GMAT abysmal 430 Score

[nakkad]

Dear Stacey,

I just took my 2nd official gmat exam and scored a 430. Q21, V27. I had taken it previously a couple of years ago and really didn't put that much effort in studying because of a high demanding job and got the same score.

What is heartbreaking this time around is that I really gave it my all, studied for 2 months straight and I still got this awful score. Here's a breakdown of how I studied and what I got on my practice exams. I scheduled to retake it in 5 weeks. The issue that I have is time is not on my side. I'm sending my applications, right after I finish my next exam so hopefully start in the fall, if I even were to get accepted with such a terrible score. But this last chance is it for me so I want to make sure I study right.

I used the Beat the Gmat 60 day study guide to help me get organized as well as their OG answer/time guide tracker. I always get 70% of the questions right. The issue that I have is with time. Some of the questions I do really well with time and others I go way over, anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes over the 2 minute mark. But when I go in and take the practice exams, I tell myself if I don't know it then I need to get it wrong faster. This strategy was working well with me.

I would study about 4 hours a day, reviewing the chapters of MGMAT then practicing OG questions while timing myself. When I first starting taking practice tests, I would skip the AWA and IR part and move on directly to quant and verbal but I knew since stamina was such a large part of the exam, I started taking the entire exam under official exam conditions. I would take a full length exam twice a week. Go over my mistakes in a day and move on to other chapters I didn't complete. And the week before my exam I took an exam everyday, which I'm not sure was the best approach. My cat exams have ranged from the following:

CAT 1: 540 Q36 V29
CAT 2: 530 Q37 V27
CAT 3: 520 Q28 V34
CAT 4: 540 Q34 V31
CAT 5: 530 Q36 V28
CAT 6: 480 Q30 V27
CAT 1A: 600 Q36 V35
CAT 2A: 58 Q38 V32

In addition to the mgmat cat exams I also took the gmat prep exams and a kaplan and princeton review exam and scored the following:

Gmat Prep 1: 550 Q38 V27
Gmat Prep 2: 590 Q41 V31

I know that seems like way many tests to take but I really wanted to get used to taking them so I don't panic on the actual test day which is exactly what I ended up doing unfortunately. I was fine during awa and ir. I took the minute break and kept reminding myself to stay with my time intervals and just get questions wrong faster that I didn't know. But I started making mistakes on questions I knew how to solve but wasn't finding the matching answers to so I would then go back and check my work to find the mistake which started taking time and before i knew it I was 5 questions behind. I knew it was a disaster but didn't a 21 score disaster. I regrouped before verbal and followed my time and question strategies as I previously followed on my practice exams. I have never scored a 430 on a practice exam so I'm so devastated this happened. My goal is crazy, I just want to get at least a 550. That's all! I thought it was going to be so doable but after the 430 disaster, I'm so scared that it's not going to happen and I no longer have time on my side. This is it for me. My last hoorah at the gmat and I HAVE to succeed.

Stacey, I just want to make sure I spend these next 5 weeks wisely but I don't know how to go about studying now. Should I review my practice exams more and figure out what I'm doing wrong? Should I just review the whole content all over again? Should I just keep timing myself on questions? What should I do?! I need your wonderful advise!! I've always been a horrible test taker my whole life but I excel in school and I know I can excel in a business program but I'm worried the gmat is going to prevent from getting into the school I want.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you had a rough test day. We need to try to figure out what happened so that we know what to do in order to remedy the situation.

Your Q and V subscores varied a lot from practice test to practice test. Why? On practice CAT 6, your score dropped to 480 and your quant score dropped a lot. Why?

Use this to help you figure it out:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ent-wrong/

And this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

On the real test, your quant score dropped in a huge way; your verbal score was on the lower end of your range (and it matched your score on the first GMATPrep). So the major issue seems to be quant, but there's still verbal work to do as well.

Did any of the score drops correspond to when you started doing essay + IR?

You almost certainly had timing issues on the real test, since you did before. It's not enough just to tell yourself to "let go faster" on the real thing - it's WAY harder than that, as you found out.

Tell me about those timing issues, using the above article to analyze your tests. Also tell me about your major strengths and weaknesses (in terms of both accuracy and timing, not just accuracy). Then we'll figure out what you need to do - but I suspect that the biggest thing is just going to be dealing with the timing overall.

