From 590 to 480 within 3 months

Question

Hello All,
I would like to share my GMAT experience. My score goal was 700. In Ferbuary this year, I took the official GMAT and scored 590. I decided to prepare futher and take the test again since my verbal score was not sufficient, just V25. After three months of preparation, I took the test again at the center and scored 480! Before taking the test, my official practice GMAT score was 700. I also took the GMAT test at London Business School, and my score was 670: the same score of 670 I received after taking a test at Experts' Global. My Manhattan test score was 640. 
Regarding my last official test at the center, Integrated Reasoning was very easy this time. There were three answer choice, and not five. The Quantatative part, in my view, did not vary at all. Basically, two same topics with different numbers. In Verbal, critical reasoning questions were almost absent. 
To practice for the test, I used the Official Guide 2022, CR Bible, and SC Guide by E. Meltzer. 
I really do not know whether there is a point to take the test again.

bb · Answer

Ugh. Sorry! That is a bit weird… definitely not normal. Sorry about it.

What were your sectional scores?

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Viorik · Answer

Thank you for your reply. The verbal score was 16 and quantitative was 43.

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

If you decide to take the exam again, consider using Official Mocks (in case you weren't already). You can also purchase the Official Quant/Verbal review guides for more Official questions.

The ESR may be worth getting for more insight into what happened/what to potentially work on. You could also share it here (may want to wipe any personal info first) for specific suggestions.

5 Verbal tips

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Viorik.

I realize it must be unsettling to prepare, see score increases on your practice tests, and then score much lower on the real GMAT, but you can certainly score higher on the GMAT by preparing effectively.

One move that may help is taking many more practice tests, both official and third-party tests, so that you become better at handling the test overall and achieve an actual GMAT score more in line with your higher practice test scores.

Also, if you make some adjustments to how you prepare for Verbal, you'll score higher on the Verbal section. You can learn how to prepare for GMAT Verbal for best results from this post.

How to Score High on GMAT Verbal

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Assuming that you took your official practice exams under realistic testing conditions, the results show that, on a good day, you are capable of scoring higher than V16. Thus, it’s quite 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. Although I’m unsure of how you prepared, it’s possible that, in your preparation, particularly in verbal, you did not really learn to do what you have to do in order to score high on the actual GMAT. Rather, you picked up on some patterns that were effective in getting you relatively high scores on practice tests. So, for you to hit your score goal, your preparation, particularly for verbal, probably needs to be more complete, meaning that you have to go through the various types of GMAT questions carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills.

For verbal specifically, you have to become more skilled at clearly defining the differences between trap choices and correct answers. Otherwise, you will get stuck guessing between two choices or be surprised to find that you incorrectly answered questions that you thought you answered correctly. Becoming more skilled in this way takes carefully analyzing all of the answer choices to lots of verbal questions to develop an eye for the logical differences between the choices. In other words, you have to go beyond answering practice questions and reading explanations to doing deep analysis of questions to learn to see everything that is going on in them.

Feel free to reach out with any questions!

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