feel nervous, hard to concentrate on readingLet's start here. When you are nervous, it's harder to concentrate...and things that are familiar can look
completely unfamiliar even when they are not all that different from what you are used to seeing. Stress affects us negatively, basically. When your brain panics, it focuses on the unfamiliar because it's trying to control any potential sources of danger—and you literally overlook the stuff that is more familiar.
unsure about almost all decisions on SC quesitons
And yet your SC performance from your ESR:
SC 87%(NOTE: that stat is 87th percentile. Not the same thing as %. Just want to make clear for everyone reading this.)
In other words, you might have been unsure about your SC decisions...but you still did extremely well on SC. In fact, this is completely to be expected on an adaptive test. When you are doing super well, that means you are getting super hard questions. So things *should* feel really hard. And that's exactly how it felt.
Our teachers regularly go in to take the test and I check in with all of them afterwards. While we occasionally do see some questions that are a bit different from what we're used to, overall, the test is pretty steady. (It has to be, because it's a standardized test. Even when they do want to change something, they have to make that change slowly and gradually, or they risk messing up the validity of all of their data.) And when you do see something really different, it's most likely an experimental, so it's not going to count for you.
In the last year, the only reports that I've had of some decently "different" SCs were
shorter sentences and underlines that actually felt easier to teachers (though I'm not convinced students would necessarily feel the same way). I'm pretty sure those were experimental questions that they were testing for their new Executive Assessment exam for EMBA programs.
The latest produce releases / publications from GMAC include questions that were used more recently on the real test. The two tests that were released in March include problems used on the real test over the past 6 to 8 years. (Some of them are showing up on old forum posts because they were unfortunately stolen from the live test and posted online at that time.) The new editions of the books published in June also include more recently written problems. Again, though, the test questions have not changed
that much in that time.
Note: I
strongly recommend not studying from the 1000 series of documents for multiple reasons. Someone put these together—illegally, I might add—at least 8 years ago from a bunch of mixed sources, including official sources. So, first, these are all pretty old. Second, and more concerning, those documents have lots of errors. I once came across a forum post in which people were fiercely debating an SC question from this document. Some thought that the official answer was mis-marked and should have been a different letter; others thought that the official answer was correct and were trying to argue why.
Turns out: all 5 answers were wrong. Whoever transcribed the question in the first place had messed up and the problem as written in this document did not have a correct answer. So they were studying a flawed question—and messing up their own studies / knowledge / understanding in the process! (Eventually, it got to the point where we banned those documents entirely as a source for our forums.)
I have a question for you: those scores that you posted are from official tests? So you scored 720 on the official test?
If yes, fantastic job! Congratulations! And that leads me to another question: why are you going for 750+? 720 is a fantastic score. Q50 and V37 are fantastic sub-scores. If you want to teach for us, you need 760+, but otherwise, nobody
needs a 750+.
I just want to make sure that you're not thinking that, because the top 5 schools have averages in the 710 to 730 range, you have to score 750+ to get in. Averages, by definition, mean that quite a number of people got in with scores below those averages. You may want to chat with some admissions consultants to get feedback on your overall profile. The time you could spend trying to move the GMAT from 720 to 750 might be better spent plugging some hole in your overall application profile.
Your quant score is 50 (top score is 51), so if you do want to improve the overall score more, you'll have to do so on the verbal side. Your SC performance was excellent but your average time was quite high, so the question is: can you learn to maintain that performance on SC while reducing your average time, so that you don't have to rush so much on CR and RC? That way, you can improve your CR and RC performance and hopefully lift your overall score.
Next, one of the biggest differences between someone scoring V37 (your current score) and V40+ is the below.
Identify ALL of the questions on which you narrowed to two and guessed, even when you guessed right. And answer these questions:
1) why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible; also, now you know this is not a good reason to pick an answer)
2) why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
3) why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong? (also, now you know that this is not a good reason to eliminate an answer)
4) why was it actually right?
If you can figure out how they got you to doubt the right answer and to prefer the wrong answer instead, then you will be much less likely to fall into that trap again the next time you see it.
Let me know what the admissions consultants say about your overall profile.