These two articles will help you get the "mindset" down:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -to-do-it/

This is how you're actually going to fix that timing on a question-by-question basis:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... nt-part-1/

I have to warn you that it typically takes people about 4-6 weeks to fix these kinds of issues. I know you said you've only got about 5 weeks, so you'll have to do what you can do in the time you have. You're not going for a crazy high score, though, so you might be able to make it. :)

And the week before my exam I took an exam everyday, which I'm not sure was the best approach.

Here's reason #2 why your score probably dropped. Think of the test as a marathon. What would happen if you ran a practice marathon every day during the week before your real marathon? You'd completely tire yourself out. Next time, no practice tests within 5 days of the real thing. The day before, no more than 2 hours of study. The day before that, no more than 3-4 hours of study. Rest before the test. :)

Finally, I just want to ask you one thing: you said a few times that this was your last possible chance. Would it really be impossible for you to postpone for a year? I'm not suggesting that you have to, but is there some reason why you couldn't? If you put so much pressure on yourself, that's going to make it harder to perform well on test day. If it works out this year, that's great. If it doesn't, that's okay too - b-school will still be there next year. And if you're worried about what other people will think, all you need to say is that you decided it would be better for your career to wait until next year.

Again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't go for it this year. I just don't want you to think that there's no other possible time that you could go to b-school. Why place that much pressure on yourself?

[nakkad]

In terms of CAT 6, the reason I believe it dropped a lot is because when I got to the library to take the exam, the internet was down. So I had to go back home and take the exam there. I lost on so much time bc of driving, setting up, etc, so I just skipped the essay and IR section and went straight to quant and verbal. But there were so many distractions at home, my toddler running around with my mom was one of them.

I just evaluated my CAT 6 quant section since it was the lowest overall practice exam I got and this is what I came up with.

22 total wrong

5 questions I spent way too much time on and got them wrong anyway. time range 2:51 to 4:38 minutes. 2 of them 500-600 level (#9,#10). 2 of them 600-700 level (#20, #26). 1 of them 700-800 level (#2).

4 questions I spent way too much time on and got them right. time range 3:20 to 5:57 minutes. (ouch, I know!) 3 of them 500-600 level (#7,#22,#25). 1 of them 600-700 level (#16).

9 questions I spent way too little time on and got them wrong. These were also towards the very end. Time range 0:04 to 0:51 seconds. 2 of them 300-500 level (#14, #35), 4 of them 500-600 level (#21,#32,#34,#37). 3 of them 600-700 level (#27,#29,#33)

9 questions I got wrong within the timeframe. 2 of them were 500-600 level (#13,#31). 6 of them 600-700 level (#6,#8,#17,#24,#26,#30). 1 of them was 700-800 level (#4).

10 questions I got right within the timeframe. 3 of them 300-500 level (#1,#3,#11). 5 of them 500-600 level (#5,#15,#18,#19,#23). 2 of them 600-700 level (#12,#28).

I also wanted to show you the timing intervals I used to practice with and used on the actual exam.

Quant:
65-5
55-10
45-15
35-20
25-25
15-30
5-35

Verbal:
67-5
58-10
49-15
41-20
31-25
22-30
13-35
4-40

I like the verbal one more because I felt like it kept me on track. Would it be better for me if I used more time intervals for quant? For example something like this:

Quant

67-4
59-8
51-12
43-16
35-20
27-24
19-28
11-32
3-36

On the actual exam, I felt really good on the essay section. I'm honestly not sure how the IR section went. Every time I answer the IR section, I'm always surprised by my score. When I think I did well, I did terrible and vice versa. I took the 8 minute break, regrouped, then started quant.

I think timing was the biggest factor and because I lost track of time, panic came soon after, which I believe was the death of me. I started losing time on problems I thought I actually knew how to answer and then when I would solve them and look for the answer, it wasn't there. So I made some mistake somewhere in my solving, either careless mistakes, or approach mistakes, but because I've solved problems very similar to those over and over before and got them right, I was determined to figure it out, hence spending way too much time. I was about five questions behind midway through quant, and from there I just lost control of my nerves and started making carless mistakes and obviously not the best guesses.

I then took the 8 minute break again and I knew quant was bad but I felt bad like that before on my practice exams because I had some timing issues similar to that before and I ended up doing surprisingly well. So it wouldn't affect my verbal, I kept telling myself that was the case this time as well. So again, I regrouped and got ready for verbal.

Verbal, I thought was much harder on the actual gmat than the practice exams. I ran out of time and had to guess on the last three questions. I think, RC was the hardest for me. There was a long, very descriptive science passage, that I spent way too much time on. Also, I've realized I always seem to do much better on the verbal section when the RC passages appear earlier on in the exam. Every time they appear later towards the end of the section, I never seem do as well.

