700 practice to 550 GMAT - 150 pt drop and 50% on Verbal!

[as2764]

Hi Ron, Stacey -

i scored poorly on the GMAT on 24 dec 2010, and as i appreciate some great advice from you -- i wanted to share how much effort has gone into training and pursuing the right study materials.

my background: i am from an engineering background and hold a master's degree from an ivy league school. i work in the wireless industry but i am considering a career change. last year in May i decided that i want to go to b-school and thus, started practicing for my gmat.

i took a kaplan class to learn the strategies. my math score was around 49, while verbal was very weak since 'm a non-native speaker. i lost touch with studies later and then got back again in october (had to take another kaplan class). after few practice tests i took my 1st gmat:

[october 2009]
Kaplan 1 650 V24 Q50
Kaplan 2 680 V25 Q53
Kaplan 3 700 V27 Q55 (Only 1 math question wrong out of 37)
04 nov 2009 GMAT1 590 V23 Q48 AWA5.0

obviously, i was very disheartened and also thought kaplan's tests are skewed, so decided to pursue mgmat materials. i bought entire verbal set of SC, CR, and RC along with practice cats. i went to mgmat center in new york several times to practice by myself and following is what i scored:

[dec 2009]
Mgmat1 430 V09 Q49 -- 1st time always low whenever i pick up studies
Mgmat2 610 V27 Q49
Mgmat3 650 V32 Q48
Mgmat4 600 V26 Q47
Mgmat5 600 V29 Q45

i was unhappy and eventually decided to take MGMAT's private tutoring to learn strategies in person. however, this wasn't of much help. i probably should have taken an mgmat class instead and learned from other students as well in addition to instructor's teachings. i also started reading WSJ and NYT regularly but my engineering job was so much of software and coding, that these words of english were nerve-cracking. following were the scores during that period:

[march 2010]
Mgmat1 420 V12 Q38 -- 1st time always low whenever i pick up studies
Mgmat2 560 V24 Q43
Mgmat3 520 V22 Q40
Mgmat4 630 V32 Q44

finally, i thought i had enough and decided to take a break from work to cross 700. i left my job in aug and seriously decided to pursue the beast. apart from this i also had other problems i needed to take care of. reading is my fatal weakness - i can read words super fast but phrases (collection of words) burned me out and knocked me down. it took me few seconds (and still does) to comprehend every sentence i read so i waited after every sentence to take a moment and process what it meant. slowly i got better. i started reading stuff on nytimes.com, national geographic, and history.com very regularly and typing them out to familiarize myself with standard idioms and structure.

[november 2010]
14 nov 2010 Mgmat5 530 V21 Q43 -- 1st time always low whenever i pick up studies

with 530 i was upset that even after 3 months, i couldn't score better. so i started following you on beat the gmat forums very very closely. i made summary notes from mgmat sc, cr, and rc. i saw all videos of Ron about rc, timing, and awas. and i also got the following study material:

powerscore cr

what i hated was changing strategies: from kaplan - to - mgmat - to - powerscore - to - ron's and stacey's. but in the end i got a mix of all and settled with that. following was the outcome within 10 days:

(also note, from these tests onwards i was able to conveniently complete both quant and verbal sections unlike before when i ran out at 31 on Q and 24 on V -- thanks to Ron's timing strategies)
24 nov 2010 Mgmat6 670 V33 Q48
02 dec 2010 Mgmat1 640 V32 Q47
10 dec 2010 Gprep2 660 V32 Q49
13 dec 2010 Gprep1 690 V35 Q49
17 dec 2010 Mgmat2 680 V35 Q47
19 dec 2010 Gprep2 700 V38 Q48
22 dec 2010 Gprep1 690 V34 Q49
24 dec 2010 GMAT2 550 V19 Q48 AWA6.0
26 dec 2010 Gperp2 700 V34 Q50

please note that i gave a practice test right after the GMAT and scored a 700 V34!

my score drop is probably the worst of all:
from 700 V38 Q48 in practice tests to 550 V19 Q48 on the real deal on Dec 24, 2010 - a 150 pt drop in combined score due to a 50% drop in verbal score!

so, i submitted for a revaluation of scores to reveal nothing to my disappointment. till date, mystery surrounds as to what happened on test day as i don't recall much. one hypothesis is that i panicked during the verbal section -- anxiety, etc.

also - on the GMAT, i very vaguely remember:
-i had few SCs in the beginning
-i had an entire paragraph highlighted (scientists blah blah....), inference (suggest, most likely agree) and strengthen/support questions in RC.

in my opinion, after reading several posts of yours on BTG and here, there could be some psychological aspect, but appreciate what you infer from the data above since i have burned lot of money in test prep and materials already!

