mocks such that the real deal feels like just another mock. Initially, I was ending up with a lot of time at the end of the section, and consequently a lot of silly mistakes. I then paced myself better, started verifying my work, and having fewer silly mistakes and overall better time management.

Mistakes I am able to identify:
1. I feel i over-verified my quant work before proceeding to the next question, leading to poor time management towards the end of section, and consequently had to guess mark a few questions (about 2-3) towards the end of the sections.
2. I can probably work on CR - inference and assumptions questions better/more
3. I spent too much time on certain tough questions and still had to guess mark (mostly around the 15th question mark); this again led to poor time management.

Request to the experts:
1. Please suggest a retest strategy, study strategy for these 3 weeks.
2. If you have seen similar cases where the mock scores are consistently significantly higher than the real GMAT scores, how did those students overcome this. Have you been able to identify any common denominators among such cases? Basically, how to get the real gmat score closer to mock scores?
3. Please recommend the best CR resources. Have gone through Manhattan GMAT CR Strategy guide.

Miscellaneous information:
1. Didn't take a mock the day before the exam, mostly relaxed, revised the notes
2. Ate well, slept well before all exams, everything was fairly ok in life in general
3. The test conditions during the mocks were exactly the same. Same timings, same breaks, same clothes and air conditioner temperature too

4. Didn't reset any mocks

Happy to answer any other questions.

Thank you and look forward to your advice!

4. Didn't reset any mocks Happy to answer any other questions. Thank you and look forward to your advice!

ReedArnoldMPREP · Answer

It seems pretty likely that the drop in score was almost entirely attributable to verbal. A Q48 is a very solid quant score. I wouldn't recommend changing too much there. You mentioned that you felt rushed in the back half of the verbal section. Without an ESR it's hard to gauge how rushed you were, but if it was substantial enough--yeah, you were likely making mistakes due to timing issues. Doing verbal question sets (I usually say 3 SC, 2 CR, 1 RC+3Q's in 15 minutes) and making sure to get through on pace is a good idea.

Pertaining on how else to improve... it's just hard to say without more information. You mention you might struggle with CR. What kinds of mistakes do you tend to make? What causes you to miss CR? Do you overlook details? Bring in your own assumptions? Eliminate right answers for being 'out of scope?' All of the above? CR--since it's pretty much just a paragraph and your own thoughts--requires a lot of self-reflection to improve. You have to put the microscope onto your own interpretation of the text and thought process to answer the question.

Below are three videos I've done on CR (and some RC) that I think are helpful for CR studying, particularly for 'assumption family' questions.

It's also possible that, y'know, it was just a bad day. And look--I know you say you 'need' a 700 (730+)... but you don't, that would just be a nice thing to have. You have a solid 690 to apply with, *worst case scenario* at this point. That's a good worst case scenario. So point is, you can take the test again (and again... and again!) with a really solid fall back, so you can take some of the pressure off the thing. That alone might help.

VIDEOS:

Three key questions for CR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfTcOr6zJjs

Critical Reasoning Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmz46ADcFdw

How to review RC and CR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xem2vqS ... e=youtu.be

MathRevolution · Answer

Hello gandharvm,

First of all your current GMAT score of 690 with Q48 is Decent. You can surely achieve your target score of 730+. You need to keep your motivation high to learn.

With my GMAT tutoring, guidance, and counseling experience, we have to accept a fact with a pinch of salt that diagnostic/ mock test scores are above then what one should expect in a real test. There is often dropping in the score. It is one of the realities, and your preparation should not sideline this fact.

A couple of things that can be a noticeable barrier to your scores would be some or all of the below.

• No expert support (maybe) who can tutor, analyze, and guide you during your learning especially on hard-level questions while stably hitting middle-level questions.
• Not well aligned with time to solve questions.

You can schedule a free Counseling(https://calendly.com/mathrevolution/1-on-1-session) session for 20 mins with one of our experts to have detailed advice on your current study plans.

