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From 590 to 550, what is happening?

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From 590 to 550, what is happening?

by laqua » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:34 am
Hi all,

I am crushed about the GMAT, and in need of some advice and motivation.

English is not my firs language, so I'm sorry in advance for spelling errors and bad language (I'm Norwegian).

I have been studying for the GMAT for a couple of months, and my test is in 7 days. My initial goal was 700 (an absolute joke at the moment), and after scoring 590 on my first CAT, I adjusted my goal to 650.

After completing the whole Kaplan On-Demand course, reading and doing every problem in the GMAT Premier book, I took another CAT and got 560 (!). Studied some more, and got a 580.

All of the CATs were Kaplan-CATs, and I heard that these use an algorithm giving you fewer points than the real test, so I did the MGMAT free CAT yesterday - and got a 550.

I am devastated, and I don't know what to do :(

And just to make the whole thing worse, it seems my Kaplan On-Demand course expired yesterday (it's very hard to find out at what date is expires from the Kaplan-website!), I'm not even allowed to review my CATs.

OK - enough whining. If you are still with me: What should I do? With 7 days left, where should I put my focus? Any "must read books" I should get? Should I spend my time doing CATs and reviewing mistakes?

My math scores are "all over the place" and I can't seem to find a pattern showing me where to place my focus. The same goes for the verbal section. (I'm in total denial about the IR). So I'm looking for some general advice, if that even exists...

Best regards,
Devastated GMAT student
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:55 am
Hi laqua,

Sorry to hear about your predicament.

I typically suggest that students achieve their target score on at least 2 practice tests before they take the official test, but it sounds like it's too late to reschedule your tests, so.....

It's hard to tell which areas you need to focus on, but I will mention that the GMAT is a test of your math and verbal skills AND it's a test of your test-taking skills. So, taking several practice tests is an important part of your prep. So, unless you've already identified your main areas of weakness, I suggest that you take another test or two and carefully analyze them to identify areas of weakness.

While analyzing your practice tests, there are four main types of weakness to watch out for:
1. specific Quant skills/concepts (e.g., algebra, geometry, etc.)
2. specific Verbal skills/concepts (e.g., verb tenses, assumption CR questions, etc.)
3. test-taking skills (time management, endurance, anxiety etc.)
4. silly mistakes

For the first two weaknesses, the fix is pretty straightforward. Learn the concept/skill and find some practice questions to strengthen that weakness. To focus on one topic at a time, you can use BTG's tagging feature to isolate one concept. For example, here are all of the questions tagged as statistics questions: https://www.beatthegmat.com/forums/tags/ ... statistics
See the left side of that linked page for more tag options. HAVING SAID THAT, given that you have only 7 days remaining, don't spend a lot of time working on topics that are not frequently tested. For example, counting and probability take a fair bit of work to perfect, and they aren't tested that much.

If your test-taking skills are holding you back, then you need to work on these. For example, we have a free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244.

Finally, if silly mistakes are hurting your score, then it's important that you identify and categorize these mistakes so that, during tests, you can easily spot situations in which you're prone to making errors. I write about this and other strategies in the following article for BTG: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/ ... n-the-gmat

I hope that helps. Best of luck!

Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
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by laqua » Thu Feb 20, 2014 4:04 am
Thank you for advice and links.

I will do the best out of it on test day, and cross my fingers hoping for a miracle :)
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Thu Feb 20, 2014 7:53 am
Good luck, laqua.

Let us know how things went.

Cheers,
Brent
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by [email protected] » Thu Feb 20, 2014 3:25 pm
Hi Iaqua,

The GMAT is remarkably good at giving you the score that you EARN, so when answering a question, think in terms of what it will take to PROVE that you have the correct answer and then do that necessary work. If you have the chance to go back and review any of your work thus far, pay careful attention to WHY you got questions wrong. Work to fix any of the little things, but try not to burn yourself out before Test Day.

The worse-case scenario is that you end up with a GMAT score that you're not happy with. Since Business Schools don't care if you retake the GMAT, a bad Test Date won't be the end of your story. Since you're describing a lot of inconsistencies, chances are that you'll need to retake the GMAT (and you'll need more time to study before you do), but that's not the end of the world. Many Test Takers end up spending more time on this process than they initially thought would be needed. Don't lose sight of your goals.

As Brent said, you should repost after your exam to fill us in on how everything went.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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