Thank you,
Ashish

PS: all practice tests above replicated the GMAT under timed conditions for AWA, Quant, and Verbal sections, with two 7-minute breaks.

[RonPurewal]

ok -- before i address anything, let me note that the title of this post is, to say the least, rather misleading -- the "700" that you listed was on at least your THIRD repetition of gmat prep. such scores are meaningless (see below); it's very bad judgment to use them as an indicator.

[october 2009]
Kaplan 1 650 V24 Q50
Kaplan 2 680 V25 Q53
Kaplan 3 700 V27 Q55 (Only 1 math question wrong out of 37)
04 nov 2009 GMAT1 590 V23 Q48 AWA5.0

wait ... huh?
"Q53"? "Q55"? are these scores, or are they percentiles?

the highest possible scores on the gmat are Q51 and V51, so i'm really confused as to what's going on here.

obviously, i was very disheartened and also thought kaplan's tests are skewed

weeeellll ... if they give you scores like Q53 and Q55 (i.e., scores that don't even exist), then, yes, they are skewed.

[dec 2009]
Mgmat1 430 V09 Q49 -- 1st time always low whenever i pick up studies
Mgmat2 610 V27 Q49
Mgmat3 650 V32 Q48
Mgmat4 600 V26 Q47
Mgmat5 600 V29 Q45

wait ... did you take all five of these practice tests in december 2009? over how long a period of time?

remember -- practice tests will NOT help you improve your understanding of, or aptitude on, the actual material of the test.
a practice test is just a measuring tool; it is not a tool for improvement, except in the sense of improving your overall timing scheme and attention span.
taking lots and lots of practice tests will not make you any better at the material of the gmat, any more than running lots and lots of races will make you a faster runner -- in both cases, it's the TRAINING that you do between these events that matters.

are you learning GENERAL lessons from the problems? are you generalizing the things you learn into principles that could conceivably apply to other problems that don't look like the problems you studied on?
this is the key.

reading is my fatal weakness - i can read words super fast but phrases (collection of words) burned me out and knocked me down.

does this happen in your native language as well? i.e., do you parse out the sentences word by word, or are you more able to process the entirety of the sentence?

i think that it's quite unlikely that the answer to this question is "yes".
if the answer is "yes" (again, unlikely), then there will be little that you can do about this issue; that's just the way in which you process things.
if the answer is "no", then the issue is probably that you are too intent on trying to understand the exact details of the sentence, rather than trying to understand the meaning of the sentence.
think about listening to talk on a weak radio signal -- you don't have to hear every single word of what is being said to get the message. in fact, you could probably get a pretty clear idea of what the speaker is talking about even if you can only hear half of the words.
you should try to take the same approach to reading things, too.

it took me few seconds (and still does) to comprehend every sentence i read so i waited after every sentence to take a moment and process what it meant. slowly i got better. i started reading stuff on nytimes.com, national geographic, and history.com very regularly and typing them out to familiarize myself with standard idioms and structure.

copying will not do anything for you. in fact, many studies show that the brain basically shuts down as soon as people start copying things -- i.e., it's basically impossible to copy and think at the same time.

if you want to do writing of your own, you should write DIFFERENT sentences that contain the same idioms and structural elements as the sentences that you are reading. this sort of exercise will actually engage your brain.

