I just Beat The GMAT!

i received a private message regarding this thread.

satishchandra wrote: 1)Mgmat SC 4th Ed(3 times)
2)Powerscore CR bible
3)Kaplan Premium
4)Quant 700-800 questions
5)OG12
6)Verbal review
7)Kaplan 800

that's a LOT of books. if you used that many books, then you are probably studying by just trying to memorize lots and lots of things; that approach will not work. in fact, the entire purpose of the gmat, especially the verbal section, is to be impossible to master via memorization.

As I am an IIT student, I never had any serious problem with Gmat Quant. I improved myself gradually. I got 510 in gmatprep in January when I did not even know A,b,c,d of Gmat.I used to score in the range of 600 in the month of May. I reached 700 mark in September.

ok, so this is 3 gmat prep scores so far. there are only two distinct exams in the software, so it's already guaranteed that these later scores are repeated administrations of the exam. furthermore, the wording of this statement strongly suggests that you took gmat prep more than 3 times.

as i hope you are aware, repeated scores are going to be inflated, and are pretty much meaningless.

In verbal, I reached upto 31st question. I marked all questions D for the later questions.

...so you were forced to make random guesses on the last 10 out of 41 problems (!!)
that is a huge quantity of random guesses -- a quantity so large that it may explain most of your score discrepancy by itself. that's one-fourth of the entire verbal section!

I used to get this score when I started my prep in Jan. I have improved my self so much. I wrote more than 20 tests so far.

actually, the fact that you've done 20 practice tests is not a good thing -- it's a bad thing. after this much over-studying, it's a virtual certainty that you were in a worse situation regarding CR/RC than before you even cracked a gmat book for the first time.
for more on this, read near the bottom of this post:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/how-to-impro ... tml#405217

It not only happened with me. My friend who gave on the same day(Oct 21st) same time in Blore got 540(q41, v24) too. She consistently scored 680 or 670 in Gmatprep exams recently. She gave her official Gmat in August and got 600. She prepared so much (worked about 8 hours a day) during next two months. Even She was expecting to see a 660 when she clicked to view scores. But she also got 540(q41, v24).

if someone is preparing for 8 hours a day, there is a 100% chance that he or she is preparing in a way that will be completely ineffective and most likely harmful. in fact, every student i've known who has studied that many hours has made negative progress on verbal (i.e., scored lower on the official test than on any of their practice tests).
read the above link again; the reasons are in there, and they should make sense.

We are so clueless on how did it happen? What went wrong in the exam. Everything looked so perfect while writing the test but eventually got poorest score what you can think of on any day.

well, as i said above, the sheer quantity of materials you've cited makes it pretty obvious that your primary mechanism of studying is memorization, memorization, and more memorization -- if you are studying had a more conceptual basis, there is no way you would have used that many materials.

fun fact: if you study primarily by memorization, your practice test scores will be inflated, and you WILL score lower on the official test than on your practice tests.
the reason is pretty simple: the existing materials, including practice books and practice tests, are based on official problems that have already been published -- i.e., exactly the same problems that appear in the official guides and in gmat prep. therefore, when you take gmat prep after having studied these materials so extensively, the problems are going to look strangely familiar, because they are the problems on which the prep materials are based in the first place!

if your studying has a conceptual basis (i.e., you are actually trying to understand the mentality and strategy behind the problems, and not trying to memorize "rules"), then seeing new problems on the official test will not be an issue; the underlying mentality and strategy behind those problems will be the same.
however, if your studying is based on memorization, then you are going to crash and burn on the official test -- because the problems, while still fundamentally working in the same general way, won't contain any of the exact same structures, arguments, etc. in this case, even the slightest change from what you've memorized will throw you off, and so you will underperform on the official test.

Can it happen this way?on one day if most 750 gmatprep scorers give their official exam, a 650 gmatprep scorer gets 550 in official exam?

no.

On other day if most 550 gmatprep scorers give their official exam, a 650 gmatprep scorer gets 750 in official exam?

no.

How does the scoring algo works on any particular day?

it works in exactly the same way it works on any other day.
the only thing that might change at all is the percentiles -- and those are going to change very, very, very slowly, because they are based on the last five years' worth of results. the way in which the algorithm generates numerical scores is always exactly the same.

We both are so confident that you ask us to give any practice exam available today, we will score 650 or above. That's what our Prep history is.

see above re: inflated practice-test scores.

But the fact is- I did not screw my exam; In fact exam screwed me
I can believe it just because I experienced it.

i'm sorry, but anecdotal evidence is not evidence. if you want anecdotal evidence on the other side of the equation, i have a private student who just recently took the exam and scored 710, even though none of his practice-test scores had ever been higher than 660.

what bothers me most about this post -- and, in fact, the primary reason why i'm responding to it -- is that there is absolutely no consideration of the fact that you may have been studying the wrong way! you've explored a bunch of other hypotheses, including the rather farfetched idea that the scoring algorithm changes drastically on a daily basis, but you haven't given even a thought to the notion that your preparation may have been misguided.
this attitude is problematic in general (it's impossible to improve at anything if you blame all of your failures on outside sources), but it's especially problematic for anyone who aspires to be a business manager. in business, there are no "hard rules"; if you manage a business and it is failing, you have to look introspectively at the situation and find out what you are doing wrong. what if you've read eight different business books and memorized all their contents, and your business is still not making a profit? ... well, you still have to look introspectively at the situation and find out what you are doing incorrectly.

this post also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the gmat is all about.
this test is NOT a test on which people can achieve top scores by simply "cramming" for an incredible number of hours over an incredibly long period of time. if it were that kind of test, it would be absolutely useless for its intended purpose!
here are a couple of posts i've written, in which i give some insights into what this test actually is. you should read them, consider the ways in which they clash with your (and your friend's) study strategy, and think about making the appropriate changes.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-score-6 ... tml#415768

https://www.beatthegmat.com/what-is-reco ... tml#416810

good luck.

satish, it appears you have a more accurate view of the test now; that's a good thing.

two comments:

satishchandra wrote:It is really good to know that scores on any particular day are based on how well students give the exam not on that particular day but in five previous years.

the numerical scores don't change through time at all. if a performance would have earned a 680 on the day this test format was first introduced, it would still get a 680 today.

the percentiles, however, are based on the last 5 years' worth of performances.

I have big notes for SC.

sentence correction is largely an exercise in setting priorities.
the bad news: if "big notes" means that you have hundreds of pages of notes and are actually expecting to look for all of these things on test day, then that's not realistic.
the good news: there are not very many major topics in sentence correction. if you can fully master the following topics -- as in "recognize them with very close to 100% accuracy, very close to 100% of the time" -- then you will be in very good shape for sentence correction:
meaning of the sentence
parallelism
pronouns
modifier placement
subject-verb agreement
if you have not fully mastered these concepts, do not study anything else until you have. a thorough mastery of these concepts is worth more than a knowledge of literally everything else on sentence correction, combined.

good luck.