Gmat focus exams attempt 1 with 575 score. Need guidance for reattempt

Question

Hi Experts -

I gave my first gmat focus exams today with a score of 575 (V80, DI74 and Q81). DI pulled down my score significantly I was disheartened as was scoring above 600 in all official gmat mocks.

1. Mock 1 - 6- Mar - 635 - V83, DI81 and Q81
2. Mock 2 - 9 - Mar - 595 - V83, DI73 and Q82
3. Mock 3 - 10 - Mar - 625 - V81, DI79 and Q84 
4. Mock 4 - 11 - Mar - 645 - V81, DI82 and Q84

During exams i was caught off gaurd by word problem based Data Sufficiency questions. Which pulled my score significantly down. I did not realise that i was so weak in it till i gave the exams. And data insight have been consistently unreliable.

Given this I request some suggestion to best prepare for data insights and is a month timeline realistic given my goal of >= 655 for focus edition.

Insights is much appreciate. Want to apply for June-Jul cycle so have sometime. But given the application will take in neighbourhood of 4 weeks i wanted to get done by mid April or so.

Appreciate the insight you could share in this regards, Also any leads for place and strategies best to hone the Data insight skills.

MartyMurray · Answer

Hi ankuraker.

You should be able to get to your target score sometime in April, perhaps by mid April or maybe toward the end of April.

Practicing Verbal DS questions and working on the rest of DI may be enough to get you to your goal. A little improvement in Verbal or mastering a weaker Quant topic or two could help as well.

With that in mind, how have you prepared for DI so far?

bb · Answer

Were these typical work problems for data sufficiency or were these logic based word problems? Have you ever encountered questions like that?

Posted from my mobile device

ankuraker · Answer

Thank you BB for the reply. The problems were logic based word problems.

Not in my preparation with official guide.

Posted from my mobile device

ankuraker · Answer

Marty thank you for the response. I was primarily using the OG official question bank 2023-24 for the DI preparation. However after this post I got a detailed ESR from GMAC.

Realise a couple of things

a)  Data Insights  was weak as expected. But the incorrect questions were peppered all over the stretch on MSR, DS and TPA showing a discrete weakness in DI section. With as much as 10/20 questions incorrect, not a great streak.

b)  Verbal , which was a surprise compounded by bad day, resulted in a low Comprehension score. Though my CR had been in 88th percentile  , but RC was barely 50th percentile  . Got major headaches with Very lengthy RC passages as well, drew the short end of stick on this.

c)  Quant  was the last section, and the exams did scale the difficulty down significantly. I was done with Quant 15min early and was reviewing the questions. Overall only 2 mistakes on quant but given scaled down toughness level, I could not score any higher

So in conclusion I am considering focusing on Data insights and RC for the said one month. Suggestions on right approach here would help.

Data Insights:  I have now invested in Official question bank from GMAT for Data insights. This section I need some guidance what would be the best strategy to improve.

Verbal:  For RC was considering the GMAT club quizzes something like 2-3 Passages a day. With 5-6 CR to keep up my knowledge. Considering I am stumped by RC results as generally during my mocks they were my strong suite.

Quant:  For Quant once in 3 days of 15-20 questions of mixed questions from OG.

Once again thanks a ton for response and would appreciate any lead, guidance you could offer.

Will try to paste the images from the ESR for now the server is down.

ankuraker · Answer

Data Insights https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81763 =11.0pt https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81764 Verbal https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81765 =11.0pt https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81766 https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81767 Quant https://gmatclub.com/forum/download/file.php?id=81768 GMAT-Club-Forum-xwdqlx9u.png GMAT-Club-Forum-qew1cr81.png GMAT-Club-Forum-lhoav94c.png GMAT-Club-Forum-bg1y00l8.png GMAT-Club-Forum-xizi18r0.png GMAT-Club-Forum-hf9ab6n3.png

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

For RC, becoming familiar with how inference questions work could be helpful. If you want to practice reading without burning official questions, consider using similar articles from The Economist. You could also search for the types of passages you find more slippery than others (i.e. business).

3 Reading Comprehension tips

ankuraker · Answer

Thank you. Any specific articles i should pick. Or anything would work?

Posted from my mobile device

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

So, to be clear, your main preparation was from doing questions out of the OG?

ankuraker · Answer

Scott I would not say it was only OG as had subscription from eGMAT. But for Data insight it did not work for me well. In my opinion the question framing were too jargoned and further away from official question and even the ones posed in GMAT exam/mocks. So reliance was totally on Official question

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

Ugh. Sorry. That sucks they’re not many sources of these logic-based problems and questions at this time… even the official guidance lacking but there are some in the online question bank for the official guide. They were added after the release of the book.

There’s also a new guide coming in a few months so hopefully that will have a lot more questions to practice with.

I would usually recommend for you to consider is that solving questions without learning proper strategies and approaches is usually a very hard route to take so I would encourage you to get a book or some kind of a course to get any gaps filled. But was logic based data sufficiency questions, there’s not a lot of sources 😬

Gmat focus exams attempt 1 with 575 score. Need guidance for reattempt

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards