Frustrated with my Verbal Score

[vkar]

Hello Everyone,

I took my GMAT exam a week ago and i am completely frustrated with my verbal score.

I have been practising for almost a month and half putting in atleast 4 hours of study time daily. The overall study experience was quite draining but at the same time Verbal part was a sweet spot until the real GMAT. I don't understand what actually went wrong in the actual exam. In terms of study material i used Mgmat Sentence correction guide and Powerprep for CR. I was always good at RC and overall i used to get around 3 questions wrong for the entire RCs session. I practised 11 CAT tests and the scores averaged 700 including verbal around 38. The CAT tests were taken at home at the same time as the real GMAT complete from AWA to Verbal. The only tests i retook were Mgmat tests after almost 3 years and GMATprep in July 2015. Though i have paused sometimes on quant i didn't do the same in the verbal section on any of the CAT tests.

Except for some revisions i didn't study the last 3 days before the exam. I should say as well that i didn't sleep well the night before the exam however, i was fresh to ready to take the GMAT next day. I wasn't blocked or tired during the verbal session in the actual test but i did feel that questions weren't tough enough as i used to encounter.

VERBAL CAT SCORES :
MGMAT from CAT 1 to CAT 6 : 40 ; 37 ; 40 ; 39 ; 37 ; 45
GMAT prep CAT 1 to CAT 2 : 38; 34 (34-because i had to hurry up for last 4 questions and got all of them wrong)
Economist Free CAT : 35
GMAT pill Free CAT : 39
Veritas Free CAT : 31 (Same as gmat prep CAT 2 where the last 3 questions were from RC and had to rush through)

Verbal GMAT score : 20

I want to nail the GMAT and my aim is to score in 700 score range. I have planned to give myself enough time to level up my verbal and take the test in January 2016. I am bit lost as i don't know where i should start from. Any suggestions would be very helpful to me.

Thank you.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you had a disappointing test experience. Let's try to figure out what went wrong.

but i did feel that questions weren't tough enough as i used to encounter.

As we know from your score, you were right: they weren't that tough. But you thought they were easier and yet you must still have been getting them wrong, since your score didn't lift. One common cause for this is mental fatigue.

Mental fatigue doesn't feel like physical fatigue. (In fact, your adrenaline can be pumping even when you're experiencing mental fatigue.) And mental fatigue often isn't noticeable as such - basically, the more fatigued you are, the harder it is to realize it, because your brain is too tired to recognize the fatigue!

Some symptoms:
- You feel like you "don't care" anymore (or you don't care as much as you usually do). You answer questions more quickly than usual, without your usual thought. Or you start skipping steps in your process - eg, not writing down ABCDE and crossing off the answers as you go.
- The flip side can occur too: you feel like you can't make a decision and you keep agonizing over everything
- You find it hard to concentrate. You keep getting distracted by other thoughts, possibly related to the last question, possibly unrelated to the test at all. You read something and then realize that you weren't really paying attention and you have to read it again.
- You start getting sloppy (this is the hardest one of all to realize you're doing). You read something and then suddenly realize that you skipped right over the word "not" and that changes the entire meaning of the sentence! (But if you don't realize it, then you just make a careless mistake, thinking that you were right.) You meant to pick B but you actually pick C. You eliminated D but then find yourself re-examining it because you forgot that you eliminated it.

Did anything like this occur?

Next, you may want to consider ordering the Enhanced Score Report (ESR). It costs $25 and it doesn't have a ton of useful info, but it would at least let you know whether your performance dropped on all 3 V question types or whether 1 or 2 areas really hurt you most. It also show you your average timing, so you might be able to see if you were rushing on certain types. (Did you use the full time? Did you finish more than a few minutes early?)

Here's more on the ESR; if you do order it, tell me the data:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... re-report/

[vkar]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you for the feedback.

Some symptoms:
- You feel like you "don't care" anymore (or you don't care as much as you usually do). You answer questions more quickly than usual, without your usual thought. Or you start skipping steps in your process - eg, not writing down ABCDE and crossing off the answers as you go.

