Came back from test today - need score suggestion...

[weishao]

Came back from test today and got a 640. Quant 48 and Verbal 29. I was surprised at how the math didnt have any probability/comb questions and also didnt have many geometry questions either. I actually thought i did well on verbal until i saw my score. Obviously 640 is not a score i want to have and it is also obvious i need to improve my Verbal a lot more than my quant. My question for the experts is this - what kind of verbal score would i need to get ~700 if my quant stays the same ~48? do i need mid 35s or more like a 40?

thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

With a Q48, you'd probably need about V38 or V39 to hit 700. So pretty darn close to 40. It'd be more reasonable to try to improve quant a bit too so that you don't have to do everything with verbal alone.

Was your score about what you expected based on your practice tests? Or was your score lower than what you expected? If significantly lower than your practice tests, read this article and do the analysis described to try to figure out what happened:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26/my-score-dropped-figuring-out-what-went-wrong

[weishao]

Was your score about what you expected based on your practice tests? Or was your score lower than what you expected? If significantly lower than your practice tests, read this article and do the analysis described to try to figure out what happened:

I actually took 5 of the MGMAT CATs and i got 46-48 Quant and 30-34 verbal. I actually find the math from MGMAT CATs more difficult/annoying. I think i was in "perfect shape" - took breaks whenever i can - just strolling around or whatnot. Drank energy drink before test and no crash at all. I actually felt so confident about verbal i had about 10 mins left that is with double checking verbal answers and re-reading passages...

About the higher quant goals - i think 53 is the highest - how many questions would i need to get it right to get a high quant like that? My 48 is actually 83% so there's definitely room for improvement...

[StaceyKoprince]

Quant usually maxes out at 51 (99th percentile). There isn't a set number of questions you need to get right - the score is based on the difficulty levels of the questions and the specific mix in which you get them right / wrong. (eg, if you get the last few in a row wrong, you won't hit 99th percentile.)

To hit the 99th percentile in quant, you probably need to get 80+ percent of the questions right (though we don't know for sure, as that info is not published by the people who make the test).

You mentioned having a lot of time left over on the verbal even after double-checking answers. If you have 10 minutes left over, you're still moving too quickly, even if you did have time to double-check everything. You're not double-checking thoroughly enough or working systematically enough or something - if you have 10m left and you aren't getting the score you want.

When you study, how much time do you spend analyzing problems after you've already tried to do them? Generally speaking, that's where most of your learning occurs - in the analysis afterwards. If you're not spending at least twice as much time analyzing, then you're not spending enough time really learning what's going on.

Here's an article that can help with that:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09/how-to-analyze-a-practice-problem

So, you need to do more work on verbal, yes, but you also need to do some work on quant. If you can lift your quant to, say, the 90th percentile, that takes some of the pressure off of the verbal (though, obviously, you still do need significant improvement on the verbal).