You can try our (Quant only) free diagnostic test https://www.mathrevolution.com/diagnostic/dtExamMember and receive a comprehensive study guide by topic. This test will clearly help you understand your weak areas.

Register with MathRevolution https://www.mathrevolution.com/member/signup to get access to our 7-days on-demand course for free trial lessons.

Below is the useful link we will recommend you visit on GMAT club:

Ultimate Q51 guide: https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-ultimate ... l#p1613600

Breakdown of GMAT math questions and types: https://gmatclub.com/forum/overview-of- ... l#p1641411

We appreciate your time and patience in reading this reply.

Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

Success is within your reach.
Good luck!

Math Revolution Team

gandharvm · Answer

ReedArnoldMPREP

Thank you, highly appreciate your prompt and elaborate response. I think I agree. Most of the drop can be attributed to verbal.

Now, to strengthen verbal, I believe in the exam I struggled with CR-inference questions the most, followed by CR-assumption, and then a little bit with a few RC questions as well. In addition, I feel I am taking too much time to solve CR questions; this has been a problem during mocks as well. Too little time on SC, too much time on CR.   Any advice on how to increase speed?  
 A usual struggle I am facing with CR practice is that I am finding it hard to find reliable, high-quality CR practice question banks. A lot of CR questions out there, I feel, have very subjective unconvincing debatable answers.   In addition to the question banks available here on gmatclub, are there any other question banks you can recommend.

And yes, this is a great piece of advice, I will practice question sets as you mentioned to pace myself better.

Although the ESR isn't available for online GMAT at the moment, is there any other information I can provide to help you answer the queries better?

Once again, thank you very much for your response! PS - of all the mocks i have taken,  Manhattan mocks were of the highest quality and were the most indicative of what I actually scored each time.  Each time what I scored was 30 points below Manhattan mocks' average, and that's actually not bad given that with other mocks the difference is beyond 50 points, rendering those mock-series not-indicative of the real score one can expect. Kudos to the MGMAT team and yourself.

ReedArnoldMPREP · Answer

See the 'How to review RC and CR' video for inferences. For SC, speed is a factor many things, but my biggest question would be: Are you reading every word of the sentence and answering choices? Reading top to bottom, left to right, and hoping to 'hear' a mistake? This is how most people do SC. I might say your goal when you're studying SC is to figure out, for each question, how you might get that question right by reading as few words in the question as possible. You should never have to read every word in an SC question. Probably not even half the words. How? The best advice I can give is master reading for structure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIsU_JI7Z6w That's probably a little reductive, but it's a solid place to start. The Official Guide and any official resources, full stop. If you think the answer is subjective, you're just wrong. Figure out why. Use the 'How to review RC and CR' method in the video linked. That video gives a strategy that forces you to put your reasoning down for why you think an answer is right, or why the other answers are wrong. As you do this, you might realize your mistake, but if you get a full 'link,' you can then study it closely to figure out where that 'link' actually breaks. Hard to do much without working with you. But I think the videos I linked should be a good start.

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Gandharvm,

First of all, I can understand the feeling of getting good mock scores but not being able to hit your target score in the actual test. I understand your disappointment. Also, I am very much familiar with the problem stated by you as it is a very common problem among students and I have helped a lot of students to overcome this barrier and achieve their goal. So, don’t lose hope, you are almost there. Just a little brush up/guidance will help you understand what is holding you back. Let me share my observations here.

Your score break-up tells that you have good command over concepts. However, you are struggling with methodical application of concepts, specially in Verbal.

Also, time management is one of the most important skills for competitive exams that most students struggle with. There is a significant penalty for failing to complete any section of the GMAT exam, so it is also important to develop pacing skills. Once you hone your time management skills strategically, you will be confident about not missing out on any questions on the test day.

