Wrong study method?

Question

Hi all,

I've been studying on and off.. I took 2 times GMAT exam (once in 2018 and again just yesterday), scored poorly low 500.

1st exam I got 530 (cant remember the detail breakdown), 2nd exam I got 520 (Q41 V21 IR5), and I cancelled both scores. Mostly I studied for 1 month intense, 4 hours a day 6ish hours weekend, 1 day break per week. Every time I took official mock exam, I am able to score around 640-700, but when it comes to the exam always went down, especially on the Verbal section.

As I believe my problem in verbal, can anyone suggest to me what should I do to improve my score? I am trying to be realistic, target score 600-650 is good enough for me.

Thanks!

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

It's surprising your Official Mock score and actual exam result differ by nearly 100 points. One suggestion would be to start reading some articles on a daily basis - from the Economist for example.

Russ19 · Answer

Are done with all concepts from manhattan prep strategy guides? What material did you cover so far? Follow AndrewN, GMATGuruNY, DmitryFarber, and GMATNinja as they are all gmat club verbal experts and have answered lots of queries, which are insightful and an eye-opener.

sjuniv32 thanks for your suggestion on the experts, will keep an eye and hopefully I can learn from them.

Thanks

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

First off, you can drive your score much higher by increasing your quant score, and for most people, increasing their quant scores is easier than increasing their verbal scores. So, for sure, you should work on quant.

Regarding verbal, how have you prepared?

It could be that however you have been preparing tipped you off to how to answer the questions that appear on the official practice tests but didn't result in your truly learning how to handle GMAT verbal.

Russ19 · Answer

In the link below, you will find the video solution to OG problems of quant, and you might love the superb approaches: https://gmatquantum.com/

rajatchopra1994 · Answer

Dear  sergio  Widjanarko ,

Sorry to hear about your GMAT score.

As you mentioned, more than 100 points GAP between your mock test score & GMAT official score is hard to believe. Were you under any pressure at the GMAT exam?

May i know, have you followed any study plan or taken any coaching for preparation?

Too Low verbal score means still you are not goods with basics. So i would suggest first brush up all your basics. then go with 600 level questions to 700 level questions.

Check your accuracy always. ( It should be more than the 75% always)

I have seen many GMAT takers who has achieved 700+ score from 550 around. so don't get discouraged with your score.

Regards,
Rajat Chopra

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Sergio Widjanarko . I am guessing that test-day anxiety has gotten in your way in the past, but regardless of what the situation may have been, your best way forward is to build as strong a foundation as you can, section by section, topic by topic. The GMAT™ is not the sort of test that most people can cram for in a month and walk away from with a desired score in hand. So, how do you go about improving your core knowledge? Practice is a key component, of course, but at this point in your journey, given the actual exam scores you have achieved, you ought to focus on theory first. Your best bet for Verbal, depending on your preferred method of learning, is probably watching YouTube videos, particularly those by  GMATNinja  or, if you can get your hands on them, reading through the verbal guides from Manhattan Prep (either the older ones, a slim book for each of RC, CR, and SC, or the newer edition, which combines all the areas in one larger book). With guided practice through something like the Manhattan Prep guides, your core knowledge is likely to improve considerably, and if you decide to fast-track further progress at that point by enlisting the help of a tutor, that is entirely up to you. I would advise against going the tutoring route right now, since you would likely spend much more money covering core concepts that you could just as easily learn on your own. You may also consider online, module-based learning, a cheaper alternative to class-based or one-on-one tutoring. There are plenty of programs to choose from, either in the Marketplace or offsite. My recommendation remains the same, though. Work on building the basics first, then attack more and more official questions as you increase your understanding of the material.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Sergio Widjanarko,

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 V21. 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.

In order to follow the path described above, you may need some new quant and verbal materials, so take a look at the GMAT Club reviews for the  best quant  and  verbal courses .

You also may find it helpful to read the following article:

Why Was My GMAT Score Lower Than My Practice Test Scores?

If you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your quant and verbal skills, feel free to reach back out. Good luck!

swindo · Answer

Thanks for your input.

I am mostly reading the video explanation (currently I am using magoosh, it is very helpful video and especially on quant), and then start doing practice, and look on the video on the explanation itself on how to tackle the question.

I tend to agree that I believe I didnt understand the true learning for Verbal, as I am a non native speaker.

swindo · Answer

Are done with all concepts from manhattan prep strategy guides? What material did you cover so far? Follow AndrewN, GMATGuruNY, DmitryFarber, and GMATNinja as they are all gmat club verbal experts and have answered lots of queries, which are insightful and an eye-opener.

sjuniv32 thanks for your suggestion on the experts, will keep an eye and hopefully I can learn from them.

Thanks

sjuniv32  thanks for your suggestion on the experts, will keep an eye and hopefully I can learn from them.

