650 Q36 V44 8IR on first practice test; aiming for 700+

Question

Hey guys,

I have just started my GMAT-journey. I am a 23 year old guy from Germany, with mediocre university grades pursuing a top European MiM program next summer. Thusly I am aware about the importance of my GMAT score in order to make up for my 2.3 GPA (German grading system).

In order to find out where my journey is starting, I took the first official GMAT practice test under test conditions, as adviced. To my surprise I scored 650. I had not studied for the GMAT previously, but had familiarized myself with the test format and the timing constraints. I was expecting my verbal score to be rather strong, based on my multiple years of bilingual education and general ability in language comprehension and analysis. I was also expecting my math score to be horrendous, seeing as my previous experiences with math were to pass my uni and school exams with some effort only, usually achieving only mediocre grades. Furthermore it had also been some times since I applied math in my daily or work life (strategy at a football club, previously controlling at KPMG), so I knew there would be quite a few simple things I would not be able to answer (e.g. forgot the formula for the circumference of a circle).

Anyways, I ended up with the aforementioned 650 Q36 V44 IR 8, surprising myself and hopefully making my journey to a 700+ (ideally 730 or higher) slightly easier. I was left with about 11 minutes to spear on the V-section having taken enough time to answer each question to my best knowledge and about 15 minutes on the Q-part, having exhausted my mathematical knowledge rather quickly and knowing when to move on.

I have now booked a test appointment for the 14th of March and am planning to dedicate about 100-120hrs on prepping, as I will still need to sit exams and work in the meanwhile. For this I have bought the official GMAT-guide incl. the quant and verbal extra books.

I am interested in your guys input especially on my Q-prep, seeing as this is definetly the place to improve. Do you feel like my plans are realistic? I do not want to rest on my good V-score, but have at least heard that the official mock tests 1+2 are supossed to be pretty accurate - how much time (%) would you invest into upping my V-score?

Happy to be a part of the crew now - Thank you for your help

Vincent

AndrewN · Answer

Hello, Vincent. That is a fantastic entry point in Verbal. Even so, because a high total score is more accessible with a high Verbal scaled score, I would urge you not to neglect this aspect of your preparation. Sure, Quant should be your primary focus, but if you could delve into Verbal a bit more and go from missing, say, five questions to two or three in another month or two, then that could make a big difference in the eventual outcome, and a higher Verbal score could alleviate some of the pressure you may feel to raise your Quant score. (You might even be able to ace the Verbal portion, a rare feat.)

There are any of a number of ways to go about your preparation. I would recommend checking out  the GMAT Study Plan  provided by GMAT Club founder   bb   if you have not already. The official guides are an excellent source for practice questions, but they do not help much in the way of theory, or teaching you strategies to take on various topics and question types. Again, I would refer you to the study plan above for further reading.

To answer your question directly, I would probably work in some Verbal practice or preparation three times a week to not only break up the doldrums of constant Quant preparation, but also to ensure that you are not banking on a performance that could backfire. After all, testing well in practice is one thing, but a number of debriefs speak to test-day factors taking their toll and resulting in a lower score than expected when it counts. Put everything you have into that first effort.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

Russ19 · Answer

Hi vincent98 , What books/resources are you going through for quant concepts? When you solve OG quant problems, you can see the video solution to the questions: https://gmatquantum.com/official-guides ... at-videos/ Best Wishes!

nislam · Answer

Hi vincent98 , When you are done with free official MOC 1 & 2, consider going through some video lessons of Ron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijvBigm ... RL&index=3 Thanks!

vincent98 · Answer

Hello Andrew,

thank you for your lengthy and insightful message. I really appreciate you taking the time. I thought about what you wrote and looked at what my personal goal for quantitative should realistically be. I am hoping to be a bit above average at around 45 points, a feat I deam achievable. I agree with you that it might be more realistic and interesting to push my total score by means of my verbal section. I feel especially confident about this, because in the practice test I took, I excelled in the reading comprehension part, scoring full marks, while leaving some room for improvement in the sentence correction department. So I know where to begin

I will take your tips into consideration and am now going to check out the study plan you linked to.

Greetings

Vincent

I will take your tips into consideration and am now going to check out the study plan you linked to. Greetings Vincent

vincent98 · Answer

Thank you, Ill give that a shot

vincent98 · Answer

Hey thank you for the tip.

currently I will only be using the official prep books. I think seeing the explanations will help massively.

