Very disappointing experience. Experts help please

[gmatcats]

Hi,

I have been studying for a good 4 months now. I took the test 2 weeks ago and scored a 570, 41 quant 28 verbal. My practice scores however on manhattan gmat were all high 600's and gmat prep was mid 600's. I said I would be ok for the first time as long as I scored low-mid 600's since stuff happens... but a 570??!! I was shocked. Honestly I got hit with like 3 combo/prob questions- a weakness, the third an insane question I had to guess and then the 4th as well- didn't seem that hard but i just wasn't able to rearrange the equation and get an answer which I think really messed me up, confidence and rhythm wise. I want to say those are the reasons for the low quant but maybe I truly am not at a 45-48 quant even though those were my scores on practice tests. Also verbal, I don't know what happened at all. A 28... the lowest I ever got a a practice test was a 33, which was a one time bust.

Since the test, I got right back on have been keeping up just practicing quant and have focused an insane amount on SC. I just took first practice mgmat and got a 700, 47 quant 38 verbal- highest to date with 3 sc wrong. For some reason I hardly get any CR wrong on gmat prep but mgmat I tend to miss a lot. But anyway, how do I make sure what happened doesn't happen again on the may 24th test, my next coming test. I need a minimum of a 700 and I don't think I'm being unrealistic due to my practice scores.

Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks again.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you had a rough test experience. It's important to figure out what went wrong - that will help us figure out what to do to avoid a similar drop next time.

Read this and do the analysis described:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ent-wrong/

Then come back here and share your analysis with us.

Also, if you took our course or one of our Guided Self-Study packages, 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 went wrong and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment.

Next, did you take your practice tests under 100% official conditions, including essays, length of breaks, EVERYthing? If so (or if you deviated only a little), use the below article to analyze your most recent 1-2 MGMAT CATs:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

If you deviated a lot, take another CAT under 100% official conditions, then do the analysis described in that article. Then come back here and share your analysis with us. (Note: don't just give us the raw data - tell us what you think it means. That's an important skill to develop.)

Finally, take a look at the resources discussed in this article:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -the-gmat/

[anjang86]

gmatcats,

I had almost the same exact experience as you. Check it out:

test-on-may-5th-still-not-happy-with-results-t15330.html

send me an email - anjang86 at gmail and let's help each other out. I restest on July 16th (new format) so I want to see if we are taking the same approach to studying for the restest.

I'm interested in knowing what material you are using now because I used up a lot of resources - CATs, OG Problems, etc. prepping for the first test.

Also, I'm trying to figure out why we tanked so bad. I had EXACTLY the same feelings as you regarding combo problems and also was very surprised that my verbal was so much lower than my quant.

[gmatcats]

Thank you both for your responses.

First- Stacey- thank you so much for your input. All my cat's were test like and under test like conditions. I don't think that was the issue at all. I am pretty sure I know what happened.

1) Quant- I have found that when I spend more time on the earlier ones, this is when I get the highest quant scores. I know this may not work for a lot of people- but it did work for me. On the test day, number 2 and number 3 I simply could not figure out, and i think i panicked. I should have spent more time on it and it didn't go well- timing was off. In addition, I got 2 or 3 combo/perm problems. I didn't study those topics since people said they rarely see them on the gmat, I got lucky with 2 of them. I truly think i just had an off day and got nervous, so a 41 isin't that far off from my 45 average on gmat prep quant. This time around, I have mastered the basics in both categories and think getting the basic questions right will earn me a minimum of a 46 on quant.

2) Verbal- This is where I deserve to get a hit in the face. Before my last gmat, I had no timing strategy and underestimated SC like no body's business. CR was never really an issue- I might get 1 or 2 wrong if the wording is difficult and its simply a really hard question- cant fix that. For RC, if I didn't understand the passage I would panic a little and try and guess well. Now, I am reading over the passages a few times (if thats what it takes) to understand the passage. I have seen my accuracy improve from that. In addition, I am trying to make sure every answer is supported by the passage- not that it "works" but that it has to be right- this has helped me catch a few mistakes. SC is currently my issue and have actually posted a new topic a few threads down about this. I did deserve the 28 I got on the gmat. The issue is, as you can see in my other post, that since my last official gmat, I have taken 3 practice tests.