I think i got sloppy and answered the questions more quickly than usual as you point out.
I started to skip the usual steps in SC as i used to follow (vertical skimming, spot the error, POE, insert answer back to question, select answer) . I believe i stopped at the correct sounding answer rather than going though elimination process for each choices. This made me to pick answer which wasn't correct. I don't know if i can attribute it to mental fatigue as i took 11 CAT tests to prepare myself for the test day.

In CR i mentally worked out the given information rather than writing it down on scratch paper before eliminating and picking the correct answer choice.

In RC, i was confident as i used to do very well whatever the passage i was put through. Even the mock test scores were quite consistent across verbal, that makes my case a unique, unable to correlate with the actual test results and the mock CATs.

The flip side can occur too: you feel like you can't make a decision and you keep agonizing over everything
Did anything like this occur?

No i don't think so. The verbal bit was as normal as a mock test i used to take. I didn't get blocked over any part during the test but before i could realise that questions weren't as tough as it used to be i was half way through the verbal.

Next, you may want to consider ordering the Enhanced Score Report (ESR). It costs $25 and it doesn't have a ton of useful info, but it would at least let you know whether your performance dropped on all 3 V question types or whether 1 or 2 areas really hurt you most. It also show you your average timing, so you might be able to see if you were rushing on certain types. (Did you use the full time? Did you finish more than a few minutes early?)

As you could notice the drop is through all the 3 parts with SC being the worst.
SC - 17% with mean response time of 1.63 sec
RC - 33% with mean response time of 1.73 sec
CR - 33% with mean response time of 1.73 sec

From timing point of view, i used the full time to finish the test except for quant wherein i had to rush for the last 3 questions.

Given the scenario any suggestions as how to proceed from here would be very useful. I have started again with the MGMAT SC guide and also thinking about online computer course material that would help me overcome the usual book style preparation. This will entail me to prepare, to understand and to apply the concepts using a computer interface thereby improving my concentration and avoiding any sloppiness.

[StaceyKoprince]

I don't know if i can attribute it to mental fatigue as i took 11 CAT tests to prepare myself for the test day.

That doesn't mean you weren't feeling mental fatigue on test day. Some people run many marathons, and yet any runner is still physically exhausted when each marathon is over.

Getting "sloppy" in your process is indeed a sign of mental fatigue. That could be from simply doing too much in the couple of days before the test. It could be from having too much nervous energy before and during the test. It could be from taking the test in a way that actually tires you out (eg, continuing to push on really hard quant and IR questions that you should let go - so that you're tired out by the time you get to verbal).

In your first post, you mentioned that you took 11 CATs...and you also said, separately, that you'd been studying for "almost a month and a half." Did you take those 11 CATs in that approximately 6-week-long period?

That's a huge volume of CATs. I wouldn't recommend that someone take 11 CATs even over a 6 month period. So I'm worried that you really did mentally fatigue yourself in a big way. That would have affected your ability to make good memories, as well - when we're fatigued, our brains don't solidify / codify the memories as well, so when you try to retrieve the information, you don't remember as accurately. That can really mess up your test performance.

Also in your first post, you mentioned pausing sometimes on quant (on practice tests). Did you do this in order to continue working on the problem? If so, that indicates a tendency to be unable to let go when you should let go - and if you were doing that on the real test, then you would have tired yourself out more by the time you got to the last section, verbal. That would have made verbal even harder to handle.

So what I suspect here is that we need to have a major mindset shift. Your goal is not to take a million tests or do a million practice problems in order to get ready for the test. Your goal is to learn how to think your way through the entire test in a way that allows you to make good decisions about how best to spend your two scarce resources: your time and your mental energy.

Start with this:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
And this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Think about what implications that has for how you approach both your studies and a testing situation.

Then look at this:
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

How do your studies match up with what that article describes? What do you need to change (if anything) going forward?

It's possible that you might need this too:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/07/ ... s-say-what

I've found that "over-studiers" are prone to studying one thing exclusively for a long time / multiple study sessions - and that's a less effective way to study.

If you'd like to get some more specific feedback on question types and content areas, then use the below to analyze your most recent MPrep CATs (this should take you a minimum of 1 hour):
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Based on everything above, figure out your strengths and weaknesses as well as any ideas you have for what you think you should do. Then come back here and tell us; we'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Your analysis should include a discussion of your buckets - you'll understand what that means when you read the last article. 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!)