Need Urgent advice from experts. Hv to Retake GMAT in 4weeks

[dpak.designer]

Hi Ron/Stacey

This is my first post. I am a non-native English speaker. I faced GMAT last week and ended up with a dismal performance. Scored 580 Q47 V23. This score is probably lower than the lowest score that I could ever imagine for myself.

I started my preparation with a Mock test- Gmat Prep 1: Scored 650. Through various stages I kept testing myself. I never scored anything below 720. Quant was always 49+ and verbal was always 36+ .

On the test day, I was nervous when I started quant and messed up with a really easy speed-time question. Therefore, I can understand that my nervousness gifted me a phenomenal 47 in Quant section. But, by the time I reached verbal, I was into my senses and knew that I really need to perform in this section ( to make up for loses in quant). I started off with confidence and finished my exam with 2 mins to spare. Every question was well analyzed and responded. Questions were not out of this universe. Everything was perfect until I saw the score. I kept staring at the screen, hoping that score might change. I was expecting 38-42 in verbal. 580 Q47 V23 was worse than a nightmare.

My confidence has never been so low. I wish I could prove that something was wrong with the software. I did notice few strange things ( few technical errors) on the day of the exam, but its useless to discuss all that now. [did not write this just because I scored low, I have noticed few strange results from Gmat prep software also. I got 36 questions correct in quant and still scored 49or 50. Obviously at that stage marks were not that important]
I am in a shocked state and have decided to reappear. My exam is due for first week of July and I really need some expert advise to start my voyage.
I did all standard sources (mgmat books, KP800, Princeton, OGs, Prep tests) but concentrated only on original gmat questions (as is advised by most experts).

I am devastated and want to be BETTER PREPARED for my second attempt. Kindly help me out. (mainly VERBAL, SC to be precise)
SOS !!!

Thanks
Deepak

[dpak.designer]

Hi experts... kindly help me out. :(

[dpak.designer]

It is really disheartening to see that no one could come up for helping a student. If not Manhattan instructors, Manhattan books will help me. Nevertheless, I thank this forum.
Good luck to myself and other students.

Deepak

[StaceyKoprince]

Please, please, please remember to read the forum guidelines before posting. We respond to all posts in order, oldest first, and the date of your post is based on the date of the last post in the thread, not the first. If you bump your own post, you will wait longer for a response.

In this case, you bumped your own post twice - you would have been answered at least 4 days ago if you had not bumped your post.

Please also note that the forums are a free service, open to the public. Because of the volume of traffic we receive, it is not unusual to wait a week from the date of the last post (sometimes longer) for a response. If you see that older posts (further down the list) in the same folder have not yet been answered, then you know that we haven't missed you - we just haven't gotten to your question yet.

Our next task is to figure out why your score dropped so much, particularly your verbal score. There's a chance that your practice test scores were artificially inflated, so we need to figure that out, and then you clearly underperformed on test day, so we need to figure out why.

Please read this article; what applies in your case?
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ent-wrong/

Did you take your practice tests under 100% official conditions, including both essays (or 1 essay + IR, if you took the new test)?

Did you have any timing problems? Note: I talk to people all the time who tell me they don't have timing problems but they actually do. How to tell?

Analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s) using this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

If you do have timing problems (almost everyone does), read these two articles and start doing what they say:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... to-win-it/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... anagement/

You mention SC in particular. How much did you study meaning? The test writers announced last fall that they were increasing the proportion of questions testing meaning. The books and released official questions at that point did not reflect this change in proportions, so a lot of students didn't study meaning much.

These questions will often have longer underlines, be harder to understand, have large chunks of the sentence changing or moving around, etc. It's often harder to find clean "splits" (or differences) in the answers, and so on. Does this sound familiar?

Here's how to tackle more convoluted sentences:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... sc-problem
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... -problem-2

Also, please check our blog over the next few days - I just wrote an article about this topic and it'll be published soon.

Then come back here and tell me everything that you think contributed to this score drop and we'll figure out what to do from there.

[dpak.designer]

Hi Stacey

My apologies for my hyper reaction and for ignoring forum guidelines. To begin with, I would like to thank you for this post and for various other posts that have helped me indirectly.

Definitely, my score during tests was inflated as it is common to repeat gmat prep tests. I have always used these tests to learn rather than just boosting my confidence with a 700+ figure on the screen.
Except for Initial few tests, all the tests were with Essays and timed breaks. My scores never really fluctuated drastically. I practiced only with Gmat Prep tests, can this be a problem ?? I never wanted to test myself with unofficial questions. I agree that scores tend to vary ( like my quant score on any day could easily be 49 but dropped on test day to 47). However, a drop of 12 points is really shattering and hard to evaluate. I am out of this now and just looking ahead.

Yes, I was aware that meaning based questions are frequent these days. I did try to practice separately, but my focus was equally distributed. One problem area could be that I laid more emphasis on the number of questions that I did each day and I think in the process I missed on actual learning. I would also like to ask if current Gmat Prep has enough meaning based problems ??. Gmat prep SC is one area that has not been exploited fully and can be explored further. Please advise if this strategy can pay ?? Will it cover all the types that I need to know ??

