Should i retake a 680 for LBS or HEC paris?

Question

Hey guys, This is literally a cry for help.

A little about me, I am a 21 year old who just graduated from BITS -Dubai as a Chemical engineer with an 8.92.
Its been 6 months since I graduated and over an year since i took my first GMAT.

I took my first GMAT in september last year without much knowledge of the verbal section and scored a 640.
My aim was to score to a 730.
So I prepared for another month and i practiced questions the Jamboree’s software as i had taken coaching there in the summer vacation.

My second trial after a month of practice was 670 that was Q48 and V34.
I knew i had messed up quant as i was unable to answer last few questions properly. And i knew i had to improve my verbal to touch 700.
Because of the compulsory internship, i had to take a break and started studying again this September.
I took egmat’s complete self study course and attempted the mock tests and scored a 710 and 730.
I thought i willbe able to score similar during the actual exam too.
However my third trial today landed me 680 Q49 and V33.
I thought i had done well in verbal hence this score is surprising for me.
I did not find the section tough and did not think that i would get that score in verbal.

Please suggest as to how i can improve my verbal score for the next trial.

As i intend to apply to universities like London business school and HEC Paris, in which the percentage of indian applicants is high, what are my chances of acceptance in these universities with this score and if i should retake gmat..

Thankyou for the help.

Posted from my mobile device

u1983 · Answer

Hello  leeshac  ...... welcome to the community.

Your Score is a touch less for LBS ( mean 708 ) & HECp ( mean 690 ) {specially considering the Indian applicant pool} . But again, GMAT score is only 1 element of you application . Getting admit(s),depends on your overall application.

All the best !!

billionaire · Answer

Hello leeshac Do not despair. For verbal use GMAT grammar book and Manhattan verbal series of books. It would be advisable for you retake GMAT if you can, still even with 680 you are not without a chance at all. Average LBS GMAT score is 708, but that is not the whole story. The typical class range is actually from 600 to 800. The GMAT is just one of several admission criteria. As a rule to any (top) business school, just as a high score does not guarantee admission, a below average score does not eliminate a candidate. The average GMAT score of HEC Paris admitted students is 690, so you are practically there.

Good Luck !

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi leeshac,

First off, a 680/Q49 is a strong score (it's right around the 85th percentile overall), so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. You're ultimately asking Admissions questions though, so you would likely find it beneficial to speak with an Admissions Expert about your overall profile. There's a Forum full of those Experts here:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/ask-admissio ... tants-124/

If you do choose to retest, it's worth noting that GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +/- 30 points of actual ability. Your last 2 Official Scores show that you essentially performed the same each time (about 670 +/- a few points). You handle certain aspects of the GMAT consistently well, but you also make certain consistent mistakes. If your goal is to score significantly higher on the GMAT, then you will have to focus on training to 'see' (and respond to) the Exam in new ways - meaning that you would have to focus on learning and practicing the proper Tactics.

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

Arro44 · Answer

While 680 is a great score, I would recommend going for another try if time permits.
This could lead to your score becoming so great as to stick out of an otherwise very competitive applicant pool.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi leeshac,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. The good news is that a Q49 is awesome, so if you can improve your verbal score, you will have one heck of an overall GMAT score.

Since your verbal score dropped from your practice tests to your real test, it’s possible possible that nerves, stress, tiredness, or a combination of all three negatively affected your test-day performance. However, it’s also possible that you have some lingering weaknesses that were exposed on test day. Scoring high on GMAT verbal tends to involve using logic and noticing key details. However, it is possible to get some verbal questions right by looking for patterns that you have already encountered in your preparation. Looking for patterns will not always work, though, and if the patterns you are familiar with don’t show up in the questions that you see on the actual GMAT, your verbal score will not be very high. So, another possible reason for the difference between your verbal scores on practice tests and your verbal score on the real GMAT is that in your preparation, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on verbal. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, I'm happy to provide some detailed advice on how to improve your verbal skills. Let’s start with Critical Reasoning.

When studying Critical Reasoning, your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so you can assess how well you understand the topic. If, for example, you incorrectly answer 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 are reading a paragraph, also 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, 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 passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, 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, it is likely that you will have to work on all three of those aspects.
 
Regarding what you know, 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 under 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 those reasons are not 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 answer were always the one 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 logical meanings. 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 be determined to see the differences and 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 that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order 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 have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you will then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple Sentence Correction topics.

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!

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Should i retake a 680 for LBS or HEC paris?

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