Took GMAT today 690 (Q50 V31) - Surprised, retake in 1 month

Question

I desperately need suggestions here today:

Just came out of GMAT test. Score 690 (Q50, V31)..I am surprised and need suggestions. Why read on:

1. Test results in GMAT prep 1&2 - 750 both (Q 50, V42)
2. Test results in 6 Manhattan test - 690, 710, 720, 740, 740, 760

Consistent high score in every other test that I took. Needless to say I was expecting 750+. I dont know what hit me. I was extremely poor in SC when I started but I have picked up after some consistent practice. Though SC was still a concern when I went in but I never expected a score of 31. CR was cause of concern for me but I was doing good lately and SC is a no issue for me. I seldom get SC questions wrong. I am quick reader and has good comprehension.

What is most surprising is that I noticed nothing out of ordinary in verbal apart from few bad CR choices. Quant was no issue for me.

Its pretty much clear that I need to work on verbal and especially on SC and CR

CR: Pls recommend me good books. Is Manhattan better or powerscore bible
SC: I already went through Manhattan. I need to go through it again. Should I get the powerscore bible too.

I am sad and depressed today. 690 is the lowest score I have ever achieved in any practice test including free ones from princeton and knewton ( I didnt took any Kaplan though). But I am filled with anguish and anger. I am determined to go back and correct whatever went wrong today and whatever it takes to get 750+.

gurpreetsingh · Answer

You should definitely revise MGMAT SC 2-3 times and for CR- use powerscore bible.
Revise them multiple times and practice question of each type.

taylor85 · Answer

verbal can be a lot harder on the real thing, especially due to timing pressures. do you NEED a 750+?? (answer: no)

690 is perfectly acceptable, especially if you are a non us applicant. your total score is decent enough not to keep you out of anywhere as long as the rest of your app is solid. i say move onto the rest of your app. Q50 and V in the 30's is fine. adcom will put a check next to gmat and move onto the rest of your app.

DAYNE · Answer

Get the Powerscore SC because it has a foundation section that Manhattan SC doesn't have.
I also prefer Powerscore CR

Tell us how did you score so well in qant.

What materials did you use?
Are you naturally good at math?
Are you a native english speaker?

Ironduke · Answer

I am feeling better today. Thanks for your suggestions and advice. I had some pending works for past 2-3 weeks which I wrapped up yesterday to divert my attention and I am starting again today with my studies.

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Is 750 necessary is not the debate I want to be in right now. I think I could have achieved that score. I took all my tests in timed way and had no trouble getting over 700 anytime. I still think 750 is the score I can achieve. I am just trying to see what went wrong especially why my scores is -60 from my GMAT prep scores.

I am not a native english speaker and I was very bad in SC. But I picked up after lot of practice and I was doing good in SC close to 85-90% correct in OG 2 days before.

CR was troublesome as I used to get most of the question correct but used to miss some very obvious ones. This was a consistently true in my Manhattan Tests where I used to miss 500-600 level CR but used to be always correct in 700-800 level ones. I now believe that CR has cost me dear here, due to my intutive first and reasoning later approach to CR rather than logical first and elimination later approach.

I am still thinking of other possible reasons and I will update the thread.

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For whether 690 is good or not for my profile I havent done much research but I believe for top 10 US schools the people from my demographics (age, education, station and country) mean score of any applicant would be above 720. I am pretty much sure about this. That will probably get me rejected at the onset. Anyways I will go back to this if I get 690 again in my retake.

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Ironduke · Answer

Thanks. Powerscore is my next choice. I plan to order the books today. The seem old (2005 and 2006) is that the correct version that I see in Amazon.

For maths I used
GMAT Club tests
OG
Any other material that I can get my hands on including Kaplan math workbook, princeton review etc. I did a lot of questions and lot of tests. My PS is better than my DS.

I would say I am naturally good at maths too. Though I still needed a lot of different strategies to push myself harder in the subject especially in time management.