(also note, from these tests onwards i was able to conveniently complete both quant and verbal sections unlike before when i ran out at 31 on Q and 24 on V -- thanks to Ron's timing strategies)
24 nov 2010 Mgmat6 670 V33 Q48
02 dec 2010 Mgmat1 640 V32 Q47
10 dec 2010 Gprep2 660 V32 Q49
13 dec 2010 Gprep1 690 V35 Q49
17 dec 2010 Mgmat2 680 V35 Q47
19 dec 2010 Gprep2 700 V38 Q48
22 dec 2010 Gprep1 690 V34 Q49
24 dec 2010 GMAT2 550 V19 Q48 AWA6.0
26 dec 2010 Gperp2 700 V34 Q50

SCORES ON REPEATED TESTS ARE MEANINGLESS!
IGNORE THEM!

when you repeat tests, you see repeated questions. the presence of these questions will inflate your score, so the resulting number doesn't mean anything.
the inflation is huge, too -- seeing as few as 5-6 repeat problems (on the whole test) could easily add 50-80 artificial points to your score.
if this 700 was on your third (or later) repetition of gmat prep, i would imagine that you saw a lot more than 5-6 repeat problems -- which means that this score could easily be 100-150 points above the true value.

please note that i gave a practice test right after the GMAT and scored a 700 V34!

repeated test. not meaningful.
...and, why would you take a practice test 2 days after your gmat administration? i can't think of any valid reason to do that.

my score drop is probably the worst of all:
from 700 V38 Q48 in practice tests to 550 V19 Q48 on the real deal on Dec 24, 2010 - a 150 pt drop in combined score due to a 50% drop in verbal score!

yeah, but the good news, this time, is that this "drop" isn't real. because these "statistics" are based on repeated test administrations, they're fiction.

in my opinion, after reading several posts of yours on BTG and here, there could be some psychological aspect, but appreciate what you infer from the data above since i have burned lot of money in test prep and materials already!

well -- you've definitely been spending too much time on practice tests. since you didn't mention *anything* about how you REVIEWED the tests, or STUDIED problems between the tests, i must assume that you gave these 2 tasks a lower priority than the practice tests themselves -- big mistake. those two tasks are where you're going to get 100% of your improvement (except in timing considerations).

for SC:
on EVERY problem of EVERY practice test
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY wrong answer choice is wrong? can you extend these findings to other sentences, or are you stuck too exclusively on this one sentence?
* can you explain EVERY construction in the correct sentence -- every modifier, every pronoun, every parallel structure, etc. -- including the non-underlined part?

for CR and RC:
on EVERY problem of EVERY practice test
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY wrong answer choice is wrong? can you categorize these wrong answers into approximate "types" of wrong answers (e.g. wrong scope, too extreme, irrelevant subject material, etc.)?
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY correct answer is correct?

you should be answering the above questions for EVERY problem (including the ones you get correct) on EVERY practice test, and you should seek out similar problems in the OG.
that's a lot of work -- but that's where the improvement happens. if you're studying properly, there is no reason to take more than 1-2 practice tests per month (maybe 3-4, if you are studying full-time and not doing anything else); you should have plenty of review between those tests.
the frequency with which you take practice tests suggests that you are doing very little review of those tests -- it suggests that you are just taking practice test after practice test after practice test. unfortunately, that is a strategy that will provide close to zero benefit -- especially if you are a naturally "detail oriented" person. (if you are more of a "big picture" person then it's possible that you could absorb some of the general strategies through sheer practice, but detail-oriented brains don't really work that way.)

[StaceyKoprince]

Well, Ron already said a lot and got at the key issues, I think: (a) inflated practice scores, and (b) HOW you're studying.

I'm going to give you links to a bunch of articles that will help you with HOW you're studying. In particular, they'll help you with analyzing and reviewing material, which is where you really learn (as Ron said).

Analyzing a Practice Question Series:
At minimum, spend 2x as long reviewing a question as you spent doing it in the first place (even if you get it right). Most of the time, you'll spend 3x to 5x as long reviewing as doing, and sometimes longer.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

SC: http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/GMATprep-SC.cfm
CR: http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/CR-assumption.cfm
RC: http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... estion.cfm
PS: http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm
DS: http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

RC reading:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... mp-passage
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/07/ ... rc-passage

SC process:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem
You may also want to look up other SC articles in the archives here:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/manhattan-gmat
http://www.manhattangmat.com/resources/

Learning from errors:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm

Educated guessing:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/08/ ... -on-verbal

Good luck with these - let us know if you have any questions.