1 Mgmat- 700 47, 38

2 Mgmat 710 47 40

3- Today- Gmat prep 660 46 35.

Gmat prep Today-The quant I made a few careless errors but on verbal, I got 16 questions wrong.The breakdown was 3 RC 2 CR and 11 SC. I am suprised Gmat prep even gave me a 35... The weird thing is that on mgmat cat's, i had a 77 percent accuracy with SC; On the cats I got 3 and 4 wrong respectivelly. My SC accuracy was way above any other section on the mgmat cat's. So, I'm not sure what to do at this point. I understand modifiers and parallelism and all the basics- I am not sure thats going to help anymore. I am thinking i really have to learn all the rules inside and out. SC is what's holding me back from a 700 and is really my main focus till my next test on may 24th.


Thanks so much again for all your help!

[StaceyKoprince]

Study groups are great! I'm glad you two have hooked up.

anjang, re: your mention of practice materials, two things:
(1) You are going to need to go back over some of your old materials, even old practice problems, because there were some "holes" in what you learned the first time through - so realize that, just because you've already done something doesn't mean you're actually done with it for good. :)
(2) You can get new OG questions by purchasing OG13 (200+ new quant and verbal Qs). If you download the new GMATPrep (2.0), you'll also get 15 free practice questions for each of the question types, and you can buy access to about 400 more (combined) Q and V questions through the GMATPrep 2.0 software. These are all new questions that haven't been released before.

On the test day, number 2 and number 3 I simply could not figure out, and i think i panicked. I should have spent more time on it and it didn't go well- timing was off.

I doubt that the problem was that you didn't spend enough time. More time does not automatically equal a correct answer - sometimes the question is just too hard. (In fact, as a general trend, the more time we spend above, say, 3m or so, the *less* likely we are to get something right - because spending all that time is an indication that we're struggling with something on the problem...)

We don't know for sure exactly which problems count, but we do know that we all get the same mix of "counted" problems (from different topic areas) - the variation is in the experimental questions. So if you get more combinatorics / probability than usual, that's because some of them are experimental questions, in which case you don't care. Remind yourself of that if that happens again. :)

Note that accuracy for certain question types can change from test to test simply depending upon the difficulty mix that you happen to get. If one test happens to have a harder mix of SC and the next one happens to have a harder mix of CR, well, then your performance is going to change accordingly.

At the same time, 11 wrong in SC indicates that there's definitely some work to be done in that area! You mention that you started another post about SC, but I don't know how far down the list it is or whether I'll get to that other post today, so I'm going to give you some advice here.

What do you think was going on in that GMATPrep test? When you look back over those questions, were you lost? Did you think a rule was one thing when it was actually something else? Did you get distracted by something that didn't "sound" right or vice versa? Were there times you narrowed down to 2 but didn't see how to pick between them - they both looked fine to you?

That last one often has to do with the meaning of the sentence. There's a difference between looking at two answers and thinking, "Well, I can see that the difference between the two is right here but I just don't know the rule" and "Hmm, they both seem okay. How can I choose?" How much have you studied meaning?

Here are some resources on meaning (and you can browse our blog for more):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... orrection/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... on-part-2/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... h-meaning/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... problem-2/

Were there sentences that were had such long underlines and were so convoluted that you felt like you weren't even sure what they were trying to say in the original sentence? And the answer choices were changing so much that you didn't know where to start?

Here are some resources for those kinds of sentences:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... sc-problem
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/03/ ... -problem-2

And, of course, if you have holes in your foundational knowledge of the grammar, then you know what to do there... :)