The possible reason for struggling with time management: 
 In case of Quant:  
You have identified most of the reasons yourself, one of it being encountering question types that may be new to you or appear to be harder than what you have practiced and the fear of not being able to solve them within time. This ultimately must have demotivated you and slowed you down. Also, over verification leads to spending almost double time on single question. However, that shows maybe you were not very confident about your approach. If you are well-prepared, you need to trust yourself and solve every question with full concentration in one go. There may be other reasons which you can share briefly to help me understand better.

For Quant, identifying your weaker areas and working your weaker areas should ideally get you a score of 49/50. You have to work a little more on the application of concepts while solving the Quant Questions. You should consider spending more time on analysing the solutions of the questions from the topics in which you are weak. By analysing I mean, go through each step of the solution, identify the exact step at which you made the mistake, compare your approach with the right one and then learn the right approach. This should help.
If you are struggling with some specific topics, you may share the same for better understanding.

In case of Verbal: 
Talking about the reason behind struggling with time management, you are likely taking more time to solve RC questions. The reason for this might be you are taking too long to read a passage or you might be going back and forth to the passage for every question. This happens when you don’t use the right reading strategies. Students often read the passage from a detail perspective and stuff themselves with the details. And once they come across an inferential question or a main point question, they cannot answer it and they read the passage again to find the answer. This would often lead to the wastage of time.

While in case of CR, the reason could be -not having conceptually clear knowledge about how to approach CR problems thereby leading to confusion in eliminating the incorrect choices. You have to follow certain steps while solving CR questions:
  Read the argument 
 Identify the premise and the conclusion 
 Read the question stem 
 Identify the missing link (Pre-think the assumption) 
 Eliminate answer choices which are irrelevant or out of scope

Identifying the conclusion helps you understand the scope of the argument, which in turn helps you to eliminate answer choices which fall out of scope. And to develop the ability to pre-think, you need to understand the framework on which most CR questions are based. Once you identify the framework, there are certain guidelines using which you can come up with the missing link.

For GMAT Verbal, it is very important that you follow the right methodology and the logical approach. Your focus has to be on eliminating four incorrect choices rather than choosing the right one. The key is to develop a solid understanding of the concepts that are typically tested on the GMAT and master the process skills that are required to solve GMAT questions. Only then, you will be able to smartly avoid the traps set by the test makers and avoid taking too much time in solving questions.
  For SC – Follow the meaning based approach.  
 For CR – Focus on Scope Analysis and Framework driven Pre-thinking.  
 For RC – Involve yourself in the passage and understand why the passage is written and not just on what’s written.   
  Important Tip   –  Don’t practice tons of questions directly. First focus on learning the right methods for each question. That plays a significant role in getting hard questions correct within 2 mins.

Having said this, I would like to know what is the approach you followed during the test so that I can suggest you a more structured plan. Given you have limited time in hand before the next attempt, it would be better to discuss this over a call. You can schedule a free consultation call using the below link. Considering the effort, you have put in, I would really like to know the concerns and help you reach your target score.

Click here to schedule a call

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi gandharvm,

690 is a great start. To improve your GMAT score to a higher level, you need to 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. 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 verbal and quant 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!

gandharvm · Answer

Hello  ReedArnoldMPREP , and all other experts,

Thanks for your all your advice. To give an update I took another attempt today (~3 weeks later) and have scored 710!

I'm satisfied with the scores.

The break-up is as follows:
Q.49
V. 38
IR. 7
AWA (awaited)

Thank you for your all your guidance.

For everyone who finds this thread relevant, just one learning i'd like to add from my experience - the OG questions and gmatprep mocks, IMO, are relatively easy compared with the real GMAT. The GMAT Advanced Official Questions book is the real deal! 
The verbal section in the real gmat almost exactly matches that of the gmat advanced book. (The quant, however, in the real gmat is relatively easier)

But yes, this is a great thread thanks to the contributions made by all experts, thank you once again.

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Real GMAT score much lower than mock scores. Retest strategy request

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