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I failed the GMAT, twice!Help would be very much appreciated

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I failed the GMAT, twice!Help would be very much appreciated

by Chris_Lam » Fri Feb 13, 2015 4:28 pm
Hi guys,

I have no other choice to ask for help here. Let me explain my situation.
I recently graduated at Maastricht University, a younger university in the Netherlands (Western-Europe).

Ever since graduation I've been trying to get into a Masterpgrogram at the same uni. Unfortunately, students are not allowed any more to continue their Masters at a different faculty other than the one where they did their Bachelors (Europe uses a Bachelor-Masters structure). This is where the GMAT comes into the story. I've built a strong file that should allow me to continue my studies. Yet, I need one more thing to be admissable: the GMAT (targetscore 650).

I started studying the first time around September 2014. Next to buying all the Manhattan GMAT books I also followed a course mostly focussed on the quantitative part of the GMAT. After three months of studying I was consitsently scoring mid 600s scores for the practice test, implying I was ready to take the test. After my first time I was completely shocked as I scored a 510. Way beyond what I was usually scoring. I think I scored around 20% for the Math part and 70 % percent Verbal part. I felt down for a day but realizef that I wanted to pass the GMAT more than ever. I decided to take up studying after Christmas.

This time I started studying beginning January. I scored high-600 scores on the Manhattan GMAT tests and two mid-600 score on GMAT prep. This time I was feeling ready more than ever. Today however (February 13th) I scored a 480. I am not lying when I say that I cried when I saw the score. That is why I am asking you guys for help. What should I do? I have no idea what goes wrong? Help would be very much appreciated!

Important info:
- I made full Practice tests trying to get used to the official setting as much as possible.
- I primarily used the Manhattan GMAT guides and I did a course at GMAT Holland.
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by MartyMurray » Fri Feb 13, 2015 5:22 pm
There are two things that come to mind for me here.

One of them is that you seem to have focused on MGMAT's materials and CATs when practicing. Over and over I see people who think they have been preparing for the GMAT and who have actually prepared for a test prep company's CATs. So I wonder if you too have done that, prepared for MGMAT CAT's rather than the actual GMAT, which is slightly different.

Maybe I have it wrong and you have used official materials and CATs, but if I have it right, that's likely part of what's going on here.

The second thing I wonder about is some kind of major mental block. I mean the discrepancy between your practice test scores and your official test scores is pretty wide. MGMAT CATs are often described as being even a little more difficult than the real thing. So maybe, or likely, something is going on, maybe some kind of inner conflict, self sabotage or fear thing. Maybe you can figure this out and do something about it before you take the test again. Doing that might be even more important for raising your score than more preparation.

Myself, I have meditated on these types of things and found within me all kinds of nuttiness that can make my score lower than it would be were I not in conflict with myself.
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by [email protected] » Fri Feb 13, 2015 5:58 pm
Hi Chris-Lam,

When a Test Taker sees a significant score drop on the Official GMAT, the reason(s) are likely to be found in one of two areas:

1) Something that you did during practice was 'unrealistic', so you weren't ready for the specifics of Test Day.
2) Something about Test Day significantly impacts your performance.

I have a few questions about how you studied and about Test Day:

1) When you said that you took the FULL CAT each time, did that include the Essay? Did you do anything unrealistic during your CATs (re: anything that didn't match the Official GMAT - pause the Test, listen to music, etc.)?
2) What time of day did you take your CATs and what time of day was your Official GMAT?
3) What did you do in the last week before your GMAT?

4) How did you sleep the night before the Test?
5) How long is the ride to the Testing Center from your home?
6) What were your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on each of your Official GMATs?

Thankfully, the GMAT is a predictable, standardized Exam, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. Something is clearly "off" here and we need to fix it before you retest.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
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by Chris_Lam » Sat Feb 14, 2015 7:37 am
Hi Guys,

Thanks for getting back to me on such short notice.

@Marty, I only used the MGMAT as a first indicator to see how I was doing. From the beginning onwards I learned that Gmat prep is the closest to the real thing. Regarding the difficulty level of the two test, I had the feeling that MGAT was slightly easier than Gmat prep.

Maybe it makes sense if I outline how I prepared. When I first learned I had to take the GMAT I decided to take part into a course of an organization called GMAT Holland. They introduced students to the basic mathematical concepts. I was really disappointed by their way of teaching as they used tutors who studied Econometrics and who did not take the real thing but a prep test. Anyways, next to taking this course I also bought the MGMAT guides which primarily focus on the mathematical concepts.

The first step was to get acquainted with all of the theory of both the verbal and the math part. After studying the theory for a week I began practicing questions. I think I made around a 100 questions for math and around 500 for verbal. In doing so, I used an online environment that I also paid for via Gmat Holland. After I was scoring consistently 600 scores I decided it was time to take the test.

The week for the test I made a test, using MGMAT and GMAT prep, every day scoring between 590 and 630. The day before I made the second Gmat prep test and scored a 550. Because of this I was feeling really nervous and stressed out and decided to do another test on the morning of the test itself and scored a 600 on a MGAT cat test. I now know this one of the stupidest things I could have done... That afternoon I scored a 510 on my first attempt.

