Test nerves got the best of me

[artistocrat]

Hello,

I recently took the GMAT and scored 710 (Q47,V41). I am almost certain I could have done better, especially in Verbal. On Manhattan practice tests my scores ranged from 740-780 for the most part, and similarly on GMATPrep my scores ranged from 730-770. You can see why I felt a bit disappointed, and even misled. I found the questions on the official GMAT considerably more difficult than any practice material I encountered. I also found that the questions were unfamiliar territory (eg.some of the VICs and oddball word problems). Verbal was easier, but that must have been because I was making mistakes. At least I scored in the 700+ range after all my hard work.

I got NO sleep the night before the test, and I felt very anxious during the test. I noticed my breath was short, and my stomach was in knots. I think the reason this happened is because I had worked so diligently I didn't want to screw it up. My fiancee wants me to be done with the GMAT already, and a voice in my head says "settle", but another part of me says "yes! I can do better!"

But how? And why? And is it worth it?

[StaceyKoprince]

Is it worth it? I don't know - talk to an admissions consultant about that question. :) Also, really lay out for yourself what the possible upside is vs. the work and stress that will have to go with it - you need to know both sides to decide whether you think it's worth it.

Are you doing applications right now? If so, you also have to think about trade-offs of time. You already have a great GMAT score. Worry about having great applications in all respects before you worry about taking something that's already great and making it better. (If you're not applying till next year, on the other hand, then you don't need to worry about this.)

Did you take your practice tests under 100% official conditions, including essays, length of breaks, time of day you took the test, EVERYthing? If not, your practice tests might have been artificially inflated.

Next, we know your performance did suffer on the one thing you can't mimic on practice tests: the knowledge that, this time, it's real. Test anxiety is of course going to hurt your performance - and the fact that you didn't sleep would have compounded that problem. So, yes, you probably could do somewhat better. And you still got a 710? Fantastic!

So. Go talk to an admissions consultant (we have a forum folder here called Ask An Admissions Consultant) and think about other factors (stress levels, applications, etc). Then let us know if you do want to take it again. If so, read the two stress management articles at bottom. Also, come back here to tell us more about your GMAT strengths and weaknesses.

You can use this article to analyze recent MGMAT CATs and tell us about your performance:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

http://www.manhattangmat.com/stress-tips.cfm
http://www.manhattangmat.com/strategy-series-stress.cfm

[artistocrat]

Hi Stacey,

I am not doing applications right now. My plan was to finish the GMAT well in advance of applying for 2013.

Yes, I did take the practice tests under official conditions, including essays (I got 6.0 on the AWA on the official test), length of breaks, even the environment (went out to the university where they have cubicles and more open formats. I tried both). I even took the same snacks. I did however do the tests after work, and obviously not at 12PM (my scheduled time). Excellent advice btw to do the tests under such conditions.

Furthermore, the tests were not repeats, except for one GMATPrep, on which I scored 770.

My split for the actual exam were Q47, V41. The score is not glaringly imbalanced, but I consistently scored much higher on verbal, even though my quant score ranged from 47-51 on my practice tests, which is quite accurate, albeit on the low end.

Since I do have the time, and so many factors were stacked against me, maybe I should rewrite. To be candid I suffer from Bipolar, I was diagnosed with a skin cancer, and my grandmother died right before the exam, and I got ZERO sleep. I hope the information is not too off-putting. Not trying to make excuses, just trying to describe what I was up against, so that anyone with similar challenges knows they are not alone.

I will definitely analyze my recent MGMAT CATs and let you guys know about my performance. I will utilize the free resource "Ask an Admissions Consultant", and determine whether it is in my best interest to sacrifice the time, energy, and finances on rewriting. It may well be that 710 is enough for the schools to which I intend to apply. In fact, they pretty much told me so. But I may want to close this chapter in my life with a little gusto, so that I can look back without any regrets.

Thanks Stacey. As always I find your advice very helpful.

[StaceyKoprince]

I am not doing applications right now. My plan was to finish the GMAT well in advance of applying for 2013.

Great! I'm glad that you're planning ahead. Most people don't plan that far ahead. :)

It sounds like you had quite a rough time leading up to the test - that stress would get to anyone. That probably hurt your stamina, which would likely contribute especially to a verbal drop, since that's the last section of the test.

