Retaking GMAT Strategy Plan

[AileenF868]

I took my GMAT yesterday and had mixed emotions about my score. My practice tests were not consistent, mostly the Manhattan GMAT tests were much lower than the GMAT Prep tests I took.

My final score was 710
Q: 49
V: 38
IR:2

I was really happy with my quant score. I felt great during the whole section and was able to manage my time well. I have been struggling to get my verbal score up over the past few weeks and was a bit disappoint with the 38. My last few practice tests I was scoring between 41-43 and feel like I can score higher.

The IR is the main reason I am taking the test again. I did not spend any time preparing for this section and during the exam the proctor called me out of the room since I put my ring on the desk. It threw me off a bit and when I saw the 2 I knew it would be a red flag for my application.

I've decided to take the test again in 6 weeks. I'm a bit worried that I won't be able to hit the quant score again and I'm unsure how to approach verbal. I've done every OG question so don't know if I should purchase more or just keep reviewing old questions. When I review old questions, especially for critical reasoning and reading comprehension, I find that I remember the question. I am a native speaker but decided to start incorporating reading articles into my studying. I also can't keep up the pace that I was studying at for the past few weeks because both my work and personal commitments are starting up again so I'm hoping that putting 5-8 hours a week will be sufficient to keep quant consistent while improving in both verbal and IR.

I bought the enhanced report from GMAC but it didn't provide too much insight into my performance.
Verbal subsection rankings
CR: 78th (2.01 minutes)
RC: 80th (1.83 minutes)
SC: 85th (1.82 minutes)

Any advice would be appreciated as I put together my strategy for the next few weeks.

Thanks!

[StaceyKoprince]

Wow - great job! I know you're not happy with your IR score, but your overall scores are great (including the Q and V subscores), more than good enough to put you in the running at any school.

I know you feel you can also score better on the verbal - nothing wrong with that. I just want you to know that you already did quite a good job there, too.

It will be a challenge to improve 2 out of 3 while maintaining the 3rd in only 5-8 hours a week; I think 8 to 12 would be more realistic. However, I don't want you to put your test date out any further because you'll start to forget all of the hard learning you've already done, nor do I want you to stretch yourself too thin with your other commitments, or you'll burn yourself out.

So I think you need to go into this with a very clear and discrete set of priorities: you want to maintain quant, it would be nice (but not necessary) to get verbal to your higher practice scores, and you want to get IR to a 5 (or higher, but a higher score isn't the goal).

That puts a clear emphasis on IR. I would plan to work on one IR question type per week (there are 4 types) for the next 4 weeks. Use the IR Interact lessons (you have access in your student center). There are 5 lessons: one intro and 4 others, one for each question type. There are also associated drills located online and additional lessons in our IR / essay strategy guide, if you need extra attention on anything.

Plan to work on IR for perhaps half of your available time. The other half will be spent on a mix of quant and verbal review, with the goal to solidify both (and this might help you to pick up extra points).

You may also find that studying IR will help you on verbal because you won't use up so much brain energy on IR next time - meaning you'll still have some more gas in the tank when you get to the verbal section.

One last (but important!) thing. Did you take a class with us? If so, 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 happened on test day and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to gmat@manhattanprep.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment.

Feel free to come back here to discuss any study plans or anything that you learn during your PEA (if you're eligible for that).

Oh and one more thing! I just submitted an article on re-taking the test but it hasn't gone live on our blog yet. I'd expect it to be up in the next week or so, so if you're interested, keep checking the blog for a post titled something like "Should I re-take the GMAT?" (They sometimes change my suggested titles, so that might not be the exact title.)

[AileenF868]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you for your response! I did take a class with Manhattan GMAT but unfortunately, I have already used my post assessment office hour. I understand that 5-6 hours will not be enough to put effort into all three sections so will try to look and put more time where I can while focusing on maintaining quant and concentrating more on IR.

Do you suggest I buy GMAT Prep extra questions and more exams since I've already exhausted all the CATs from the classes and the 2 additional GMAT Prep ones in the software?

I look forward to reading your new blog post! All of the posts I have read have been very valuable so far!

Thanks,
Aileen

[StaceyKoprince]

oh, you did ask about the problems - sorry I missed that!

Before I answer that, I just want to make sure about one thing: You actually have two different "talk to an instructor" features. One is a Post Course Assessment and you sign up through the Office Hours system - it's a 30 minute phone call with an instructor. This is to talk about how to study after the course is over but before the real test.

The other one, the Post Exam Assessment, is available only after you have taken the real test, and it's a bit longer (typically 45-60 minutes). From the way that you replied, I'm thinking that you did the PCA before, not the PEA. But maybe I'm wrong. :)

Okay, for exams, have you tried redoing either ours or GMATPrep? Only some of the questions will be repeated, not all, and it may be the case that you don't remember the repeated ones because they were a while ago. So you might want to try that.

If you see a few repeats that you remember, it's okay as long as you follow a few guidelines to minimize the chance of artificially inflating your score via question repeats. First, anytime you see a problem that you remember (and this means: I know the answer or I'm pretty sure I remember the answer, not just "hmm, this looks vaguely familiar..."), immediately look at the timer and make yourself sit there for the full length of time for that question type. This way, you don't artificially give yourself more time than you should have.

Second, think about whether you got this problem right the last time. If you did, get it right again this time. If you didn't, get it wrong again. If you *completely honestly* think that you would get it right this time around if it were a new question (even though you got it wrong last time) because you've studied that area and improved, then get it right this time.

But if you see too many repeats (or if you just don't want to have to worry about it and don't mind paying the $40), then you can buy the two additional GMATPrep tests. Just realize that they don't provide a ton of data to analyze your performance, so you may want to take one or two more in our system in order to get that data.

Re: practice problems, I think you should do a mix of old and new, and I agree that the best (and most cost-efficient) source for new problems is the GMATPrep Question Pack - it's about $30 for more than 400 questions.

The article below talks about how to study / analyze practice problems; you'll see from what it says that it can still be valuable to go back over problems you've already done - even when you remember the answer - because there are still things to learn from your analysis.

http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

[AileenF868]

Thank you!! I will definitely do a post-exam assessment? Any chance it can be scheduled with you? :)

Thanks for your quick response.

[StaceyKoprince]

I don't assign them :) but if you are available on week-days during the day, make sure to put that down. (I typically only have time on week-days during the day - so evening and week-end ones are assigned to others.)