Hey jciraczz,

It's pretty likely that you ended up exhausting yourself in the last few days leading up to your exam. Taking a practice CAT is hard work, both physically and mentally, and chances are if you were trying to squeeze in a test every 2 - 3 days in the 11 days leading up to your exam that you weren't as mentally rested as you could have been going into the test. While taking CATs during preparation to get used to the timing and the experience of sitting and taking a test for that long is important, so to is resting your brain before the big day.

In terms of getting ready for your next test, I'd recommend:

1) Order an Enhanced Score Report, which can help you figure out where things went wrong on test day.

2) Use that information to structure your last month of preparation. While you probably will need to do a one or two more practice CATs, remember that they are generally a method of monitoring progress -- they should not be your primary method of study! Instead, focus on your weakest areas. In an adaptive test, the easiest questions you get wrong are often going to be more important to your score than are the hardest questions you can get right -- after all, if you can't prove that you can consistently do easier questions, the algorithm has no proof that you'll be able to handle harder ones.

3) Make sure to relax a bit before you take your next test. It seems counterintuitive, but taking a couple days off studying (or only doing some VERY light content review) is really important to performing well on test day. Think about it in terms of sports training: a marathon runner isn't going to run a 20 -mile run the weekend before the big day. He or she will have done that a few weeks before. Instead, they'll spend the weekend before making sure to eat and drink well and "taper off" the amount they're running in order to be well rested for the big run. The same principle applies when you're about to take the GMAT. A bit of light review is fine, but trying to cram in new concepts or take a ton of CATs is probably going to do more harm than good.
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Laura
Academics Aficionado | ORION
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Hi jciraczz,

In a post back in April of this year (here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/where-do-i-g ... l#p2045263), you described your first GMAT attempt - with a similar outcome. Twice now, you've consistently scored higher on your practice CATs only to earn a significantly lower Score on Test Day. As such, there's likely some issue (or multiple issues) with how you take your CATs and/or how you handle Test Day itself. To hit your Goal Score, you do NOT have to correctly answer any questions that you think are too hard or too weird, but you do have to minimize the number of little mistakes.

The process of taking (and reviewing) a CAT requires a significant amount of energy and effort - and takes time to 'recover' from. This is one of the reasons why you typically shouldn't take more than 1 CAT per week - and your last CAT should be taken about 1 week before Test Day. By taking 4 CATs in the 11 days before your Official GMAT, there's a reasonable chance that you experienced some 'burn out' on Test Day. If you took a similar number of CATs in the final 2 weeks before your first GMAT, then that might be enough to explain your situation. However, there are likely a variety of other factors that influenced your performance (on both attempts) - and that might require more than just a few "tips" to fix.

1) What application deadline(s) are you facing?
2) When you say that you "only need" a 550, what does that mean exactly? Is that a minimum score requirement to apply? Would a 550 guarantee you entry (and how do you know that?)?

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