Quant in general, has always been my weakness and I've always been stronger in verbal. Even though I feel like my verbal score doesn't show that to be the case.

When I started studying for quant, I had to go back to the basics. Way back to the basics. So I really feel like I have the basics down. A lot of times, my biggest mistakes in quant problems that I know how to answer are careless mistakes such as I added when I should've multiplied, or I forgot to switch the inequality because I divided by a negative number. And these mistakes only seem to happen when I have a time limit.

For the past week, I've been reflecting on how I prepared and did on the actual exam, and I agree with you. I think I burnt myself out and put way to much pressure on myself. This is something I've wanted for a very long time and I kept telling myself that this is it for me. So I was a nervous wreck the day of the exam and then I was completely devastated for a couple days after the exam. In the end, I feel like all this unnecessary pressure I'm putting on myself is having the opposite effect on me and making me do worse. I've always done better on the practice exams because I wasn't nervous.

I'm now in the mindset, as you suggested, that I'm going to study the best I can with the time that I have, retake it, do the best that I can, apply, and just hope for the best. I keep telling myself there's only so much I can do, because I think I was applying way to much pressure before.

I just want to make sure that I spend these next weeks wisely, and that I study the right way because my previous approach obviously was not the best way.


I can't thank you enough Stacey! Please let me know the best way to proceed.

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, first thing: in your mind, don't split out the "way too long" right from wrong. They're all way too long and so they're all in the same "this is a problem" category.

In other words, you spent somewhere around 35 minutes (I'm using an average of the times you listed, so this may not be quite right) on 9 questions and got 4 right. Then you spent another 4.5 minutes (again, using an average of the times listed) and got 9 wrong.

Total, you spent about 40 minutes to get 4 questions right and 14 wrong.

I'm writing it this way because I want you to think, "Wow, I can't believe I did that! I have to change." :)

So now, given that you had severe timing problems, it's not such a surprise that your score also dropped on test day. For test 6, you were all stressed out - the library Internet wasn't working, your child was running around making noise - right? And guess what - at the real test, you were all stressed out, this time because you knew it counted.

Task #1: you must fix these timing problems. Otherwise, the same thing will happen in future, especially when you're stressed out. (And you'll always be at least a bit stressed out on test day because you'll always know that it counts.)

I would *not* use even shorter time intervals for quant, no. You don't literally need to hit 2 minutes for every question - your times should range from about 1 minute to about 2.5 minutes. You need some flexibility in order to make good decisions about where to spend your time.

What you do want to be able to do, though, is know that it's been about a minute since you started working on a problem. That will allow you to make a good decision about whether to keep going. By 1 minute in, you should have a certain amount accomplished: you should understand the problem, you should have an idea about a solution path and you should have started down that solution path. If those things aren't true, then it's time to switch to educated guessing (if possible), and then it's time to move on.

Use section 4 (developing a 1-minute time sense) of the long time management article that I gave you last time.

because I've solved problems very similar to those over and over before and got them right, I was determined to figure it out

Re-read the second of the two shorter time management articles I gave you last time. And then re-read the first one for good measure.

What you describe with RC may also be a function of timing. If your timing is off (too slow), then that's going to be even worse when RC appears later, because it takes time to read the passages. Plus it sounds like you spend too much time when you get very technical passages (this is not unusual - lots of people get sucked in). You need to learn what to read and also what NOT to read on RC.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... p-passage/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -passages/

Also, I just submitted another article on RC that hasn't posted on our blog yet - check this week (I'm not sure which day it will go up).

So, overall, timing is a major factor that needs to be fixed before you go in there again. You've got the resources that I have to give you on this topic - use them.

Stress is also a major factor. You burned yourself out in the time leading up to the test, and that never helps. You're always going to be at least a little nervous going into the test - it would be weird if you weren't. You're going to try for it this year but you can always decide to postpone to next year - so you really have nothing to lose this year.

I just got to the part where you mentioned making careless mistakes on quant. Read this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

Finally, take a look at the how to learn / how to study section of this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

That section describes what to do to learn how to get better at the actual problems themselves.

If you'd like to discuss your practice test results in more detail, then let me know what additional strengths and weaknesses you noticed from your test review and I can recommend more resources.

Oh, finally #2. I forgot to mention this last time. If you took our course or one of our Guided Self-Study packages, then you're eligible for a free Post-Exam Assessment (if you haven't done it already). This is a phone call with an instructor to figure out what went wrong and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment.

And of course check back in here to let us know how it's going!