GMAT exam, idk what happened!

Question

Hi everyone,

Posting because I am so frustrated after taking my first attempt on the GMAT yesterday. I scored 570 Q31, V37. I studied for 2.5 months and did a prep course with Manhattan prep. In my MGMAT mock tests I was getting to 580, V32 (my highest on verbal) and Q40 (my highest on quant). I was worried about verbal of course (noting that English is my second language) but after reading many comments here about the MGMAT being harder on Quant, I was confident that I could get at least a Q40 on test day, but I got the opposite of that. On test week I focused a lot on Verbal, but also reviewed previous MGMAT on the Quant side. I took all my practice tests in my house, but mocked real test scenarios (8 minute breaks, normal time, no repeated questions, etc.) 
While taking the test, I felt that the questions I was getting on Quant were never that hard. I was actually able to solve them fairly quickly, which had never happened before! The verbal, on the other hand, felt extremely hard. 
I’m just trying to understand what could’ve happened. In many Quant questions I was confident I was getting the right answer and still, the level of the questions never went up. 
I’m just super frustrated because my application deadline is January 8th and I’m really far from my target score of 700+. I’m planning on taking a couple of days off to reset my mind, but have no idea where to begin with once I restar studying. Does anyone have a recommendation? 
Thank you so much in advance!!

Posted from my mobile device

Toffelfabriken · Answer

From your description, it does not sound like timing or significant test anxiety had a big impact. However, it does seem like you still have some significant gaps in your understanding on quant, and that you are not accurate enough in distinguishing a correct answer from a trap answer. I would recommend that you put some time into going through practice questions with a relatively lax time limit, and just try to reach the correct answer. Then, when you find that you got a wrong answer, then go analyze the expert explanations here on GMATClub and try to figure out which areas you're struggling with.

You see, before you can solve questions quickly, you have to be able to get the right answer in the first place (kind of like how you have to walk before you can run). The GMAT tries to trick you at every turn, but these attempts to fool you are predictable. By practicing and spending time analyzing the questions you got wrong, you can learn to identify those trap answers.

Russ19 · Answer

You should focus on the concepts for quant and master them as having a good grip on concepts cannot ensnare anyone. Are you done with Mprep PCE? If you mail your instructor, you must have objective suggestions for sure.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Vicf,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day. Before we discuss any of those potential issues though, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How many hours do you typically study each week?
2) Did you use any other study materials besides the course that you mentioned?
3) On what dates (or approximate dates) did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
4) What School(s) are you planning to apply to?

If you took your GMAT at a Test Center, then you might also choose to purchase the Enhanced Score Report. While the ESR doesn’t provide a lot of information, there are usually a few data points that we can use to define what went wrong on Test Day (and what you should work on to score higher). If you purchase the ESR, then I'll be happy to analyze it for you.

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

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Can you recall any question(s) you thought were easy but you may have tripped up on during Quant?

catinabox · Answer

Yep. You've definitely fallen for a few trap questions.

What you need to do right now is take a memory dump: try to recall all the questions you faced in the exam and note down whatever details you remember. Put in some special attention to those topics while preparing for your next attempt.

Your verbal score is pretty good, especially for a non-native. I'm confident that if you put in a month's effort into quant the same way you did for verbal, you could easily improve by a 100 odd points on your total score. So don't lose heart; prepare for your next attempt.

Vihf · Answer

Hi Rich, thanks for getting back to me. I'll reply to your questions in red.

Vihf · Answer

I honestly do not remember. Just recall there were a few number properties questions, one or two on combinatorics, two Geometry questions with 2 shapes. That's about what I can recall. But the questions were not hard, or not what I was used to seeing in the Manhattan mocks. That was my overall sensation about the Quant section.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Vicf,

Since you have not scored higher than 580 on your practice or actual GMAT, moving forward, you need to follow a linear and structured study plan. More specifically a study plan that allows you to learn each GMAT quant and verbal topic individually, and then practice each topic until you’ve gained mastery. Let me expand on this idea further.

Say you begin studying Critical Reasoning. First, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics such that you develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you incorrectly answered 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 read a paragraph, 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 Reading Comprehension, 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 easy to read. 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, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working 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 that 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 meanings that make sense. 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 to 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 Sentence Correction skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.

For quant, as already mentioned, you’ll want to engage in focused practice. Let me expand on that idea further. For example, if you are reviewing Number Properties, be sure that you practice 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 and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions 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.

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!

Hovkial · Answer

I have to put in a word of caution here.

Testtakers should not try to remember questions and to recall them later. Remembering questions is explicity an offense according to GMAC.

I would suggest instead to the OP to just generally form some views about (a) what sorts of questions were "problematic" and (b) what strategies they employed during test day.

The feeling too confident about the answers to some questions could indicate, among other things, that the OP miscalculated the level of the questions and that they were super confident on easy answers. It is possible that even though they felt that they were answering all questions correctly, they were actually answering only the "easier" questions. The algorithm never moved their score any higher because the difficulty levels of the questions never varied far from the easy levels.

catinabox · Answer

Definitely. I think I must clarify too. Try to remember the type of questions you faced. (I had assumed that he wouldn't remember the details of the questions anyway, and most GMAT tests have similar types of questions anyway. The idea is that questions you remember are likely to be those you found difficult and hence worth remembering to practice those kinds before the next attempt.

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GMAT exam, idk what happened!

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