Gmat Retake

[JuanA115]

I wanted to ask your opinion about a GMAT retake in one month, particularly to Ron or Stacy, since I´ve been reading all your comments and I think they were a valuable part of my preparation.

I´ve been studying for the GMAT for 5 months. My scores in the gmat prep were:
GMAT Prep 1 new version: 680 (Q 47, V 35) - left 5 Q questions unanswered
GMAT Prep 1 new verison (retake): 710 (Q 48, V 39)
GMAT Prep 2 new verison: 730 (Q 48, V 42)
GMAT Prep 1 old version: 760 (Q 50, V 42) - I´ve remembered seeing 3 verbal questions
GMAT Prep 2 old verison: 760 (Q 50, V 44) - I´ve remembered seeing 2 verbal questions

Real GMAT: 650 (Q49, V30)

I was really surprised by this score, particularly because during the exam I thought I was doing quite awful in math, but extremely well in verbal. Particularly, I´ve never had been that calm during verbal and finished the exam with 13 minutes left on the clock. I was that surprised with the score that I even asked the administrator if anything went wrong with the system. Even though my last two scores probably were a little bit inflated, I think that a difference of 12-14 points is too much.

What are your recommendations for a re-take? Is it one month ok or should I keep studying a little bit more? How can I approach this strategically and not by brute force (I work in consulting and probably will be working long hours)? The result was really disappointing for me, but I have to break the 700 barrier.

Just as background, I am a non-Native English speaker with an engineering degree.

Thanks in advance,

[StaceyKoprince]

I wouldn't have guessed that English is a second language for you if you hadn't told me. :)

If you felt that you were doing really well...then that's actually a sign you weren't actually doing all that well. An adaptive test has this weird quality by nature: the better you do, the harder the test feels.

In addition, if you finished the test 13 minutes early, then you were rushing -- which leads to careless mistakes on things that you thought you were getting right.

So that's probably why you thought you were doing just fine but you weren't.

When you took practice CATs, did you do the essay and IR sections? Did you take them as seriously as you did on the real test? If not, then you may have been suffering from more mental fatigue than usual on the GMAT - particularly during the final section...verbal. (Alternatively, you may have studied too much in the couple of days before, or you may have simply used up too much mental energy on the earlier sections and didn't save enough in reserve to last you through verbal.)

Read this; did you experience any of these symptoms of mental fatigue?
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... you-crazy/

Because you felt good about the section, I'm going to guess that you may have been in the "making faster decisions than normal" mode of mental fatigue (which, again, typically leads to careless mistakes).

Once we figure out what we think was going on, then you can figure out what you need to do for a re-take. What do you think?

[JuanA115]

Thanks Stacy,

I think that I haven´t taken my preparation CATs as seriously as I should. Even though I´ve been through a lot of material, I´ve only took the complete exam (AWA + IR) twice. (In total I took 8 cats, and lots of paper exams)

My plan is to take a full new CAT every saturday for 4 weeks and take the real gmat again on week 5. I don´t want to extend my preparation much longer than that because I feel I will enter in a phase of diminishing returns, if you know what I mean. What do you thing about it?

I think that I have the concepts there, but further analyzing my performance during the exam I concur with your opinion that I probably rushed during verbal and made a ton of silly mistakes.

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, that can have an impact (not taking full CATs). Now you know for next time.

I think your plan is good assuming that, as you go, you don't discover that there actually are fundamental / underlying issues that need to be addressed (and that may take more than 4 weeks to address).

Make sure that you are studying in the way described here:
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Also, it's good to practice under full official circumstances, but it's always going to be the case that a 3.5 hour long test is going to tire you our more than a 2.5 hour long test. So you may have to make some changes to how you're making decisions in all of the test sections.

Your brain has a limited amount of energy. Once it's gone, you need to rest (or sleep!) before your brain can get back up to normal speed. For the vast majority of people, the GMAT is too taxing to maintain full brain energy for the whole test.

You need to start picking your battles. I guarantee you that there were times during IR and Quant (and probably even early on in verbal) when you spent more brain energy than you should have on something. If I see a problem and I know (or think I know) that I can do it, but I can also tell that it's going to take me 1+ minute longer than typical...then I'm not going to do that problem. I'm not going to waste a bunch of resources on one small battle when that might cost me the whole war.

I know that I'm terrible at combinatorics and 3D Geometry. If the test pops one of those up, I'm only going to do the problem if I think it's easy. If it looks hard, forget. Moving on. Know your weaknesses and react accordingly.

Also know when they're trying to slow you down. Some roman numeral problems are quick to process once you've got the basic ideas down...but some basically require you to do the work of 2 or 3 problems to answer that one question. No thanks.

Figure out what areas aren't worth it for you and practice making those decisions during the next month - on practice CATs and when doing problems in general.

And, of course, if you do discover that there are some fundamental issues that you need to fix, come on back here to get advice!