Fluctuating Official Mock Scores - How to assess odds of hitting 700?

Question

Hi GMAT Experts,

Looking for some advice and a realistic/objective perspective in assessing my current GMAT “readiness”. Targeting a 700 and applying by the round 2 deadlines. Been taking the official mock CATs from GMAT for the past month-plus and here are my scores so far, averaging out to roughly a 680 (Q45/V38):

Sep 26 – 690 (Q45/V39)
Oct 10 – 710 (Q48/V39)
Oct 17 – 630 (Q42/V35)
Oct 24 – 700 (Q47/V38)
Nov 01 – 660 (Q42/V38)

For some context on my prep:
1) Study materials – took Target Test Prep courses for both Quant and Verbal, then used OG 2021 for practice before taking the official mock tests.
2) In between mocks – reviewed errors and did timed practice sets using the Official Practice 1 from GMAT (exam mode)

Some questions I have:
1) Should I hold off on taking the GMAT until I consistently hit 700 in mocks? (either by improving quant consistency to the 47-48 range or breaking 40+ in verbal). 
2) I feel like the ranges of my overall (630 vs 710) & quant (42 vs 48) scores are still too wide at this point – what are acceptable variances/ranges in mocks (both overall scores and sub sections) before taking the actual test? And what does a 6-pt range in my quant indicate at this point?
3) Is it fair to say that currently I basically have a 50-50 shot of hitting a 700 on test day? And would those be good enough odds to go ahead and take the real test?
4) If I do elect to take the test already and miss on my 700 goal, would a retake within a month’s time be realistic given that I’ve hit 700 a couple of times in my mocks?

Any advice on how best to proceed would be most welcome. Thank you very much in advance!

Best regards!

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi nathancjr.

The best way for you to hit your score goal is to score at the higher end of the range of your quant scores rather than to increase your verbal score, because schools would prefer to see a quant score in the upper 40s paired with a verbal score in the 30s or low 40s than a quant score in the low to mid 40s with a verbal score in the 40s as well.

The 6 point range in your quant scores indicates that you likely have some knowledge gaps such that, when you see questions in your stronger areas, you score high in quant, and when the test gives you questions in other areas, you score lower. Also, you may simply have to work on execution and getting questions correct more consistently.

So, to more consistently score at the upper end of your range, you could strengthen your weaker areas of quant and also work on accuracy in general.

For some tips on improving overall accuracy, see this post. Improving Your Accuracy on the GMAT

Also, by the way, doing timed practice is not necessarily the way to achieve either of those aims because, by doing all your practice with a timer going, you may not give yourself time to develop skills in the process of answering practice questions. So, be sure to continue to do at least some of your practice untimed.

For some insights into how to use untimed practice to maximize the results of your prep, see this post. https://gmatclub.com/forum/mastering-th ... 58019.html

Regarding whether you should go ahead and take the GMAT, clearly there's a reasonable chance that you could hit your score goal, but probably you should prep a bit more before you book a test. The GMAT has a tendency to discover people's weaknesses. So, there's a good chance you'd waste your time and money taking the GMAT at this point. So, I think your move is to figure out which kinds of quant questions you'd prefer not to see or consistently trip you up, work on those by reviewing concept and doing topic focused practice, and keep taking practice tests, including third-party tests, until you're more confident that you'll hit your score goal on test day.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  nathancjr . Once again, I find myself agreeing with Marty. I like to say that on test day, you are only as good as your  worst  score in practice. Plan for an unexpected turn of events and be ready to face that challenge. I will answer your specific questions below to add a second opinion.

Yes, you probably should hold off. On occasion, someone may swing from a 650 or so in practice to a 700+ on the actual exam, but this typically happens when the person has limited experience with mocks and thus more volatility in terms of a scoring range. Since you have taken five mocks, your confidence should be higher in those scores. You can say that the 630 is an outlier, but it is part of a majority of scores falling below 700. And even one more 700 or 710 would only put the balance at a 50/50.

You cannot afford that sort of variance heading into the exam. I second the view that you should address your weak spots in Quant to even things out a bit. If you land at the lower end of your range, that places a lot of pressure on you to perform at the top of your range in Verbal, even beyond. You want to feel as though you have some wiggle room in either section to still walk away with your desired score.