Timing has ALWAYS been my problem and therefore, during my preparation I tried to answer every question under 2mins. This helped me a lot. On the test day, I did finish all the sections on time. AWA- 5.0 1min to spare. Quant 47, 2-3 mins to spare and verbal 23, 3 mins to spare (I agree that I rushed through few questions and answered few questions way too quickly). My strategy was not to sit on any question and to answer within time frame of 2mins and move on. Since, I could answer many questions within a minute, I DID spend more than 2mins on harder questions.

I was stressed (my quant shows that), but was never out of focus. I firmly believe that strategies do pay, but nothing can beat hard work. I have approximately 20 days to go, please advise me on the RIGHT MATERIAL for SC ( at this stage).
My overall accuracy rate in SC is around 75-80%. For harder problems it is around 60% (timed) but almost always, I am able take it down to 2choices.

I have gone though the articles on BTG and would surely use the strategies while practicing. I simply want to be BETTER PREPARED.

Thanks a lot Stacey. I am a big fan of yours.

[StaceyKoprince]

I agree that the real questions are the best source of practice, but the problem with doing only GMATPrep is that there are only 2. After that, you're repeating questions - so, while you are getting practice, you don't have any clear idea of what your true scoring level is.

One problem area could be that I laid more emphasis on the number of questions that I did each day and I think in the process I missed on actual learning.

Yes, that is a common mistake made by many students. It's possible that you essentially sensitized yourself to the practice materials such that you could do more of the exact same very easily but you didn't learn how to think your way through new problems, especially problems with twists or variations that you hadn't seen before.

Take a look at the How To Study section of this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

As I said, the real questions are the best practice questions available, but even they have one big drawback: they're old, by definition. They're only released several years (at least) after they were written and used on the real thing. The questions and question writers evolve over time, and so if you focus on almost memorizing" a large quantity of questions from one "era," you aren't necessarily learning how to think flexibly when you see the questions on the current test.

Next, timing. You mention that you finished each section on time, and then you mentioned that you did many questions very quickly (within a minute) so that you spent more time on some other harder questions.

What you're describing is a problematic timing habit we call "up and down timing." It's okay to go about 30 seconds over whatever the average expected time is on a question type, because you will have some faster questions. But you also have to make sure that you're spending enough time on every question that you're not making a bunch of mistakes due to speed.

For example. on quant, we're expected to average 2 minutes. Answering a quant Q in 1 minute to 2.5 minutes is generally okay. Spending less than a minute really increases the chances that you're going to make a careless mistake. Spending more than 2.5 minutes just indicates that you're struggling with the question (because there is a way to do it more efficiently - but you're not finding it).

And here's where it gets very problematic: people spend 3 or 4 minutes on some problems, which they mostly get wrong because the whole point is that you don't actually know what you're doing when you spend that kind of time. Then, to make it up, people feel pressured to go faster on the questions that they *can* answer correctly in normal time, and then they start to make mistakes on questions they could have gotten right. Double-whammy.

My guess is that you have a lot of work to do on both timing and thinking / thought process (using the resources I gave you last time and up above in my current post). The most recently released new official questions can be found in the GMATPrep Prep Pack #1 (which you buy through the GMATPrep software), but don't just plow through all of the questions there. Change how you're studying. Look at the resources in the How To Study section of the article I linked above.

I also want to mention that it often takes a good 4 to 6 weeks to fix timing problems. You said you have 20 days, so I just want to let you know that it's possible you will have to give yourself a little more time and postpone your test.

[dpak.designer]

Hi Stacey

I appeared for my exam and got 660 q50 v29. :( Not really happy with Verbal. I finished my Verbal section 8mins before time. I was bogged down by my earlier experience. I strongly feel I did all my CR and RC questions right and SC let me down yet again. Please advise if I should Retake ? Will such a low percentile in Verbal ruin my chances ?
I am an Accessories Designer, with 3yrs of work experience in Fashion Industry.
Please advice some strategy for 700+ score. I am target Top B schools.

Thanks
Deepak

[StaceyKoprince]

First of all, wow, you raised your score 80 points!! And it's only been about a month!! That's really fantastic - congratulations.

I know you're looking for an even higher score, but seriously - what you just did is great, and I want to make sure you give yourself credit for it!

Next, your question was whether your verbal performance will hurt your application. That's going to depend on where you apply, and it's best to discuss that with an admissions consultant - I'm not an admissions expert.

Next, on the test itself, you finished verbal 8 minutes early. That means you were rushing and you likely made careless mistakes due to that fact. Rushing is most typically due to a combination of nerves and mental fatigue; if you can fix either or both, then you may be able to increase your score even further.

I strongly feel I did all my CR and RC questions right and SC let me down yet again.

You got some CR and RC questions wrong, too. It would be almost impossible to get those all right and not get a very high score (unless you literally miss every single SC question). I just want to point that out because I want you to be aware that you may be missing things there without even realizing it - which means you've got some work to do in those areas as well.

Next, if you would like more specific advice, I'm going to repeat something that I said in my first post to you:

Analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s) using this:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Then come back here and tell us the results of your analysis. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. 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!)

I also asked you some questions in other posts; please look through and answer my questions (eg, for SC, I asked you how much you studied meaning). If you don't answer those questions, I'm just going to ask again, because I need to know that information in order to give you good advice! :)