I will reply in detail on the subject of my preparation for quant in few hours.

shadow · Answer

The powerscore bible is very good for CR. As far as SC, i'd just go through manhattan SC again - no need to overload yourself with a bunch of new material. Also, read through this thread: should-i-retake-gmat-thread-retaking-gmat-strategies-83339.html. The "700 barrier" is a psychological barrier, at best. If your profile is strong, it won't matter if you got a 720 or a 750 or a 690. However, if you have the time/money to re-take, then I'd say go for it.

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lagomez · Answer

I wouldn't use either one as a good barometer. I think GMAT prep and manhattan gmat overstate your score. Your average for manhattan gmat is a 720 (didn't do the calculation) and there is a 30pt (positive and negative) margin of error. You can score a 750 but honestly will you be okay hitting your average 720? If not, I think you need to rethink your priorities on this unless you do not have an impressive background. Realistically, one more time won't hurt.

Try Knewton's free exam and get paid $100 dollars in the process if you plan to retake (assuming they are still having that promo). In my experience their score is pretty close to the real deal.

Ironduke · Answer

Thanks folks. Your response is keeping me engaged and focused.

My problem is something inside me is not accepting the 690 score. As I said I never had this score ( including knewton free one).

I am not sure about GMAT prep. I found it easy and many people have said that the scores in GMAT prep are best representation of your actual GMAT score. I will agree as I found real GMAT questions quite similar to GMAT prep and OG.

Manhattan tests are tougher than GMATprep (though the 6th one was close to the real GMAT - I score 760) and I have not seen a single profile (though my search of the forum was limited) who fared so well in all these timed tests and scored so poorly in actual GMAT. And I am not taking a single test as a barometer. I took all in all 10 full test including GMATprep, princeton review, knewton, Manhattan and few more from different sources.

I am fine with anything above 720 as I know (and I have mentioned this earlier) for my demographics the people I am pitted against in application shortlisting will have at least 720 as an average score. 690 is good If I have a different an unique profile but I have a very common profile for my demographics (6 out of 10 will be from similar background in education (including GPA range) and experience type/range).

All in all it appears to me that I missed some very simple but crucial piece in the overall logic of SC and CR which tanked me. I am trying to figure it out.

Dayne - Thanks for that link and forum. Your help is much appreciated.

xyztroy · Answer

Your story reflects mine word by word. I was also doing extremely well on practice tests.

My Scores of Manhattan tests were as follows: 700, 710, 740, 740, 780.
GMAT Prep test scores were also above 700.

I gave my GMAT on 17th May and scored same Q50 V31. Although when I was doing Verbal, I was quite excited, because I was very confident on almost all my answers. I have been correcting almost all my RC questions in the practice tests and was quite confident on all the RC passages in the real test as well. I might have got little nervous for the last 5 questions in verbal section because I had around 7 minutes left, although should be enough. But I was expecting much higher score in verbal than 31.

I just received my official report and got AWA 5.5.

My target programs are 1 year MBA with schools as HKUST, NUS, Cambridge, and Oxford SAID. I am not sure whether I should retake GMAT because it was already a second attempt.

Thanks

Ironduke · Answer

alright I am late in updating this thread but my second attempt got me a score of 710. Q50 V35. I was slightly able to better my verbal and was able to save it from a near disaster. I could have scored a little higher but poor time management got me in verbal.

I am not planning a third take (at least soon) though when I saw my score I was disappointed again and thought lets go for third time. My quant was fabulous this time. I was expecting 51 (sigh!) but verbal experience started to roll downhill after my extra caution initially cost me dear in terms of time and I had to make some take a dash in the end.

Anyways the journey of frustration to enlightment have been fantastic and busy. Busy because I had put a lot of projects in personal and professional life on hold anticipating that I will score close to 720 in first run. Didnt happened. So for second run I had too much work everywhere...wish I had more time.

Fantastic because I came to know that whatever I may think my verbal sucks!. I cannot improve the score unless I do some fundamental improvements in this domain. But I dont have time now as all application deadlines are approaching and i have way too much work in office now.

Thanks to all those contributed to this thread. I may take GMAT again in future and will update this thread.