I took up studying after Christmas and decided to focus even more on making practice questions. Hence, I used the same virtual environment by Gmat Holland to practice questions. I started by doing reps of 15 questions (three a day) for both Verbal and Quant. For Verbal I practiced level 700-800 questions and consistently scored between 80 and 90%. For Quant. I primarily focused on level 500-600 questions and consistently scored between 40 and 50%.

This time I made around 500 questions for both Verbal and Quant. Two weeks before the test, i.e. February 13th, I decided to start by doing a full Gmat prep test and scored a 580. Was again disappointed by my score and therefore decided to purchase a Question pack to practice questions from Gmat prep. I was also curious whether the questions would be different from the questions in the online environment by Gmat Holland. I made around 100 questions and scored 79% correct. For me this was again an indication that I was ready.

Nine to ten days before the test, I took a test from MGMAT, with on day rest between them, and scored decent 600 scores (630, 620 and 610). Two days before the test I did my second Gmat prep test and scored a 640. The day before the test I did absolutely nothing and revised my notes a bit. February 13th was G-day and I was feeling positive and ready even though I was feeling a bit nervous (Because what if I scored lower than 600...). Everything was going okay; I dominated the essay, IR was not important for me, and I was feeling positive about Quant. Halfway the verbal part I got a long and pretty technical RC passage on patent problems in the ICT sector. I don't know what happened but I got completely stuck.. it was as if I could not read anymore. I felt my heart bumping in my throat and thought that it was better to completely ignore the passage and guessed all four questions belonging to that question. After that I calmed down and finished the verbal part in time.

That was my second test for which I scored a 480... Pfffoe what a day.

Btw, My apologies for my long comment.
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by Chris_Lam » Sat Feb 14, 2015 8:00 am
@Rich

These are the answers to your questions.

1) I took full cats each time including the essay and IR. IR is not important for me so I did not put any effort in the sections whatsoever. I have to admit that I sometimes paused some of the CATS to look up a word I didn't understand (part of being a non-native speaker). Moreover, when I was on break time I sometimes read some news paper articles.

In total, I think I made around 9 MGAT cats and 4 Gmat prep test. The last week before the test I tried to simulate the conditions of the GMAT as much as possible (not listening music, not reading blog etc.). I only used the 8 minutes to go to the bath room.

2) I usually took the cats in the early afternoon (Noonish). My first attempts was scheduled at 4:30 pm and my second at 11:30 am.

3) For my first attempt I took a Cat or Gmat prep every day. The day before I took my second Gmat prep. On the day itself I took a MGMAT cat in the morning.

For my second attempt I took test with breaks of one day (all three of them were MGMAT cats). Two days before the test I took my second Gmat prep test. The day before I relaxed a bit and revised (very briefly) my notes for some of the Math concepts and the outline of my essay.

4) I slept quite well. Yet, the day before I couldn't sleep as I was laying in my bed feeling anxious about the test. You could compare it with the feeling a kid has the day before going on vacation.

5) the ride was about one and a half hours.

6) To be honest, I only looked at the score and was feeling so emotional that I was not really interest anymore in seeing the scaled scores. If I have to make a guess I would say that I had low 40% for Quant. and the same for Verbal. But again, I am not sure.

Thank you for helping me out guys. I really appreciate it.

Chris
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by MartyMurray » Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:55 am
Chris, probably you should get in touch with GMAC and get those sub scores. It might even make sense for you to pay the price and get the enhanced score report, at least for the second sitting. I for one am so curious about what happened and about how much ditching that RC passage affected your score.

From the sound of it, it does sound as if at least to some degree your preparation was skewed toward whatever GMAT Holland might have skewed it toward. So that really could be part of the issue.

One thing you could do to get a higher score is use some other sources of questions so that you get a more balanced preparation. I personally like the BellCurves question bank for quant, and the Veritas question bank for both verbal and quant.

On another note, the fact that you locked up in the middle of working on an RC passage is some indication of a level of anxiety that could affect your performance more than you are realizing. Also, I still wonder if you are psychologically sabotaging yourself somehow.
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by [email protected] » Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:44 am
Hi Chris_Lam,

All of the extra information that you've provided is important; it defines a lot of the different ways how your practice just wasn't 'realistic' enough to properly prepare you for what you experienced (and will experience again) on Test Day.

1) Although you did not realize it at the time, the class that you took does not sound like a proper GMAT Class.

2) You took too many CATs in too short a period of time. As a general rule, you should NOT be taking more than 1 CAT/week. Taking a CAT the morning of your Official GMAT was also not a good idea.

3) Most of the CATs were NOT taken in a realistic fashion. Skipping sections, pausing the Test, etc. - making those types of choices during practice almost always leads to an "inflated", unrealistic score. The longer-term damage is that you are not properly training yourself for the full 4-hour "event" of Test Day.

