Shocked to see gmatprep score!

[pretzK785]

http://www.beatthegmat.com/hi-all-i-hav ... 92225.html

Hello Stacey,

I have already posted a detail analysis of my current situation on one of the external forums and the link is shared above. Kindly read the post and then the test analysis I shared here:

Last gmatprep I scored a 490 and I am sure that's not the current range I am in. I understand there is no point cribbing about it, but I want to ensure that my study schedule is going right or the gmatprep software was just fooling around.

Here's the quant and verbal pattern:
Incorrect strings on Quant: 1, 3, 6, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33

Ended with a 600 level qs in quant. PS - 60% accuracy and DS - 47% accuracy

Incorrect strings on Verbal: 4, 5,7,8,9,10,11,12,18,20,23,27,28,31,32,33,35,37,38

SC -77% accuracy, CR - 27% accuracy, RC - 46% accuracy

How would you advise me to channelise my preparation going forward? After reading many posts here and prior recommendations to many students - I think focusing on foundations and careless mistakes is the key. Is there anything else you'd suggest based in my scores and performance on other tests.

Thank you,
P

[StaceyKoprince]

For future, please copy and paste into this thread everything that you want the instructor to review before answering your post. We have very limited time and it's harder to respond when we're having to pop back and forth between multiple posts in different threads, particularly when the posts involve lots of data. Thanks!

The second quarter of your Q section in GMATPrep really brought your score down. From Q10 to 20, you missed 7 questions. That's enough of a downward trend to pull your score down a large amount. In order to bring your score back up from there, you'd have to have some strings of 3+ right answers, but you didn't have that until after Q33 (ie, the very end of the section).

What happened in that second quarter? I'm going to guess that some of the earlier ones were quite hard and you maybe spent too much time and energy on them (and missed them anyway because they were so hard). Then, you made some mistakes towards the end of that quarter due to some combination of timing pressure, mental fatigue, etc.

I'm seeing a similar pattern on V. You had 6 questions wrong in a row (7 through 12), plus questions 4 and 5. So from #4 to #12 you answered only one question (out of nine) correctly. This would have pulled your score even further down. You did have a good string just after that (5 right) to pull your score back up a decent amount, but you had another bit of a lapse in the final quarter (#31 to #38, 6 out of 8 wrong), so that would have pulled you down somewhat again.

So I'm guessing that there are timing and mental fatigue issues going on that are leading to careless mistakes at times. And there are likely also holes in your foundation (that's true for everyone). As you review the questions that you got wrong, which ones were careless mistakes? Which were problems that you feel you can learn to do without too much trouble? (These are the ones where you say, "Oh, I didn't know that before, but that makes complete sense now. I just need to study / practice XYZ." These are not the ones where you say, "Huh? That makes no sense. What are they talking about?" Or "I never would have thought to do that!")

I noticed in your other post that you said you did not do essay or IR on these tests. Please start taking all CATs under 100% official conditions, including essay and IR. Any timing and mental fatigue issues will only get exacerbated once you do add those other sections. You have done more than enough work at this point to start practicing under official conditions. (For others reading this, the only test on which I allow my students to skip essay/IR is test #1. After that: 100% official conditions, every time.)