Let us know what the admissions consultant folks say and what your analysis is for your tests and we'll go from there!

[beaverpistol]

Stacey,

I have not contacted admissions consultants yet, but I have contacted my school of choice. However, thank you for encouraging me to assess my performance. Doing so is very valuable as it can open doors to understanding positives and negatives, and what went right and what went wrong. I used Manhattan GMAT’s built in evaluator, which does a cross-sectional analysis of my performance across multiple (5, as I have one left) mock exams.

In case students are not aware of this feature, The Generated Report, Assessment Summary, determines worst and best areas, and percentage right, as well as the average time for right and wrong answers. In quantitative, the report states that my strongest area is FDP’s and my worst area is Geometry. My slowest areas was Algebra, but my fastest area was FDP’s. Clearly then, I can afford to slow down on FDP’s to improve my accuracy.

In verbal my best area was sentence correction, with 91% correct, and my weakest area was reading comprehension at 78%. The average level of difficulty for wrong answers for sentence correction was 740, while for reading comprehension it was 700. From this analysis, its clear to me that I need to brush up on my reading comprehension skills. The difficulty with improving verbal I find, especially at the 700+ level, is not knowing how to improve. Reading skills are mastered over a very long period of time. Any advice would be appreciated.

My highest score on the CAT was 780 (Q51,V45) and my lowest was 730 (Q45,V45). It is peculiar that my verbal score was the same on all 5 CATs (V45), yet I dropped down to V41 for the actual exam. Some have criticized Manhattan GMAT for its verbal component, while they have praised it for its quantitative component. The criticism is that the question format is considerably different than the format for official questions. What do you think of this criticism?

On the actual exam I felt that the quantitative was largely out of my control. I felt that I did not manage the more difficult questions because I was under pressure. I may have attempted them under a mock test circumstance, but on the actual test I guessed the difficult questions, and banked the extra time for moderate questions. Is this strategy effective? I guessed on many questions. I also felt that the questions were radically different from ANY material I had seen. Perhaps I was not seeing the pattern, and recognizing important similarities, but I felt quite nervous when I received question after question that had no bearing on my studies. I know that the test is one of reasoning not computational ability, but I at least expected that I would see some questions that fit the profile of what I studied (eg. exponents, factors, number properties, remainders). What I learned from the experience was beware of word problems. Translating word problems into algebraic expressions is tested quite frequently (maybe 1/3). I also got a lot of odd-ball questions that had no sibling in the Official Guide. I didn’t get any questions on inequalities, probability, absolute value, geometry, triangles, co-ordinate geometry, and much more.

The verbal felt much, much more comfortable. But, ironically, I did worse! The section seemed to flow really well, and I felt that the answers just popped off the page. This was a big mistake! I was falling into traps and making assumptions. It is difficult to figure out in which area I was strongest, and which area I was weakest, but I have a feeling that the recent change in sentence correction threw me off. I was too accustomed to reading for grammatical mistakes and not wary of intended meaning. The last split usually comes down to intended meaning, and in this area I may have made mistakes. I think I was simply too exhausted from all of my prior challenges, and the test anxiety. Note to self: SLEEP, eat, take care of yourself (TLC)! Reading comprehension passages felt very easy, and much like the Official Guide, and generally the same could be said of critical reasoning, although there were some tricky ones.

All in all, it was not a bad experience. I just feel that I could have done better. I know this is a common sentiment. Perhaps we can all put it down to all the unexpected variables on test day. But then again, I knew in the back of my mind it would all be different than what I expected. At least two nice unexpected features were the earplugs and cubicles!

Moving forward, I intend to put together a plan for success. A study plan that is terse and focused -one that is the best for me. I will spend considerable time putting together question sets and mock exams from my broad resources, and setting a schedule. I intend to practice and review in an appropriate ratio. I plan to emphasize understanding my errors, reworking problems, and even looking for multiple solutions. I also want to use the forums more, especially the Manhattan GMAT forum. Finally, I would like to utilize the resources at my disposal such as the great community that is here. There is a mountain of accumulated knowledge, much of which is highly useful even for those aiming for a top score.

So that’s it for now. I look forward to your response. I appreciate your diligence, thoroughness, patience, and understanding. I am sure other members feel the same way.

