GMAT bombed after good Mock scores :(

[shankar245]

Hi stacey,


So here i go , I wrote my Gmat yesterday and scored a dismal 580 ( 47 Q , 23 V)

2 days prior to the exam my scores were
GMAT PREP 710 - Q 49 V 38
A week back MGMATY 690 Q 44 V 39

I have got all the MGMAT guides, Advacned gmat qaunt


I'm shocked to see the score. I certainly know some thing is wrong but im not sure where it is.
Is it my content knowledge or do I lack basic verbal skills?


Can you please help me with this? I know I have provided very little information but really I really do not have either :(


How can mock exams misguide me close to 120 points? Are they by nature designed that way?



Brief description of the Real Gmat Exam:

Quants went well and kind of breezed through

Verbal was tough . I felt it tough even for the score of 23 esp Sentence correction . It was so confusing and energy demanding

and I had to spend a lot of time to get through SC's.

Please let me know . I need to improve and atelast score a 680 to get into my desired b-schools!

I need to know where I;m lagging to improve the weak areas!

Thanks and waiting for your valuable inputs

[StaceyKoprince]

Sorry you had a bad test day. :(

No, the practice exams aren't designed to give you higher scores than you're really capable of getting. That would leave us with lots of very unhappy customers.

There are several reasons why scores can drop on test day. Timing is probably the most common culprit - it's possible that you have timing problems. (Well, actually, almost everyone does have timing problems to some degree, so you almost certainly do too - but you might have serious timing problems.)

You also mention feeling like verbal was very tough and confusing and you felt drained of energy. That means there was likely a problem with mental stamina. Were you taking your practice tests under 100% official conditions, including essays, length of breaks, etc?

Read this article: when it describes mental fatigue, does any of that sound familiar to you? Did you experience that on test day?
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... you-crazy/

You mention SC in particular. Over the past year or so, they have been increasing the emphasis on testing meaning as well as grammar (they announced this last fall). Did you study meaning or did you mostly concentrate on grammar? If you weren't adequately prepared for meaning issues, then you likely would've felt like you were sometimes narrowing down to 2 or 3 answers and then couldn't tell what to do from there. Maybe 2 answers both seemed fine (even though they were different).

Also, as a side effect of the meaning issue, a greater proportion of questions now will have longer underlines and will have larger "chunks" of the sentence moving around or changing. Did you feel like this was the case for you? If so, did you have a technique for handling these more complex sentence structures?

Here are some resources on meaning (you can browse our blog for more):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... orrection/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... on-part-2/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... h-meaning/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... problem-2/

And here are some resources on long underline / chunks of sentence changing questions:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... sc-problem
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... -problem-2

[shankar245]

Well,
Have you ever experienced the "panic stare?" That’s when you stare at a problem for way too long without really doing anything besides thinking that you don’t know what to do

Here it is the culprit . Yes , I was just staring thinking what to do whether I should move to the next question or should I make an guess here and I guess I would have lost valuable time in that itself!

The problem with Verbal is that it's like an avalanche You screw SC CR also gets screwed unless you are super confident in CR.

I think this is what happened to me I screwed up SC and CR as well totally pulling me down.

The surprising factor is that during mock exams I literally ran thru CR's with an 80% accuracy and SC close 75% accuracy , yielding a 39 in verbal.


So stacey I think i should be doing this.please correct me if im wrong!

1) I have exhausted the valuable MGMAT CATS. So I do not have a tool to evaluate .

2) I'm going to practice more SC based on meanings parallel y practicing CR and RC .

3) Improve my timing.

Please let me know if I need to be doing anything to set things right!

Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay, so nerves got to you a bit. Mental fatigue may also have been a factor, so make sure to work on mental stamina.
1. Take practice tests under 100% official conditions, including essays or essay/IR, length of breaks, etc.
2. During study sessions, figure out what you're going to do for an entire 2 hour period. Then GO for 1 hour, no breaks, no checking email, NOTHING. Take a 10-min break, then GO again for 1 more hour. After that, take a substantial break (at least an hour).

Note: people sometimes ask whether they should study in 3.5 or 4h blocks to mimic the length of the test. No, definitely don't do that. When you're studying, you're trying to both recall old memories and create new ones. When you're taking a test, you're only trying to recall old memories. It's more mentally draining to try to create new memories - so if you do that for 3.5 to 4 hours straight, you're not going to remember as much or as well.

I agree that you need to study SC meaning if that was a lack in your previous preparation (without forgetting about CR and RC). So, yes, do that.

Re: practice tests, you can use other tests- GMATPrep, 800 Score, etc.

Also, leave ours alone for a while - don't even study the questions. Then you can take them again once you've forgotten most of the questions.