Thank you

Vincent

AndrewN · Answer

Sure thing, Vincent. If SC is an area of interest, I just published  a spreadsheet of all SC questions  tagged "official" on this site. (You do not need to go through 800 questions to get better at SC, but if you notice certain patterns in the types of questions you tend to miss, such a spreadsheet might come in handy for supplemental practice.) If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

- Andrew

egmat · Answer

Hi Vincent , 650 is a great starting point. If you execute a study plan that is fully customized to your strengths and weaknesses, you can surely improve to a 730+ by March. You do have sufficient time to improve. Based on the details shared by you, here are our observations and recommendations. We covered the following 3 things in this response - Quant improvement from Q36 to Q46+ 1.1. Using OG as a resource 1.2 How to track the improvement Verbal Improvement from V44 to V48 Helping you set up a study plan 1.Quant improvement from Q36 to Q46 Like you mentioned, Q45/Q46 can surely be achieved if you follow a structured approach. Q36 score suggests that your foundation in Quant is very weak. You must start the prep from the basics and master 1 topic at a time. In each topic, you must learn the concept, learn the right process to apply the concept and master the process with practice. While doing this, you need to track the improvement. Here are a couple of examples of students who executed such trackable study plans to improve - Haleemah scored a Q35 on her first attempt . She improved to a Q47 in her next attempt. Watch her journey to understand how planning and tracking helped her improve. She got a full scholarship from Kelley. Rida improved from Q32 to Q49 in just 50 days . 1.1Using OG as a resource for learning I see that you plan to start the prep with OG. When the score is low, jumping in to OG is not a great idea (as OG is primarily a resource for practice, not for learning). But you can surely try this. Try learning the concepts and process from OG for a week, take assessment quizzes and track the improvement. If your scores are improving, then the approach is working for you. If not, you need to consider changing the learning resource. So, tracking the improvement is very important for you (especially since you have limited time. Without tracking, you might put in a lot of effort without direction). Here is a student who started at 580 score, studied from OG for about a month and improved to just 600 level. He then changed the strategy entirely and improved to a 720. Here is a snippet from his GC debrief. https://cloudfiles.e-gmat.com/rebrandly/Gccelerate/OG_help_Hitesh.png Here is the full debrief - Hitesh ( GMAT 580 to 730) 1.2How to track the improvement Here is an image showing how you can track your level of understanding in the concepts and the ability to apply the right process (at a topic level). https://cloudfiles.e-gmat.com/rebrandly/Gccelerate/Linear_Inequalities_Learning.png Try Learning a couple of topics this way - compare it with learning from OG We have few modules of Quant in our free trial that teach in this way. I recommend that you try doing one module (such as Even-Odd topic from Arithmetic) by registering here . If this structure is working and the feedback scores come out to be good, then I believe our course can help you and we should talk about how you can improve. 2.Verbal improvement from V44 to V48 V44 is an amazing starting point. You must maximize this to a V47+ level. You just need to make sure that you get this score consistently. And for this, you must make sure that you score 90+ percentile in all the three sub-sections (SC, CR, RC) consistently. As you identified SC as the area for improvement, you need learn and master the right process to approach SC questions (learn the process first and then jump to practice. I recommend that you follow our Meaning-based approach . Here is an example of a student - Magdalena scored a V39 on her diagnostic mock test . She finetuned the prep by identifying the mistakes and rectifying them by applying the right process. She improved to a massive V48 (GMAT 780) in 2 months . Watch her journey here 3.Need help personalizing the study plan? To summarize, your Quant and Verbal journeys are going to be completely different. In Quant, you need to focus on basics and do a comprehensive prep. In Verbal, you just need to finetune your approach by identifying the mistakes. If you need help with setting up a study plan that can target your weak areas, and learn the meaning based approach, you can reach out to us over e-mail here - our e-mail ID - gmathelp@e-gmat.com You can also book a one-on-one strategy session with us by using the below link. One-on-One Strategy Session with e-GMAT experts Hope this helps!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi vincent98,

650 is a great start! To answer your question, yes, I do think your target score is realistic. Regarding how to move forward with your quant prep, I have a great article that you can check out:

How To Increase Your GMAT Quant Score

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Vincent,

This 650 is a fantastic initial CAT Score - and your V44 is outstanding (the Average Score on the Official GMAT hovers around 550 most years); these results show that you are a naturally strong critical thinker (which is a skill that will serve you well in School and beyond). Depending on your available study time (and how you go about studying), you could potentially hit your Score Goal in 1-2 months. It's worth noting that the Quant section of the GMAT is NOT a 'math test' - it's a 'critical thinking test' that requires lots of little calculations as you work through it. With a Q36, your general math knowledge is likely solid, but there are some specific concepts that you will likely need to review.

Before I can offer you any additional advice, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on your timeline and your goals:

1) What study materials do you currently have access to?
2) Are you planning to take the At-home GMAT or are you planning to take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
3) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?
4) What specific application deadlines are you facing?

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

Contact Rich at: [email protected]

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650 Q36 V44 8IR on first practice test; aiming for 700+

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