Using your Official Score as a gauge, you have a lot of work to do to get to 650+. The good news is that you have a lot of experience now, so you shouldn't be surprised by anything on Test Day. The bad news is that you've developed a number of "bad habits" during your studies which will take some time to "fix." You're also going to need to learn (and practice) some new tactics. You will probably need to invest in some new GMAT resources. This will probably take 2-3 months of additional study.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
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by Chris_Lam » Sun Feb 15, 2015 8:52 am
Hi Guys,

@Rich, why do you state that most of the cats I took were not realistic enough? Most of my cats (9 out of 13) WERE in an official setting. During those test I did not take breaks, skip sections or pause the test. I only used the breaks between IR-quant and quant-verbal to go to the bathroom.

What do you suggest that I should do to develop a 'new' or better approach towards the GMAT?

@Marty, the GMAT course I took consisted out of two parts. Firstly, personal teaching classes of 8 hours in total where a tutor introduced me to Quant. concepts. Secondly, access to an online environment/database where you could practice over 5000 questions. All though the teaching part sucked, the online environment was pretty okay as the questions were similar to questions within MGMAT cats and the Gmat prep question pack.

In my opinion, the only thing that could explain my anxiety is the fear of ruining my score again. This was especially true for my second attempt where I occasionally thought "what if I blow it again"?

In the end, I am completely struck by the fact that my official scores do not add up to my practice scores. Even when I consider that some tests where not taken under official conditions, it still does not explain why I score decent 600 scores for both MGMAT cat and Gmat prep tests when taken under official conditions and completely blow up the real thing.

Ultimately, I was wondering what both of you would advise me to do differently towards my preparation for the third attempt.

Once again, thanks for helping me out.

Chris
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by MartyMurray » Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:24 am
Yes, it is FREAKY that you consistently score above 600 in practice and took the test and scored 480.

Wow. A twenty point, a fifty point drop miight make sense....somehow.

An almost 200 point difference???? Now that takes some doing.

Are you sure you want to go to grad school, that you don't have some unconscious desire to do something else? This seems like self sabotage the more I think about it. Something's going on anyway, fear, anxiety, sabotage, something like that.

Myself, I meditate to find things like those and do something about them. For instance, my unconscious inner child aspect delights in making me decide to get questions wrong. I found that out via meditation and other self awareness techniques. As long as that inner child aspect of me wants to choose wrong answers, I am going to figure out ways to get some wrong. I can confuse radius with diameter, forget to divide, forget that zero is a possibility, whatever it takes.

So maybe your preparation going forward could include your becoming more self aware somehow. You might realize that you are really bugging about this test, or that you are conflicted about your career goals. In working with people I have found some who have difficulty with tests because of being angry about things going on in relationships or because they don't want to show up their friends by scoring higher than their friends do. There are so many things that can be going on, and a sure way to get your score higher is to find some of those things within yourself and do something to resolve them. That's one idea. Maybe it's not what you expected to hear, but that's for real. I use approaches like meditation, visualization and resolution of inner conflict all the time and generally get great results in doing so.
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by manyaabroadtpr » Wed Feb 18, 2015 3:15 am
Chris_Lam wrote:Hi guys,

I have no other choice to ask for help here. Let me explain my situation.
I recently graduated at Maastricht University, a younger university in the Netherlands (Western-Europe).

Ever since graduation I've been trying to get into a Masterpgrogram at the same uni. Unfortunately, students are not allowed any more to continue their Masters at a different faculty other than the one where they did their Bachelors (Europe uses a Bachelor-Masters structure). This is where the GMAT comes into the story. I've built a strong file that should allow me to continue my studies. Yet, I need one more thing to be admissable: the GMAT (targetscore 650).

I started studying the first time around September 2014. Next to buying all the Manhattan GMAT books I also followed a course mostly focussed on the quantitative part of the GMAT. After three months of studying I was consitsently scoring mid 600s scores for the practice test, implying I was ready to take the test. After my first time I was completely shocked as I scored a 510. Way beyond what I was usually scoring. I think I scored around 20% for the Math part and 70 % percent Verbal part. I felt down for a day but realizef that I wanted to pass the GMAT more than ever. I decided to take up studying after Christmas.

This time I started studying beginning January. I scored high-600 scores on the Manhattan GMAT tests and two mid-600 score on GMAT prep. This time I was feeling ready more than ever. Today however (February 13th) I scored a 480. I am not lying when I say that I cried when I saw the score. That is why I am asking you guys for help. What should I do? I have no idea what goes wrong? Help would be very much appreciated!

Important info:
- I made full Practice tests trying to get used to the official setting as much as possible.
- I primarily used the Manhattan GMAT guides and I did a course at GMAT Holland.
Hi Chris,

We would advise you to take as many practice tests as possible. And spend as much time in analyzing your performance in the same. Typically if you spend 2 hours in a mock test, spend 4-5 hours in analyzing your performance in the same.Take a note on how to attempt each question better, faster and smarter. You can also join a test series in a coaching institute.Joining a coaching institute is recommended as it keeps you motivated all the time.

Wish you the best
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