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Help! Just imploded on the quant section (Q38)

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Help! Just imploded on the quant section (Q38)

by rolltide82 » Sat May 16, 2015 11:41 am
Just took the GMAT this morning and was crushed to see a 640 total (Q38/V40). While the verbal score is inline with previous practice tests, the quant score is far lower than I'd been scoring.

I've spent the past 5 months studying fairly consistently (100+ hours) to take the GMAT and have been scoring in the 670-700 range on practice tests. To prepare for the exam I enrolled and completed Kaplan's Online Course and used problems from the OG in addition to Kaplan's 800 book. I used practice tests from Kaplan and the GMAT Prep scoring a 50 and 47 respectively on the quant section as recently as 1 week ago.

I won't accept a Q score of 38 but I'm unsure about how to proceed. Should I cram over the next month and plan to take the test in 5 weeks or do I need a different plan. I'm hoping that my quant score was an aberration but I have no way to know for sure other than comparing the score to practice tests. I don't feel like nerves were a factor since I felt good during the AWA and scored a 7 on the IR section and followed up my pathetic quant performance with an appropriate verbal score.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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by [email protected] » Sat May 16, 2015 2:38 pm
Hi rolltide82,

First off, a 640 is a solid score (it's just shy of the 80th percentile overall, so it might be enough to get you into Business School. Given your score range on your CATs and the Q38, it's understandable why you would want to retest though.

I have a few questions about how you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, listen to music, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once?

It's possible that you just had a "bad day", but a Quant drop from Q50 down to Q38 is evidence that something was clearly "off" in your practice or on Test Day. We really need to figure out all of things that contributed to that drop and fix them before you go in for a retest.

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by rolltide82 » Sun May 17, 2015 5:18 am
Hi Rich,

Thanks for the reply. My answers to your questions are listed below:

1) starting with the 4th CAT, I typically took the entire exam including the AWA and integrated reasoning sections
2) I took all of the practice exams at home
3) I started each practice CAT on Weekend mornings although I didn't have a hard and fast rule about starting exactly at 8am.
4) In the past I have paused exams to take an unscheduled bathroom break but tried to limit these as I progressed. My final GMAT prep test was taken uninterrupted without any unscheduled breaks. I took this exam a week before the GMAT and scored a 47 on the quant section.
5) I never took a CAT more than once.

On the real GMAT, the second question on the quant section seemed inordinately difficult and I spent too much time trying to figure out a problem that I eventually guessed on. After that though, I feel like I recovered well enough. I'd spent the past month focusing on more difficult questions in an attempt to crack 700 and throughout my exam I kept thinking that I wasn't getting these more difficult questions which worried me a bit. Im trying to recall the exam and it's kind of a blur now, but I didn't feel like I was drowning.

I honestly can't think of a good reason that I scored so low.
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by [email protected] » Sun May 17, 2015 9:53 am
Hi rolltide82,

The extra information that you provided is important, in that it points to some things that you did during your studies that were NOT realistic relative to Test Day. Skipping sections, pausing the Test, taking CATs at home, etc. are not 'in line' with what you faced on Test Day, so it's possible that your CAT scores were 'inflated.'

Other factors could have occurred in the last day before your Exam and on Test Day itself, including:

1) How well you slept.
2) Changing your daily routine.
3) The length of travel to the Testing Center.
4) General nerves or anxiety.
5) Test Day distractions.
6) What you did on your two 8-minute breaks.
Etc.

From your description, it's tough to measure how much the extra time you spent on that one Quant question could have impacted your performance. Maybe you spent way too much time on it and it rattled your confidence for the rest of the section. One wrong answer would not have pulled down your score that much though, so there must have been a series of questions that you got wrong.

It might be a good idea to take a new FULL-LENGTH CAT in the next week for comparison purposes, but you have to make that "event" match up with Test Day in every way that you can reasonably make happen (so don't pause the Test, don't take it at home, etc.). If there's an inconsistency in your performance, this should help to find it.

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun May 17, 2015 11:07 am
I agree with Rich's advice here. Simulate testing conditions as closely as possible on the next practice exam to see if that gap between practice and official test still exists. No pausing the test. No bathroom breaks during a section.

If the gap is still there, here's one theory as to what may have happened: after spending too much time on that second question, you compensated by speeding up your pace just enough to make a few careless mistakes on the next few questions, which you knew how to do. Repeated mistakes on what the algorithm deems 'easier' questions can have a large negative impact on your score. By the time you re-calibrated, the algorithm was feeding you easier questions and you never quite climbed out of that hole. (But, of course, there's no way to know for sure.)

Keep us posted...
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by rolltide82 » Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:53 am
Thanks for the advice.

During my time in between exams, I decreased the frequency of my practice CATS, and also started the habit of taking them at a third party location and adhering to all official GMAT test taking rules and breaks.

Last week I took a practice CAT from the GMAT Prep Test Pack (Exam 3) and scored a 710. Earlier today I sat for the real thing and scored a 700. I think this is the end of my GMAT journey but wanted to thank both Rich and David for the advice.
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by [email protected] » Fri Aug 28, 2015 5:05 pm
Hi rolltide82,

That's fantastic news! A 700 is a considerable improvement over a 640 - whatever adjustments you made clearly helped you to perform at a higher overall level. This score will make you a stronger overall applicant and could open up some scholarship possibilities.

When are you planning to apply to Business School?
Do you know which Schools you plan to apply to?

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Rich
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