Concerned : 590 to 610 after 4.5 months of prep!!

[SESHANV73]

Hi,

I had taken my first MGMAT Practice test (through my free account) around 4.5 months back without any preparation. The result was as follows:
IR - 3.8
Quant - 44
Verbal - 29
Total - 590

I took the same Practice test today (through my GMAT Interact account) after completing all of of my GMAT Interact course work (videos/practice/strategy guides etc). And I have received almost the same score on my second attempt as well. The score is as follows:

IR - 3.1
Quant - 45
Verbal - 30
Total - 610

I intend to take the GMAT within the next 3 months or so and I am targeting an overall score of 700+. Looking at my score today, I am really concerned about my level of preparation considering the time and the efforts that I have put in. Request guidance on where I am going wrong and what I need to do from now till my GMAT to achieve my Goal score.

Thank you for your time and appreciate your guidance in advance!

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Thanks for checking in on your progress.

It's not unusual for people to see about the same score on their second practice test. Often, this is what happens: The first time, you knew you didn't know various things and so you were willing to just let them go. The second time, you do know more...but that tempts you to hang on too long when you really should have let go. And that increases the risk that you mess up your time management, possibly enough that it lowers your score.

(Just a note for anyone else who is reading this and may be confused by what I'm about to say: This student didn't actually take the same test a second time. Because the GMAT is an adaptive test, every single test is different. So taking the "first" test in two different accounts is not the same as taking the same test. In fact, all of our tests pull from the same big database of questions. Once you've been given a certain problem, that problem just isn't allowed to be chosen again for future tests—as long as you're using the same account. And actually, SESHANV73, that's a good reason to keep your tests to just one account. If you use a different account, the system won't know which problems you already saw in your other account.)

Anyway, back to test data. Do three things:
(1) In your second practice test, pull up the problem list. The very last column shows your scoring trajectory throughout the exam—basically, what your current score was after you answered each question. Where does that score peak? The GMAT is a "where you end is what you get" test. Your score isn't an average across the section...literally, where you end is what you get. So how much greater (if at all) was your peak compared to where you ended the section? And, at your peak score, were you ahead of time, on time, or behind on time?

A lot of times, I'll see something like this: Someone peaked at a score of 48 on quant question #21, but they were 5 minutes behind on time. They had to rush later in the section (and were also getting mentally fatigued) and their score dropped to 44 (or lower...) by the end of the section. Then, when I go and look at the pre-#21 questions where the person spent the most time, I can find 2 or 3 questions on which they went 1+ minutes over the average time for that type...and got them wrong anyway (in other words, it didn't help their score). If they had recognized that those questions were bad questions and moved on faster...they would have had time to finish the section under normal timing conditions. That doesn't guarantee that they'd have maintained the higher score all the way to the end of the section, but it definitely improves your odds.

Did anything like that happen in either section? If so, you have made progress...but you haven't yet learned what you need to do in order to maintain that score all the way to the end of the section. So that's the next thing to work on—time management, decision-making, when to bail on a problem, and so on.

(2) In each section, count up the number of questions you earned in each difficulty bucket level. Compare that to the number of questions earned at each difficulty level on your first test. Did you earn more questions that were ranked at a higher level? If so, this also indicates that you did make progress—you literally earned harder questions the second time—but again, something went wrong somewhere with your pacing or mental fatigue or something that caused your score to drop before you got to the end of the section.

(3) In general, just review your timing data. Are you noticing any trends like "when I spent more than X minutes, I was more likely to get the problem wrong..." or "I tried to work quickly on these questions that I thought were easier...and then I made some careless mistakes..."?

I also highly recommend doing the full test review process that is assigned in your syllabus—make a copy of the Google Sheets file and follow all of the steps to analyze everything. It will take you 2-3 hours per section of the exam, but it's really worth it to understand what's going on and determine what skills you need to improve before you take your next practice test, including things like time management (not just the content).

Tell us what you're seeing in your analysis and we'll figure out the next steps from there!

[SESHANV73]

Thank you so much for the detailed reply and helping me with the way forward. As you rightly mentioned, I did mess up on time management in Verbal specifically. Will give this test a detailed review and come back to you for further inputs. Thanks again. Feel much more confident now. Cheers!!

[StaceyKoprince]

Great! Let us know what you figure out from your test analysis. Good luck!