[as2764]

wait ... did you take all five of these practice tests in december 2009? over how long a period of time?

just confirmed -- over a span of 3 months -- dates appended below
11/24/2009 Mgmat1 430 V09 Q49
11/29/2009 Mgmat2 610 V27 Q49
12/08/2009 Mgmat3 650 V32 Q48
12/26/2009 Mgmat4 600 V26 Q47
02/26/2010 Mgmat5 600 V29 Q45

taking lots and lots of practice tests will not make you any better at the material of the gmat, any more than running lots and lots of races will make you a faster runner -- in both cases, it's the TRAINING that you do between these events that matters.

are you learning GENERAL lessons from the problems? are you generalizing the things you learn into principles that could conceivably apply to other problems that don't look like the problems you studied on?

i was struggling with timing, so gave tests to improve. what do you suggest for an improvement tool? and what should be that training? mini-tests????

initially, i was following a destructive studying process. i tried solving as many problems as i could, thinking i would get an all-round picture of the test with a variety of problems -- unfortunately, i chose quantity over quality

reading is my fatal weakness - i can read words super fast but phrases (collection of words) burned me out and knocked me down.

does this happen in your native language as well? i.e., do you parse out the sentences word by word, or are you more able to process the entirety of the sentence?

if the answer is "no", then the issue is probably that you are too intent on trying to understand the exact details of the sentence, rather than trying to understand the meaning of the sentence.

fortunately, no. this problem happens only in reading English. in fact, i excel at interpreting (listening and speaking English) as i am a very patient listener. having studied in an Ivy league school with people from all parts of the world, i can decipher the verbal message of the best and poorest of English-speakers, and if required, correct and re-state the message -- great auditory processing abilities.

you nailed it! when it comes to reading, i try to decipher literal meanings of words, and due to this my vocabulary is near-perfect, with negligible spelling mistakes. for my GRE, i learned lots of words and so, i know meanings, pronunciations, and spellings very well (paid too much attention to letters). additionally, my time from college till date has been all technical reading. i love natural sciences passages, but get entangled in nomenclatures and definitions because engineers are taught to stop, memorize definitions and glossary of terms, and then move on. this happens in regular reading as well, and what i never did was get a bigger picture, i.e. read collective words (phrases/clauses) that could have bolstered my grammar in all these years.

your radio signal example may be the solution for my reading, but 'm afraid if this tactic would work for CR in which attention to detail is equally important.

...and, why would you take a practice test 2 days after your gmat administration? i can't think of any valid reason to do that.

since, i had asked GMAC for a revaluation of my scores, they wanted a valid reason to do so. in order to rule out the possibility that i freaked out during my GMAT exam, i gave a practice test to confirm the possibility of a technical glitch at the test-center.

in my opinion, after reading several posts of yours on BTG and here, there could be some psychological aspect, but appreciate what you infer from the data above since i have burned lot of money in test prep and materials already!

well -- you've definitely been spending too much time on practice tests. since you didn't mention *anything* about how you REVIEWED the tests, or STUDIED problems between the tests, i must assume that you gave these 2 tasks a lower priority than the practice tests themselves -- big mistake. those two tasks are where you're going to get 100% of your improvement (except in timing considerations).

reivews: i admit that until 3 months ago, i didn't review much after practice tests, except for Quant, because it was so time consuming (1-2 days of effort) given my work and i had time only on weekends.

studying between tests: i did study between tests, but not the test problems themselves.

for SC:
on EVERY problem of EVERY practice test
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY wrong answer choice is wrong? can you extend these findings to other sentences, or are you stuck too exclusively on this one sentence?
* can you explain EVERY construction in the correct sentence -- every modifier, every pronoun, every parallel structure, etc. -- including the non-underlined part?

having improved my grammar 3 months ago, my strategy for SC is:
1. make a list of all grammar, meaning, and concision errors in the question
2. if possible, determine the fix for them
3. look for those fixes in the ans choices and split them 3-2 or 1-2-2, etc
4. split, re-split till you nail the correct answer

