From 530 to 630 in 3 weeks. Should I try once more?

[amm.c]

Hello!

I took GMAT yesterday and scored 630 (Q48 V28). My first attempt GMAT score is 530 (Q47, Q17) taken last month. I was quite satisfied with the +100 in a short period. Right now I'm thinking whether I should give it one more time. Maybe there's a chance to reach 700.

My second attempt was full of stress and anxiety. I planned to score about 48-50 in quantitative because quan is always my strong point. Verbal is my weakness and I have no idea whether I will screw this past as I did last time. What happened during the test time was a disaster. The first three questions were so easy that I could finish them 100% correct within 2 minutes. After that came a nightmare, GMAT threw me several questions of the topic I'm not good at e.g. Statistics, Divisibility and prime and consecutive integer, etc.. I was under stressed and frankly speaking I couldn't do any of them especially DS. At that time I started to think about retaking once more. Since quan has always been my strong point, not being able to do it well was so devastated. I lost my confidence question after question and ended up not having enough time to finish the last 5 questions (I guessed all of them)

During the 8-minute break, I went to the toilet and tried to calm myself. Of course it didn't work. Generally I panic easily so when it comes to this kind of situation, I'm completely lost. I started to think about cancelling my score ( I wasn't exaggerated, at that time I thought I might score on 3x something on quan ). Anyway, I went back and started the verbal part. Because I was already freak out about my quan, I wasn't concentrate in solving verbal problems that much. I thought since I'm gonna retake it once more, just get it done and go home. I know this is really bad but I was so devastated at that time and didn't have any drive to do the verbal part. For some CR question, I picked the answer without reading all the answers. (For example, I read A B and C and felt like C maybe correct, I picked it without reading D and E). I think I did best in SC (Thanks e-gmat for that!). Anyway, the point was I didn't concentrate enough because I thought I screwed the quan part so there's no way for me to get more than 600.

I finished verbal in time and started again to think whether I should cancel my score. In the end, I was like it's better to know and be disappointed than not to know and always wonder. I covered my eyes with my hand at first. When I saw the score I was so SHOCKED! I mean how the hell I scored quan this high! Even higher than the last time and the point was I thought I screwed the entire part! Verbal was as expected since I didn't concentrate enough. ( If I concentrated on it more, I guess I could get 30-32)

Now I'm not sure whether I should give it a third attempt but 630 is quite enough for me to apply for the school I want. I just got a feeling that there might be a chance to improve my verbal and reach 680-700 score.


Please let me know what you think! Thank you!






P.S.

-My MGMAT CAT score is around 680-700, 44-48 in Quant (MGMAT Quant is difficult but a good practice!) and 35-38 in Verbal. I took all the CATs after my first attempt.

- Regarding my poor 530 score, My time management was so bad that I couldn't finish both quan and verbal part in time. I had to guess the last 10 questions in quan and to be worse, 20 in verbal (OMG! I have never guess this many in my entire life!)

[nt2011]

Congratulations! on your impressive performance in lifting your score in such a short time. I was trying to improve my score from 530 but my 2nd attempt failed miserably and ended up with 560. I like to know more details about your study plan for the mentioned 3 week window.

[amm.c]

Congratulations! on your impressive performance in lifting your score in such a short time. I was trying to improve my score from 530 but my 2nd attempt failed miserably and ended up with 560. I like to know more details about your study plan for the mentioned 3 week window.

Thank you nt2011 and I apologized for my late reply.
Regarding my 3-week study (I took one week off after my first attempt), I decided to buy the e-gmat course as suggested by many members in the gmatclub and beatthegmat board. I found this course very useful especially the SC part. Also, I read the Manhattan Gmat Sentence Correction once again to gain a full understanding of many issues such as modifier, parallelism, etc.. For quant, I didn't practice anything much, just did the MGMAT CAT. Personally, I think MGMAT CAT is a very good practice :)

Now I'm still thinking whether I should retake once more, I think there is still a possibility for me to improve my verbal.

[StaceyKoprince]

Wow - that's fantastic, congratulations! It's very unusual to improve that much in such a short amount of time.

I'll warn you that it's a lot harder to go from 630 to 700 than from 530 to 630. The higher you go, the harder it gets.

Even given all of that stress on quant, you still hit 48 - and you had to guess on the last 5. So if you can fix your timing and stress issues, you do have a good shot to push that score higher. A word of warning: the better you do, the harder the test feels. So you should *expect* and actually *want* to get things that are too hard for you. The right response is not to get stressed out, but to say "Yay, I'm doing really well! Okay, what am I going to guess on this super-hard question?"

Re: your stress, etc, read these (the first one is also for time management mindset in general):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/

Now, what happened on quant actually helped you on verbal - you didn't stress yourself out much and so you were actually able to perform better than the first time (even though you were being lax about some things).

Should you take it again? Given what you've managed to achieve so far, I agree that you probably do have a shot at lifting your score further - though again if you want to aim for 700, you should expect to take more than a month this time.

But I'll also say... there are a lot of ways you could be spending your time. Is there any real value to going for a higher score? It sounds like the score will be fine for where you plan to apply. Unless there's some other reason why you think a higher score would be valuable (scholarship? internship?), you may just want to be very happy and go spend your valuable time doing other things. :)

My MGMAT CAT score is around 680-700, 44-48 in Quant (MGMAT Quant is difficult but a good practice!) and 35-38 in Verbal.

Did you take these under 100% official conditions, including essay and IR? Did you take longer breaks than allowed, eat or drink during the test, use the pause button - basically anything that wouldn't be allowed on the real test?

If so, those things could have artificially inflated your practice test scores. In particular, a lot of people skip essay + IR, or do them but with less energy / attention / focus than they use on the real test - and that leaves you more mentally alert for Q and V, so those scores can go up (especially V, which is the last section).

[StaceyKoprince]

nt2011, probably the biggest factor in the score jump here was the timing issues. amm.c had to guess on 20 verbal questions (half the questions!) on the first test, but actually finished the section the second time around. That alone (fixing the timing) would lead to a major score bump in this case.

amm.c, that's also another reason why it will be harder to keep going even higher - you've already tackled the major piece of "low hanging fruit."

[nt2011]

Thanks Stacy. I presumed timing might have contributed to the big lift. I'm in the similar boat with huge timing issues. My 1st attempt GMAT was 530 (v20, Q43) and my 2nd attempt GMAT was 560 (v25, Q42). In my 1st attempt, I had huge timing issues and ended up guessing at least 5 questions at the end in each section. In my 2nd attempt, I was focused so much on timing issues that I guessed when I crossed the 2 min. mark. Thinking back and looking at the score, I ended up guessing even the lower level questions and that may have resulted in a slippery slope scenario. This time I'm re-focusing on fundamentals, strategy and timing in the mentioned other.
Would you advise whether my priorities for the new study plan are right.

[StaceyKoprince]

nt2011, I'll give you a quick reply here, but please start your own thread to discuss your case separately. I want each student to have his/her own thread so that I can follow each case clearly and provide the best advice!

It often happens that people swing too far in the opposite direction on timing and end up cutting themselves off too quickly, leaving points on the table. It sounds like this might be what you did in your second attempt. Have you already read my time management articles?

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

If not, start doing what they say, today.

Overall, yes, you have to prioritize fundamentals, strategy, and timing - everyone does. :) All three are equally important for your performance.

If you'd like to have a more in-depth discussion, use the below to analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Then start a new thread and tell us the results of your analysis and what you think you should do based on that analysis. We'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results - figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)