Ironduke · Answer

You need to work on the verbal. Thats as simple as it can be. If you have time just work on your verbal and keep refereshing quant twice every week. I am sure you will be able to manage quant but even if you are able to better verbal by 7 -8 points you will see a lot better score.

For verbal assume that there is something fundamentally wrong with your approach and try to look for it. You will be surprised by results if you start looking at it that way. my AWA is 5 so AWA has no relationship to verbal score for someone who is scoring 30+ in verbal and 650+ overall. Dont start from scratch. Just go back and analyze each mistake in verbal and try to understand the underlying reason.

nonameee · Answer

Ironduke, would you be so kind and tell us a little more about your preparation and how you achieved 50 in quant? Thank you.

Ironduke · Answer

Sure. . I followed the usual approach and used GMAT club tests as the primary source of practice apart from OG. I found OG too simple frankly. Also during inital days when I was building the fundamentals for preparation I did any question bank I can lay my hands on. This includes Kaplan math workbook (older editions from libarary) etc but towards the end I focused on GMAT club tests completly to built speed and refine concepts.

My preparation will follow the normal learning curve most follow here in terms of books and tests but I would like to mention few other things which helped me:
1. PS and DS: Both are different and approach to questions is different. I struggled with DS initially until I started with Manhattan tests. The key factor in DS is the ability to identify and derive from question stem what is required, before one even looks at the choices. No tests apart from Manhattan test put emphasis on this and these tests include GMAT club tests where explanations are curt. Once you are able to figure out what you need to know to get the answer of DS question stem the choices will immediately start making sense to you. All other strategies such as subsitution comes after this step.

2. Maths in general is simple and you will not come across some long and tough question that one sees in some of the practice tests. Emphasis is more on understanding the logical application of a concept.

3. I didnt spend time on any calculation shortcuts, memorizing tables or squares etc. They are helpful but they will just help one save some time which wont help if one is struggling in the application of the concept. However if you have good fundamentals you dont need to memorize any of these. You will have adequate time. I completed my maths in second attempt with 8 mins remaining. In the first attempt I used the full time though.

4. there is more to the scoring algo that I couldnt understand or game. But remember not to make 2-3 mistakes in a row at any part in the tests. This means that if you think your answer to a question may be wrong spend some more time on the next question.

Hope this helps and make sense. At the end of the day maths is about practice and more practice.

tt11234 · Answer

i wish i got 690...

xyztroy · Answer

I took my gmat in May and I was also doing exceptionally good in all my mock tests. However, my score is exactly same as yours. Q50, V31. I decided to focus on the applications.

nonameee · Answer

Ironduke, thanks for answering my question.

yossarian84 · Answer

Hi Ironduke, So finally, did you retake GMAT? I had the same experience as you. I appeared for the GMAT twice and scored 690 on both the attempts! I never realized I suck so much at verbal! My split in the two attempts - 690 (q49 v35) first attempt; 690 (q50 v32

) 2nd attempt. In contrast my score in GPREP1 one year ago with ZERO prep was 650 (q43 v38). I believe all the verbal preparation has made dumber

I was breezing through verbal the second time around and thought I am doing very well...hoped to see 730+ on the screen...alas! Scored even lesser on verbal this time.... I wish I knew where I was going wrong during my retake prep...I still cant figure it out though ...I gave 3 MGMAT CATs and Gprep tests (new and old) and scored 750+ in each of them.. I'd also exhausted all my tests during the first attempt...so didnt have many tests to work with during the retake...now I feel as if there no stone left unturned for my prep -- i almost recollect the CR premises and question stems -- same with SC... I feel the same as you - unfinished business! -- almost 10 months of concentrated effort, sacrificing on social life -- and I couldn't still cross the 700 barrier... feel like giving it a one last shot without any preparation ....dont think thats a smart thing to do though -- but seriously tired of all the verbal work-out...

supereco87 · Answer

don't worry, be happy with the score... 8-)

prerit86 · Answer

it's actually good...+/-30 within the mostly accepted ones

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Took GMAT today 690 (Q50 V31) - Surprised, retake in 1 month

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