- i can explain why a wrong SC answer is wrong using splits and apply the learned knowledge to similar scenarios. i use this confidence from the wrong answers to confirm the correct one (sort-of elimination).
- not every, but majority of them -- modifier, pronoun, parallel are favorites, but verb tense is sometimes puzzling

for CR and RC:
on EVERY problem of EVERY practice test
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY wrong answer choice is wrong? can you categorize these wrong answers into approximate "types" of wrong answers (e.g. wrong scope, too extreme, irrelevant subject material, etc.)?
* can you explain SPECIFICALLY why EVERY correct answer is correct?

again, in terms of what i learned in the last 3 months:
CR - i learned strategies from powerscore CR
RC - i follow your strategies from town hall videos

- CR, i can characterize wrong types as scope and extreme issues because i focus on the conclusion (if a premise happens, then a conclusion takes place). if an answer choice talks about half the story, it's incomplete and thus, wrong. for instance, in cause-effect types A -- leads to --> B, wrong answers would talk about what B leads to or what led to A, etc.

- i find assumption questions very daunting, because they can take me forever to extract the assumption. in S/W questions, a correct answer affects the plausibility of a conclusion, when present. surprisingly, i am better at identify the conclusion questions as i narrow my scope and think mathematically (i can find c = a+b only if the premise gives me the value of both, a and b, or that of a+b)

please note, i reviewed CR/RC less than i did Quant and SC.

the frequency with which you take practice tests suggests that you are doing very little review of those tests -- it suggests that you are just taking practice test after practice test after practice test. unfortunately, that is a strategy that will provide close to zero benefit -- especially if you are a naturally "detail oriented" person. (if you are more of a "big picture" person then it's possible that you could absorb some of the general strategies through sheer practice, but detail-oriented brains don't really work that way.)

i recall the memorization - vs - intuition model from a RC town hall video. i describe myself as being stuck between detail-oriented and BPReader. but what i do these days when i read is skip proper nouns, jargon (abbreviating them), and focus on sentence structure (grammar words) -- somewhat inverse of technical reading.

i have trouble w/ inference qns (re-phrasing and re-wording)

[as2764]

Analyzing a Practice Question Series:
At minimum, spend 2x as long reviewing a question as you spent doing it in the first place (even if you get it right). Most of the time, you'll spend 3x to 5x as long reviewing as doing, and sometimes longer.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

thanks Stacey! i recall reading the entire series, and was able to practice the strategies, but i was only 3-4 days away from the exam. i also read the 700 vs. 760+ scorer article to get a feel of the incline.

Learning from errors:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/error-log.cfm

this seems a lot of work as it reads, but i did create a log of a variety of problems both for Quant and Verbal, devising multiple techniques to solve a problem (i call it Plan A, B, C, D, E,..... etc. approach) and doing the 'recognition-response and memory recall' drill on some. the biggest challenge lies in recognizing your own errors. i mean the whole idea of b-school is to work in tandem, correcting errors. a person by himself can take forever to see those mistakes and be convinced, when another individual can expedite that process. as a naive example -- i can't imagine cutting my own hair or will probably take much longer than a barber at a saloon would.

another challenge was of the ego as it seemed belittling to make a log of your own mistakes and errors -- i guess i've overcome that now :)

Good luck with these - let us know if you have any questions.

one thing i can say with confidence that verbal has gotten tougher on the GMAT than has quant. and i feel that this is counter-intuitive as the %-ile scores for quant are relatively lower than verbal for a given section score, suggesting that the inverse should have happened.

i mentioned my previous study plan in my response above to Ron's post and i feel that i have exhausted on studying. also, i requested MGMAT HQ for online pvt tutoring from either you or Ron -- but both your schedules' are packed. guess i'll have to get coached in the forums itself.

--
Ashish

[StaceyKoprince]

This is the busiest time of year, yes - sorry about that. We do have lots of other good teachers, too. Ron and I aren't the only ones. (We all have to go through the same training and everything!) :)

Okay, for RC inference, the RC How to Analyze article I linked to last time was on an inference Q, so study that. And the CR article used an Assumption question, so study that one, too!

It sounds like Ron gave you some good advice about how to read and you need to keep going with that. You can also try the RC reading articles I linked to last time.

And, really, the big thing is going to be doing the analysis I talked about - dive in, start doing it, and come back here whenever you have questions about what you're doing!

[as2764]

Sounds like a plan!
I'll keep you posted here.

Thank you,
Ashish

[StaceyKoprince]

good luck!