No, I cannot say that you have a 50-50 shot of hitting a 700. Certain test-day factors can send a score plummeting if the student is not mentally prepared. It is not uncommon to see people post in the forum to ask for advice because their exam score fell 50 or more points below their mock scores. Note that I am not aiming to instill fear in you—the GMAT™ is just an exam—but you asked for an honest opinion.

Sometimes a retake goes in favor of the test-taker, sometimes not. I know this: I would not be eager to pony up more money to sit for an hours-long exam a second time after I had missed the mark. I would rather put everything I had into my first effort.

I hope my response proves helpful to you. Good luck with your studies. Stick with the Target Test Prep plan.

- Andrew

Rohit5678 · Answer

Hello, nathancjr,

To add to the above mentioned comments, I would like to suggest some things:

1. Take a private tutoring session as a diagnostic to understand your weaknesses in Quant and then decide upon an improvement strategy along with your tutor. Depending on their inputs, you could make an informed decision.

PS: GMATWhiz works pretty well with this. Checkout their website. Drop them an email for limited sessions after you schedule a consultation call for 30 mins which is totally free. Ask all these questions in the consultation call.

I am doing this for Verbal currently and I am definitely feeling much more confident than before. 
I scored a 660 Q49V31 in my first attempt (3 month prep with GMATWhiz premium) and I ordered my ESR, and then decided to start with a tutoring session so I save time rather than money, the latter being easily recoverable considering the high ROI an MBA offers. I too intend to apply for round 2 but I know that I can score much better on the GMAT.

Every test prep company will have more or less of an overlap with their strategies as the basic fundamental concepts stay the same. Its just that the approach has to be mastered. I feel that your gaps can be analyzed much more quickly by a professional who can save you an entire year, considering opportunity costs. I don't mean to overwhelm you, but at the same time I feel that you will have multiple activities to balance in addition to your GMAT Prep, which is definitely not easy.

nathancjr · Answer

Thanks everyone for your advice on this!

MartyTargetTestPrep   AndrewN , I've taken 2 more mocks since I first posted (free mocks from Veritas & Kaplan) and scored as follows:

Veritas: Nov 07 - 670 (Q45/V37)
Kaplan: Nov 14 - 680 (Q45/V38)

Based on these latest results my Quant seems to be at least stabilizing at the 45 range and the variance has minimized, but on the other hand I've hit a plateau at Q45 and need to raise this by 2-3 more points to hit 700 (assuming my Verbal is stable at 38).

I've tried to zero in and focus on Number Properties, Algebra Word Problems & Inequalities specifically, because that's where the majority of my errors in the practice tests are coming from. But so far I'm stuck at just 50% accuracy on Medium to Hard questions (with below 50% accuracy on Hard questions).

While reviewing problems, these are the issues I've noticed:
1) Inconsistent discipline in testing cases regularly (not quick enough to identify when to use theory vs choosing numbers/testing cases)
2) I understand the theory/concept behind the solution when reviewing the explanations and processes, but I'm struggling to apply them under time pressure, especially in harder questions that are abstract and involve mostly variables

What's the best way to change my approach given that I've hit a plateau and I'm not improving through the practice? How much should I shake things up in my prep in order to gain those additional 2-3 points on Quant?

Thank you very much in advance!

Best regards!

- nathancjr

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Have you done much untimed practice. If you're doing all your practice timed, it could be that the issue is that you're not giving yourself time to learn. See this post for more detail on this idea. https://gmatclub.com/forum/mastering-th ... 58019.html

AndrewN · Answer

Hello again,  nathancjr . I understand what you mean about inconsistent discipline: I think it is one of the primary factors that keep people who are quite good at some mental task from becoming outstanding. As Marty suggested, slow down. Sure, some problems can be solved faster by applying theory; others can be solved just as quickly by using numbers. You have to practice enough questions—a different number for each learner—to get a  feel  for which approach to apply at which times. It is okay to take too long on some questions. I was speaking with a tutor friend of mine not too long ago, a person who achieved a perfect 51 in Quant and graduated from the TTP program, and you know what he told me? At some point during his exam, he hit a snag and just could not see a way forward on this one problem. Rather than check the clock and guess, as many a Q50 test-taker would do, he stuck with the problem, testing this angle and that one. It took him  8 minutes  to crack that one, and he went from being a little ahead on time to falling behind. But he had the confidence, based on his practice results, that things would even out. And they did. I confessed that I myself would probably not have had the discipline to stick with the question under that kind of time pressure, but the story certainly made me reevaluate my own timing strategy. Comprehension first, speed later.

