GMAT Retake- Please help!

[finalgmat770]

Hi Stacey / Ron,

I need a bit of your urgent help here. I have written GMAT twice. The first time I wrote GMAT with a month's preparation, I scored a 680 (M 49. V 34)

However, since I was confident that I could definitely do better with a bit more effort (especially in Verbal- as my Quant was decent since I am from an Engineering background in India and I have always scored above 48 in all my tests)

So after about 5 months, I restarted my prep for GMAT. I completed thoroughly the MGMAT SC Guide, OG 10, OG 11 and 12, and about 300 questions each of the 1000 SC/CR/RC documents.

Post completion of the above, I gave some practice tests, and scored as follows:

MGMAT CAT 1: 680
MGMAT CAT 2: 690
MGMAT CAT 3: 720
MGMAT CAT 4: 750
MGMAT CAT 5: 750
MGMAT CAT 6: 760

Sorry, I didnt note the breakup separately, but I can safely say that all the M scores in the above tests ranged between 49-51 and the Verbal scores were mostly in late 30's.

In the midst, I also wrote the Kaplan diagnostic and scored a 700 on it.

Resuming with the tests, I scored the following in the GMAT Preps that I gave:

GMAT Prep 1: 720
GMAT Prep 1 repeat: 740
GMAT Prep 2: 690
GMAT Prep 2 repeat: 710

Two days before the actual GMAT, I retook GMAT Prep 1 and scored a 750 on it.

Fairly confident of crossing the 700 mark, I appeared on the GMAT. And guess what.

I scored a 660 (M 49, V 30). 20 marks below my first score.

Needless to explain the dejection I feel at this point of time, not just because of the low score, but also because of the (supposedly LAST) chance that I lost.

Since I want to apply to some top B schools (including Indian School of Business in India- which typically admits an average of 710+ GMAT scorers), I strongly feel like taking another chance with GMAT (as I'm confident I CAN do a lot better, today was just a bad day :( )

I would like to know whether I should decide in favor of retaking the GMAT a third time and what considerations should I assess while deciding upon it? Also, does a third retake work against the application (despite of better scores in the third attempt?)

Please advice, as I am in a great confusion and a bit upset :(

Thanks very much.

[upendra549]

Hi Ron,

My story is also bit the same, but I got a horrible score. I don't know why? Last time when I wrote GMAT, I got 660 (M 50, V 29). So I thought I can do much better in verbal. I studied hard for the past 4 months slogging day and night just to make sure that i am thorough in all verbal concepts. I practiced my SC, RC AND CR with time limits. I wrote on all prep tests very well. Then on Aug 8th I gave my second attempt. The GMAT test very well, verbal part was especially very satisfying experience this time and therefore i was expecting 700+, but to my utter disbelief, I got 610 in GMAT( M 49, V 25). I am just not able to digest it. I am shocked and devastated.

My practice scores of MGMAT after the 1st cat never came below 700 with the maximum of 740. I never got my verbal score below 35 in any of the practice test. Just to make sure, that I was on right path I even wrote Princeton review, veritas, and knewton free mock cats. In all of these tests I got more than 35 in verbal. Even scores in my GMAT preps were 730 and 720. I did og12, OG 11 and OG10. I also did Kaplan verbal work book. I kept an error log and revised it every week diligently. I went through Manhattan GMAT and Beatthegmat forums for all concepts in verbal especially by you. I went through all your "Thursdays with RON sessions" taking appropriate notes and re reading them to make sure that I mastered them. But a score of 25 in verbal doesn’t justify the tremendous amount of hard work that I had put in. If some body questions my verbal concepts I am confident that I can answer them.

For maths I just prepared 15 days and got 49, but for verbal I prepared for about 4 months and got 25. I had a strategy for every type of question related to CR and RC. For SC, also I had my strategies built in. I am really really shocked. I have no words to speak.

Please advise my as to what should I do, I want to apply to the best B schools in India (only because of family and financial constraints), Shall I take my GMAT exam again. I am confident that i will get good score this time as I also think that I just had a bad day. I want to apply for 2012 ISB batch, so I have to write in another 1 month, as I have other family commitments after that time frame and second round deadline of ISB ends on November 30th 2011. But want to know how to approach this time as I have no idea as to what went wrong? Do you teach verbal (only) for international students? Please let me know if you do, I would love to join such a course especially if it is from you.

Please help me! I require your help desperately.

Thanks and Regards,
Upendra

[finalgmat770]

Appreciate your response to my query....

[finalgmat770]

I need to take a retake decision ASAP...mgmat instuctors, please help.

[StaceyKoprince]

Oh, no! In future, please don't "bump" your own posts unless you have new info to add! We answer every single post and we do so oldest first. The time stamp on a thread is based on the most recent post - so all you do when you "bump" your post is put yourself later in line.

We've been short-staffed this month, but I started answering a bunch of posts on 21 Aug (and later). You would have gotten a reply several days ago, but you bumped your own thread from 9 Aug to 22 Aug by replying, putting you much further back in the queue. :(

Finally, UPENDRA, please start your own thread. Each student gets a separate thread for each individual "case."

I'm not as familiar with how the schools in India work. In the US, schools don't care if you take it up to 3 times; after that, sometimes they view it as a negative (depends upon the school).

It's important for us to try to figure out what went wrong on that last test. I'm worried that your practice test scores may have been inflated. You don't mention the timeframe in which you took your 6 MGMAT practice tests, but it kind of sounds like you took them in a short period of time. Was that the case? In particular, your scores on the last 4 are pretty similar... and that might have been one thing that led to artificial inflation.

Basically, the tests aren't designed to take a bunch in a row all right in the same scoring level - the assumption is that they'll be spread over time and you'll be getting better as you go. If you take 4+ tests all at the same level, you're in danger of running out of questions at your level in certain categories, so the test will then have to give you higher or lower level questions instead. Except if you run out of 700-800 questions, there aren't harder ones... so you'll only end up getting easier replacement questions, but the test will still give you credit as though you're getting harder ones... and your score is artificially inflated.

Also, did you take the tests under 100% official conditions, including the essays? If you skipped the essays, took longer breaks than allowed, etc - then your score also could have been inflated from that.

Next, do you ANY timing issues at all? Note: you can finish a section on time and yet still have significant timing issues. Use the below article to analyze an MGMAT test, but don't use the last couple, just in case you were getting easier questions than you should have. Let us know if you discover any timing issues.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... tudy-plan/

People with timing issues might be okay on practice tests but might have more significant issues during the real test.

Finally, how did you feel about the test yourself? Did the verbal feel harder? Strange in any way? Were you feeling fatigued? When did you take all of these practice tests? You mention that you took a practice test two days before the real test. That leads to mental fatigue as well - I recommend not taking a practice test for the last 5 days before the real test.

Take a look at this article; could this have been happening to you?
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/08/ ... -you-crazy

You may have really fatigued yourself too much in the few days leading up to the test. Let me know what you think about all of this!