Hitting a GMAT Focus plateau? (575 after 2 attempts)

Question

Hi everyone,

I wanted to get some honest feedback from folks who have been through something similar.

I’ve taken the GMAT Focus twice:
 • 1st attempt (Aug 2025): 565 → Q75 / V81 / DI78
 • 2nd attempt (Mar 2026): 575 → Q79 / V81 / DI76

In between i change job so still studying but not so many hours until lasth month.

What’s frustrating is that my mock scores have been higher:
 • Official mocks inmediately before to each attempt: 605 and 645
 • Section ranges in mocks (officials and unofficials):
 • Quant: ~76–82
 • Verbal: ~83–86
 • DI: ~77–80

⸻

Test day feelings:
 • Attempt 1: Very nervous. Quant felt shaky (felt like I was missing easy questions). Verbal and DI felt okay but not amazing.
 • Attempt 2: Felt much better overall.
 • Verbal: very confident
 • DI: felt easy, honestly thought I did really well
 • Quant: started okay, but around Q10 I felt I lost control, guessed a few, then stabilized towards the end

Despite feeling much better, Verbal dont change and i get worse in DI. Only Quant improve (where i was more nervous)

⸻

My concern:

I’m starting to feel like I might be hitting a performance ceiling under test conditions, not necessarily a knowledge gap.

Especially:
 • Quant seems very sensitive to stress for me
 • GMAT’s adaptive nature might be amplifying small mistakes
 • My “feeling” during the test doesn’t match my actual results (especially in DI/Verbal)

⸻

Context:
 • Target: 615 for IESE (planning to apply in Round 1 - Already delay my application last year)
• Last year already try with a teacher for maybe 1 month and half and also magoosh but honestly i find much comfortable with the selfpace of gmatclub, but also i dont want to fall in the trap of just doing more questions.

⸻

Main questions:
 1. Does this look like a typical “execution under pressure” issue, or could I actually be near my GMAT ceiling?
2. Since I feel more comfortable with Verbal than Quant, does it make sense to switch to the GRE? I’ll take a practice test tomorrow to see where I stand.

⸻

Would really appreciate any honest input

Thanks a lot 🙏

Archit3110 · Answer

you need to get control over your anxiety and will then see change in score ... practise mocks in as realistic test environment as possible...

pintukr · Answer

You may attempt questions using Forum Quiz. An excellent resource for practice..All the Best.

dotsoftme · Answer

work on issues and fix them

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Thanks for sharing all of this. You've done a really thoughtful job diagnosing yourself, and a lot of what you're feeling is accurate. Let me go through your two questions directly, then give you a concrete picture of what's actually happening in the data.

Question 1: Execution issue or ceiling? 
This is an execution issue. Your mock scores tell you that pretty clearly.

A 645 official mock is not the score of someone who has hit their ceiling at 575. It's the score of someone whose real ability isn't consistently showing up on test day. Those are two very different problems, and they have very different solutions.

Here's what makes your situation a little more interesting to diagnose: your gap actually *widened* between attempts, even though you felt dramatically better on attempt 2. You went from a 40-point gap (605 mock → 565 real) to a 70-point gap (645 mock → 575 real). That's worth paying attention to, because it tells us that "feeling better" isn't the same as "performing better." You can feel calm and still be losing points in ways you're not aware of in the moment.

What's actually happening in Quant 
You described losing control around question 10 out of 21 and guessing a few. On a computer-adaptive test, that's a critical stretch. The algorithm is still calibrating your level heavily in those early-to-mid questions. A cluster of misses there — especially if the questions felt difficult, which would mean the algorithm had already placed you at a decent level — can pull your score down in a way that's hard to recover from in the back half even if you stabilize.

The good news: Quant actually improved (Q75 → Q79), even under the worse conditions you described. That suggests the knowledge is there. What you're dealing with is a specific breakdown under pressure at a particular moment in the section, not a general Quant weakness.

The DI paradox 
This one is important, and it's something a lot of test-takers misread. You said DI felt easy on attempt 2 and you were confident — and then your DI score went  down  (DI78 → DI76).

On an adaptive test, questions feeling "easy" can mean one of two things: either you're genuinely cruising through hard questions, or the algorithm has already adjusted down and is now giving you easier questions because you've already missed some. The fact that your score dropped while the section felt easier strongly suggests the second scenario. The section adjusted to you, not in a good way, likely early on before you noticed anything was wrong.

This is one of the most disorienting things about adaptive tests: your gut feeling during the exam is an unreliable indicator of how you're actually doing. The questions that feel hard often mean you're doing well. The questions that feel easy sometimes mean you're not.

Verbal stagnation 
V81 both times, with mock ranges of 83–86. That gap is smaller than in Quant or DI, but the consistency of landing at exactly V81 twice in a row is worth noting. This might actually be a mild ceiling at your current preparation level — not a permanent ceiling, but a signal that there's a specific category of Verbal question you're not converting under exam conditions. It would be worth reviewing your official exam performance question-by-question (GMAC sends a post-exam report) to see if there's a pattern: CR, RC, or SC, and whether it's accuracy, timing, or both.

Question 2: Should you switch to the GRE? 
Taking a practice test is exactly the right move before deciding anything. Do that first.

A few honest things to weigh:

Your Verbal strength is real, and on the GRE, Verbal and Quant are scored on separate 130–170 scales. If your GRE Verbal turns out to be significantly stronger relative to where you need to be, that's a meaningful signal. IESE accepts both exams, and some applicants genuinely do better on GRE because the Quant ceiling is lower and the Verbal rewards reading comprehension depth.

That said, the execution issues you're describing — the mock-to-real gap, the mid-section breakdown, the disconnect between feeling and performance — those will follow you to the GRE if you don't address them. The GRE is also adaptive (at the section level), and test anxiety under pressure is test anxiety regardless of the exam. Switching exams doesn't fix the underlying pattern; it just changes the backdrop.

So: take the practice test. If your GRE Verbal is in the 160s and Quant is within range of what IESE needs, it's worth serious consideration. If your scores are similarly distributed to your GMAT performance, staying with the GMAT — where you've already built significant familiarity — is probably the stronger move.

What I'd actually focus on regardless of which exam you choose 
-  Train for the moment you lose control.  You know it happens around Q10 in Quant. That means you can simulate it. Do timed sets of 10–12 mixed-difficulty Quant questions and practice the specific skill of resetting after a question that went badly — not rehashing it, not letting it change your pacing, just moving on. That recovery skill is trainable and it's what separates your mock performance from your real performance.

-  Build a time-cap rule and practice it.  If a question still feels "sticky" after about 90 seconds in Quant, move on. Mark it and come back. Right now it sounds like a single difficult question is costing you more than it should — both in time and in composure.

-  Don't equate "felt easy" with "going well" in DI.  On adaptive sections, a string of easier-feeling questions mid-section should actually be a flag that something may have gone wrong earlier, not a sign of confidence. Staying mechanically disciplined regardless of how things feel is the skill to build.

-  Give yourself a real consolidation period before the next attempt.  You changed jobs in between attempt 1 and 2, and your preparation was fragmented. That matters. A clean, focused 6–8 weeks of consistent full-section and full-exam practice will do more for your gap than any amount of content review at this point.

Your 615 target for IESE is achievable. The gap between your mocks and your real scores is the problem to solve, not your knowledge. Take that practice test, share what you find, and you'll have a much clearer picture of which path makes most sense.

Best of luck!

Hitting a GMAT Focus plateau? (575 after 2 attempts)

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