I would also advise you to place less emphasis on Hard questions right now. Get Medium questions up to 80 percent first before you tackle the harder material. Otherwise, you are just as likely to bungle a medium question and be forced to wade through 600-level territory, not where you want to be. But by the time you can confidently and consistently hit about 80 percent accuracy (or greater, of course) on Medium questions, you will be ready to take on the harder ones. You just start to see things a little differently, trust me.

Good luck.

- Andrew

PyjamaScientist · Answer

Great piece of advice  AndrewN . But, this brings me to a follow up question- "Can someone get a 700+ score with 80% accuracy on medium to hard question"? And a below 50% accuracy on Hard questions?
I have always wondered what accuracy percentage should one hit when practicing medium to hard and hard+ questions to get a feel if one is above that 700 mark or not?

AndrewN · Answer

Remember,  PyjamaScientist , that you are only playing probabilities when it comes to question accuracy. We know, based on test-taker data from ESRs, that question difficulty tends to rise as the test-taker answers more questions correctly. If someone goes back and forth on 600-level questions (say, with 50-60 percent accuracy), then that person will exhaust more and more questions at that level, so the score would likely come out lower than that of someone who was only missing 700-level questions because he or she was NOT missing the lower-level questions that the exam kept throwing up on the screen whenever he or she might miss a tougher question. The same total number of questions could be missed, but with rather different outcomes. So, to answer your question, yes, I think someone can score a 700 by hitting 80 percent or greater on Medium questions while achieving, perhaps, slightly under 50 percent accuracy on Hard questions. However, to leave a little margin for error, I suggest aiming for at least 60 percent accuracy on Hard questions (per official designation). Obviously, the greater, the better. But I have helped students reach 720-730 scores by asking them to focus almost exclusively on Easy and Medium questions. Hitting benchmarks at that level (I like a 95/85 split, to be conservative) is way more important than worrying about the hardest questions the exam can throw at you. Of course, the higher up one wishes to reach, the more those 700-level questions factor in, and that is the allure of the exam design—just about everyone (perhaps Marty excepted) feels as though he or she can achieve a higher score than that which is in hand.

Thank you for following up. As always, good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

nathancjr · Answer

MartyTargetTestPrep   AndrewN  thanks again for your prep advice. Just to give you guys an update, in the past 2+ weeks since I last posted I took 4 more mocks, saw improved consistency, and became confident enough to take the actual GMAT.

But I only got a 580 in the actual GMAT with Q42/V28 splits, a 100 point drop off vs my average of 680 (Q46/V38) across 10+ practice tests. Ended up scoring on the low-end of my Quant in mocks while my Verbal totally fell off, going way below any of my practice test scores.

As I was going through the actual GMAT, Quant felt similar to when I was scoring in the high 40s in mocks. Verbal felt a bit harder vs the mocks but followed a similar trend in my mocks (had to rush at the end of the section), so at worst I was expecting to hit my low-end of V35-36.

I'm getting an ESR for better insight into what happened. Would you guys be able to help me analyze it and give recommendations on how to study for a retake?

Also, given the drastic score drop in my actual GMAT vs practice tests, what major changes in my prep can I make? My prep in the last 3-4 months has been heavily focused on OG problems and OG mocks.

I want to jump right back into prep for a retake ASAP, but I'm reassessing my approach, trying to think of alternatives and how to change things up, and I'm not sure how to best proceed.

Thank you very much in advance!

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi nathancjr.

I'm not sure how it's possible given that you have taken so many practice tests and scored so much higher on them than you did on the actual GMAT, but it appears that somehow you have prepared to ace GMAT practice tests but not the real thing.

Normally, when someone has an experience like yours, the reason is that he's learned to handle what the GMAT has done in the past but not really how to handle anything the GMAT might throw at him.

For instance, many "rules" that are talked about as 0GMAT rules are considered rules only because they have appeared in a few past GMAT question. Similarly, some approaches that people suggest using apply mostly to released official questions. So, it's possible to learn all these "rules" and approaches, score pretty high on official practice tests on which the "rules" and approaches are based, score high on other practice tests that are based on the same stuff, and yet not score high on the actual GMAT, on which the questions can be more out of the box than what everyone talks about implies.