[StaceyKoprince]

There are some differences in our tests vs. the real tests, yes, and the most difficult thing to match is verbal. The natural "style" of the question-writers comes through more in verbal, so people who pick up on that will find more differences when the test-writers change (that is, when you're taking a company's practice test vs. the real test).

It's also the case that the real test has been emphasizing meaning on SCs more lately (as opposed to grammar) and so you may have noticed some differences with that as well. Ah, yes, okay - I just saw your comments about the meaning issue. Go look at some OG problems again but make yourself deal with all meaning issues FIRST and only then let yourself go to grammar. You can use problems you already did before, since you'll be looking for new issues!

On your quant comments, yes, it is important to know when to let go / guess (on both sections, actually), but you also have to make sure that you're not letting go so quickly that you give up on questions you could have gotten - so there's a balance to find there.

You mention that you seemed not to be able to recognize much. Did you study how they disguise topics and questions? At the highest levels (and that's what you're aiming for), they are still testing the same material (they don't add calc or trig or anything), but they do a much better job of disguising what they're testing, so that you also have to figure out what it is in the first place.

I discuss an example in this article:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/09/ ... t-problems

Number properties topics, in particular, are easy to disguise in very tricky ways.

It doesn't surprise me that you didn't see much on probability or geometry - those topics aren't that commonly tested anyway (and aren't worth a ton of study time). Inequalities are more commonly tested and can also be disguised, so I'm wondering whether you might have seen some but didn't recognize them.

I plan to emphasize understanding my errors, reworking problems, and even looking for multiple solutions.

add:
- how they disguise things and how you can learn to decode them (use that article above as a starting point)
- looking for traps, understanding how / why the traps work (how they suck people in, how they get people to start down the wrong solution path on quant, how they get people to thing that a wrong verbal answer is actually better than the right answer, etc)
- you mention practicing and reviewing in an "appropriate ratio"; at the highest levels, that tilts even more over to review, picking these problems apart, thinking of endless variations, what if they did this to me instead, how would that change the problem, etc.

So are you going to take it again? Or are you still deciding? :)

[artistocrat]

Hi Stacey,

Insightful as usual :-)

It starts to get tricky pretty quickly at the higher levels. Concepts are embedded in a crafty way. When I said that a lot of quant questions were unrecognizable, I just meant that I received a lot of obscure word problems that did not 'fit' into any real category.

I have been studying on and off since I wrote my exam, with a considerable amount of time off over the holidays. But I am back at it again, and enjoying all of the Manhattan guides. I went over my old tests over a 5 day period, and I was really getting it. I still have one test left, but I want to save it. I may reset the exams, and do them again, even though the score will mean nothing because of repeats.

I am excited about the prospect of writing again. But to do really well requires a considerable chunk of time. I am pretty busy at work, but who isn't these days. I can fit it in. I have been doing an hour during lunch and an hour at night to start.

Do you think a 30-40 point increase is worth the effort? That's my goal for now. Why limit it you ask? Because I am already over half way there in terms of my personal GMAT database, and my native test taking abilities.

Any more kernels of wisdom?

[StaceyKoprince]

When I said that a lot of quant questions were unrecognizable, I just meant that I received a lot of obscure word problems that did not 'fit' into any real category.

Probably they were word formulations that you either hadn't seen before or hadn't studied, but if you'd had the time to pick them apart, you'd have realized that they really did match things that you'd seen before. Though sometimes, it'd be things like "Oh, half of this is like that one problem but then there's this twist that's like that other problem" - that kind of thing.

One important thing to ask yourself when studying problems that require some interpretation (which is often the case for wordy problems covering general word topics, number properties, and fractions / percents: how else could they word this in order to ask essentially the same thing? How else might this show up? Synonyms, other ways of describing a characteristic, etc.

In terms of your Q about whether 30-40 points is worth it:
(a) that's partially an admissions question, so you'd want to talk to an admissions consultant about that (where are you relative to the average incoming score at that school? how does the rest of your profile compare? etc.)
(b) and partially a personal-goal question: if you want it badly enough, then you go for it. Think about how else you could be spending that time (hobby? taking on more responsibility at work? family?) and make the decision: what's most important to you?

That's really the main thing - we're all so busy that when we decide to spend time doing something, that's inevitably time taken away from something else we could have been doing instead. So you need to figure out what your priorities are, as always. :)