Thanks

swindo · Answer

Sorry to hear about your GMAT score.

As you mentioned, more than 100 points GAP between your mock test score & GMAT official score is hard to believe. Were you under any pressure at the GMAT exam?

May i know, have you followed any study plan or taken any coaching for preparation?

Too Low verbal score means still you are not goods with basics. So i would suggest first brush up all your basics. then go with 600 level questions to 700 level questions.

Check your accuracy always. ( It should be more than the 75% always)

I have seen many GMAT takers who has achieved 700+ score from 550 around. so don't get discouraged with your score.

Regards,
Rajat Chopra

Hi Rajat, yes, I cant get my stress off, especially on the Verbal, so I took quant first then verbal. I am quite feeling ok after doing quant, but it might turns out that I am out of gas for the verbal and did poorly. I have never did a coaching preparation before, it is quite expensive in my pov, hence I am trying to do self online learning from Magoosh, did e-gmat 2 years ago, but I believe I forgot quite a lot.

So your suggestion is brush up basic, practise and practise?

Understand, will brush up my basic first, start reading economist. Thanks for the encouragement! Will try to achieve that for sure.

swindo · Answer

Hi Andrew, thanks for the suggestion. It is dense and to the point, will brush up my basic first again and go with practise after that. I will try to understand more about the verbal section. Yea agree on that, tutor is very costly especially in this current condition. I will try to consume the theory and basic concept and look for manhat prep book and currently thinking to register for empower gmat. Thanks again.

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi Sergio Widjanarko,

If you are just learning the concepts and jumping directly into practicing questions, then yes that's a wrong study strategy.  You might be missing out the most important step which is learning the right methodology to solve questions . The inconsistency in your scores (mock and the actual ones) is most likely because of the same reason. You might be getting lucky in the mock exams but when it comes to the official test, you are faltering when you come across close answer choices. So, it is important to learn the right methodology before solving questions.

The ideal way to prepare is to: 
  Learn the concepts (Start with your weak area) 
 Learn the right methodology 
 Take sectional quizzes of that topic 
 Make sure you apply the methodology learnt 
 Move to the next topic only if you get at least 80% accuracy

What do I mean my the right methodology? 
If you are wondering what is this methodology, let me explain it to you by taking the example of SC questions. There is a common misconception that knowing grammatical rules will help you solve SC questions. But SC questions on GMAT test your ability to convey the intended meaning without any ambiguity. So, it is important to  approach SC questions from a meaning stand-point . Because you will often come across answer choices which are grammatically correct and convey a logical meaning but are indeed incorrect. So, it is important to understand the intended meaning the original sentence is trying to convey and then eliminate choices which do not convey the intended meaning or which are grammatically incorrect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SGA8bwFNJM

I hope you got an idea of what do I mean by the right methodology. You need to follow specific approaches while solving Verbal questions - SC, CR and RC. Verbal questions can be very tricky because test makers often confuse students by using close words in the answer choices. You need to have a thorough understanding of the concepts and use the right strategies to eliminate the incorrect answer choices.

Why don't we connect over a zoom conference call and discuss the further study plan?  We can also solve a few questions so that you can understand where exactly you're going wrong and at the same time understand how to solve them in the right way. The call will be really informative and will help you understand what should be done next. If you wish to connect, you can schedule a free consultation call using the below link.

Click here to schedule a call

AndrewN · Answer

Hello again, Sergio. I am always happy to offer a candid appraisal of a situation or question. I have read many positive reviews, including one from prominent member Souvik, about EMPOWERgmat, and I know that Rich is adamant about using official materials for preparation, so I think you will be in good hands. Whether you decide to give EMPOWERgmat your full attention or decide to cross-reference with Manhattan Prep material, I urge you to be open to what you are taught. It is okay to gloss over some information the first time around and make mistakes, but you want to set yourself up to get a similar question right the next time around, so take more time in the beginning to understand why the wrong answers are wrong. The payoff will come later.

Again, good luck to you. I hope to see a triumphant debrief down the road.

- Andrew

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Sergio Widjanarko,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day did not turn out as well as hoped. 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. Thankfully, the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. In addition, with a Score Goal in the 600 - 650 range, you do NOT need to correctly answer ANY questions that you think are too hard or too weird, but you do have to keep the little mistakes to a minimum on everything else. Before we discuss any of this in more detail, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) For this 2nd attempt, did you take the At-home GMAT or did you take your GMAT at a Test Facility?
2) What study materials have you used over the course of ALL of your studies (in 2018 and in 2020)? What 'brands' of practice CATs/mocks did you use?
3) For this 2nd attempt, on what 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) When are you planning to apply to Business School and what Schools are you planning to apply to?

If you took your recent 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

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