So, to the degree that this scenario captures why you didn't score as high on the actual GMAT as you did on practice tests, your move is to go back to basics, such as developing skill in using logic and applyling fundamental concepts.

To give you a sense of what I mean, if you can believe it, I even used GRE Text Completion questions for my GMAT preparation, even though Text Completion questions don't appear on the GMAT. Why? To train myself to analyze things logically, because the foundational skill for the entire GMAT is logical analysis. So, while I'm not suggesting you go so far afield to prepare for the GMAT, I am suggesting that, to develop the skills you need to handle whatever comes your way when you take the GMAT, you should work on foundational skills such as skill in seeing logical relationships, noticing details, using resources, and executing.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello again,  nathancjr . There could be a psychological component that is entering the picture that you either did not mention or did not realize was getting in the way during your actual exam. You said that Quant "felt similar" while Verbal "felt a bit harder." You may have to learn to silence your doubts as you progress through either section. Rather than thinking,  Boy, that last one was hard. Was my guess the best answer? What if...?  you should be filling your mind with other thoughts:  What if that weird-looking question was just experimental? Maybe it was one of several I know I will see. Now, what do I know about how to tackle this type of question? What methods have I developed?  I am not going to tell you to stay positive, but I will suggest that the better you are able to focus on what is right in front of you, the greater will be the probability that you will execute in line with your practice. I can speak from experience that your psychological state can produce big swings. In my own preparation, I was proud of myself for having gone through nine straight RC passages (encompassing more than fifty questions) without making an error; then, at the end of the next five-question set, I slipped up. It took me about five more passages to iron out that mistake. I kept making one mistake in passage after passage, losing confidence all the while. How did I push past that block? I did exactly as Marty suggested above: I went back to basics. I hid the timer; I started making sure I had textual evidence to back up anything that felt uncertain. Before long, I rattled off fifteen flawless passages in a row (including more than seventy-five questions), and I did not look back. All of this is to say that you may be giving the test itself too much prominence in the moment. You can relax and ease into mocks, but you treat the real exam differently. I have seen plenty of people do the same—I have done so myself in the past—and in every case, the score comes out worse. But when you learn to let go of little things and focus on the task at hand, better results follow.

To speak directly to your questions at the end of your post, yes, I would be happy to take a look at your ESR. It may reveal certain test-taking trends that you are unaware of. What major changes in your preparation can you make? You could try a study buddy, revisit the Target Test Prep course, or turn your preparation into more of a game. Set small challenges, say, ten out of ten on a 500-level set of CR questions before you even allow yourself to look at 600- or 700-level questions. GMAT™ preparation does not have to be a chore. Have fun learning. (Make it fun to challenge yourself.)

Once again, I wish you good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi nathancjr,

Sorry about how things went with your GMAT. There could be a couple of reasons for the drop in the score. Please go through the article below to find out the probable reasons.

Scored well on mocks but failed miserably on the test?

OG may be a great source for solving GMAT like questions, however, it is definitely not the ideal way to prepare in your case. Moreover, you may find that the OG is a good option as a question bank but lacks detailed explanations for you to use for improvement. It’s always better to prepare with a definitive resource to help you learn concepts while formulating a consistent strategy to solve questions before practicing them from the OG. This way, your preparation will be a lot more structured, and the chances of you leaving gaps in your learning will be significantly less. Focus on improving the method you follow to solve questions because that's what stops people from scoring 700+. As such, following a resource which focuses on the right methodologies becomes even more crucial.

Having said that, it would be too early to conclude anything without knowing the actual reason. To understand what could have led to the drop in the score and to suggest you the plan of action, I need a little more information about your GMAT preparation. I would like to know more about

the way you prepared till now (your study strategy) 
 your weak areas 
 your approach of solving questions 
 the resources you have used

Answers to these questions will help me guide you in a better way. And I personally suggest to go for the retake only after you prepared well and are 100% confident.

Having said that, I would like to have a one-on-one conversation with you. The discussion would be mostly around the answers to the above questions, the approximate time you have for the next attempt and the plan of action. If you have an ESR with you, that will be even more helpful to get the insights about your performance. You use use the link below to schedule a call with me.

Click here to schedule a call

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