review of my performance

[Gurpreets641]

Hi

Yesterday i gave my official GMAT exam, scored a mere 470(IR-4, Quant-38, Verabal-"17"). Although have been getting good score in the manhattan test series. Last score being 640( IR-3, Quant-43, Verbal-35). Really disappointed with my performance of yesterday. Now, i am bit clueless, how should i go about preparing for my next attempt as i have my exhausted all the study material.

Regards
Gurpreet Singh

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you had a disappointing test experience.

In order to figure out a good plan, we need to figure out why your score dropped so much. Your IR score went up a little, but quant dropped some, and verbal dropped a lot. The below is probably going to take you between 1 and 2 hours.

Read this and tell me everything that you think might apply to your case:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... t-wrong-2/

Then, read these two articles:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Think about how what you've been doing does and doesn't match up with that and how you may need to change your approach accordingly. Tell us this, too.

Finally, use the below to analyze your most recent MPrep CATs (this will likely take you a minimum of 1 hour):
http://tinyurl.com/analyzeyourcats

Based on all of that, figure out your strengths and weaknesses as well as any ideas you have for what you think you should do. Then come back here and tell us (including a list of your study resources); we'll tell you whether we agree and advise you further. (Note: do share an analysis with us, not just the raw data. Your analysis should include a discussion of your buckets - you'll understand what that means when you read the last article. 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!)

[Gurpreets641]

First of all, thank you for sharing such enlightening articles.

I would admit that i did had some serious time management issues during the official GMAT exam, although have been giving the full mock CAT exams till date. In the quant section, i did finished early by 5minutes, implying that i made a lot of careless mistakes. Also, in the verbal section, i spent quite a lot of time in first 5 to 10 questions. In order to make up for the lost time i had to hurry up, probably resulting in a lot of wrong answers. And a series of 6 to 7 questions answered incorrectly significantly brings the score down.
I want to bring to your notice an incident which occured, before the exam. I had booked an exam date of 5 Oct, 2015 but due to some LAN problem at the examination centre, the exam had to be postponed. So next day i booked 9 oct, 2015 as the date to take the exam. I really wanted to use the momentum which i had attained. Between these dates, i found myself short of study material, so, gave my CAT exam no.4 on 7oct, 2015 attaining 640 marks. I had planned not to give any mock test withing a week of the official exam, but the situation so arose, i thought it would be in my best interest. I don't know how it helped in getting a low score on the official exam but the situation is so peculiar thought you should know about it.
And regarding my study material, apart from the official guide, gave only one mock test of the GMAT prep and 4 manhattan CAT tests.
I think the article on changing the approach is also precise. I did approached the exam with a more school oriented approach, getting all the questions correct, alhough had it in the back of mind, not to spend too much time on one question. Probably due to anxiety or nervousness, wasn't able to achieve it when it mattered the most.
I did had some moments of anxiety, but it is quite normal to be anxious when you give your official exam , right? Dont think i let it out of control to affect my performance during the exam.
Would be gratefull if you could suggest some source to practice problems, as i am left with only 3 mock tests.


Regards
Gurpreet Singh

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, it's possible that taking a practice test two days before affected your mental stamina on the real test. (This is why we tell people to take their last CAT a week before the real thing.)

This is your mantra: right now, you know what you know and you're not going to forget it all in a few days. As far as what you don't know, you're not going to learn it all in a few days. So those last few days, you don't need to do a bunch of practice. Your scoring potential is already locked in. Doing a bunch just before the test only gives you the opportunity to lower your score via mental fatigue.

So, you have to fix the timing and decision-making issues.
decision-making:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

Timing:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -to-do-it/
http://tinyurl.com/GMATTimeManagement

Especially sections 4 and 5 of that last article.

And regarding my study material, apart from the official guide, gave only one mock test of the GMAT prep and 4 manhattan CAT tests.

Here's another part of the problem. This is practice material. It is not study material. Practice and study are two different things.

Practice material allows you to practice what you have already learned. It doesn't teach you how to get better - you need study material for that. Just doing more new practice questions without actually learning how to study is not going to help you get to where you want to go.

So I am not going to give you a source for more practice material, because that's not what you need right now. You need to learn how to study first. Then, you need to go back and study your existing practice material in a way that allows you to extract all of the necessary lessons. Then, you'll finally be ready for new practice questions.

I'm going to return to what I said in my last post. Take the hour (plus) to analyze your CATs in the way that the linked article describes (look at my last post). Tell me your buckets. We'll use that to identify what study materials you need. Also, start to analyze OG problems that you've already done using the framework in this article (also linked last time):
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Tell me what you think about that framework after you have tried to apply it to at least 10 quant and at least 10 verbal questions.

Finally, yes, it is totally normal to have some anxiety around this kind of test - we all do. If you ever think it's too strong, try this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/