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600 to 580. How $4000 in Kaplan tutoring made me... Worse?

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600 to 580. How $4000 in Kaplan tutoring made me... Worse?

by njschneider » Sun Sep 06, 2015 5:55 am
I need some serious advice from the BTGMAT Forum.

I started preparing for the GMAT around thanksgiving 2014. I did self-study with MGMAT and Kaplan until May 7th 2015. I took the test and got a 600. My goal is a 680+. I took a month off and then ramped again with Kaplan 1-on-1 tutoring 24hrs worth. This tutoring was awesome- the test made sense to me for once and my practice CATs were exactly where I wanted them to be (the last three times before my second official test, I scored a 680 670 and 680). I was excited for the test and I had confidence that everything would work out. Outside of tutoring, I studied everyday for a minimum of 3 hours. I was getting hard question after hard question right and my last verbal was in the 90 percentile. I felt awesome.

The morning of the test... Everything was fine. I took it on a Friday (sept 5 2015) and I got there early. I had some weird stomach issue before but I blame the Starbucks coffee. I got into the test and felt awesome with the writing and IR (even though no one cares about those portions lol). I took my break and then went to quant. The very first question threw me a curve ball... So I guessed. But other than that, I really thought I did okay. I was shooting for a upper 50/lower 60 percentile for quant so I wasn't too concerned.

I started verbal and the grammar was harder than I had seen in Kaplan. The critical reasonings also just did not make sense to me. RC was fine. I fought through the test and then finished. I went through the stupid demographics questions and then saw... What is possibly the top 5 biggest disappointments in my life... A 580. My score went down despite 4 more months of studying, thousands of dollars, and practice CATs that say I'm at a 680. I cancelled my score immediately and then waited for this extremely slow Pearson testing employee to come sign me out. I wanted to cry/punch that Pearson person.

My question for the BTGMAT is this: should I take the test again? I will admit that I was very focused on my end score and not as much on the test (at that point, that was my 17th CAT). I already signed up for Kaplan's online course because it's free with the Kaplan guarantee. But now I'm wondering: should I give up on the GMAT and take the GRE?

Please provide thoughtful responses. I'm not at all a newbie to the GMAT. I need serious advice. This test + work = no time for fun.
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by [email protected] » Sun Sep 06, 2015 12:39 pm
HI njschneider,

I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as planned. When these types of score drops occur, the two likely "causes" involve either something that was unrealistic during practice or something that was surprising (or not accounted for) on Test Day.

If you can answer a few questions, then we should be able to figure this out:

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (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, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once?

GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +-30 points of actual ability. This means that your two Official Scores are essentially the same; by extension, you likely dealt with many aspects of Test Day in the same ways that you did before. If this is the case, then you've likely developed some 'bad habits' that will take some time to get you out of (before you retest).

What is your goals score?
When are you planning to apply to Business School?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
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by ceilidh.erickson » Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:58 am
It sounds to me like you were suffering from test anxiety - that's usually the biggest reason for differences between practice tests and real tests. I think it almost certainly is worth taking again - you know that you have the ability to hit 680-level scores!

Here are some other thoughts:

- Rich's questions are good ones. If you don't take all CATs under test-like conditions, then the real test can be a shock to your system. You need to build up your stamina by doing each CAT under accurate timing conditions.

- Did you take any of the GMATPrep CATs? Those are written by GMAC, so they will be the closest to the real thing. Tests from other companies are approximations, and some students find that they score significantly higher or lower on a given company's CATs than on the real thing.

- Do some mindset work to channel your feelings of anxiety into helpful excitement. Here are some helpful links to think about changing your mindset:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... anagement/
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... at-stress/
https://www.beatthegmat.com/exam-in-10-d ... tml#734718
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... t-wrong-2/

Good luck!
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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by MartyMurray » Fri Sep 11, 2015 9:11 pm
My first question is this. When you were hitting your target on practice tests, what practice tests were they? Were they Kaplan practice tests? or official practice tests?

Here's why. Often people preparing for the GMAT use only test prep company practice tests. What can happen is that the person preparing ends up preparing not for the GMAT, but instead for the tests made by a particular company.

Even if the company's tests are harder than the GMAT, the questions on their practice tests are likely not quite the same as those on the GMAT. In fact, it is probably safe to say that many, if not most, test prep company questions are subtly different from those on the official test.

So if you used only or mostly Kaplan questions and tests, it could very well be that in a sense you diligently prepared not to rock the GMAT, but to rock a Kaplan test.

If what I described is the case, the truth is that likely you are close to being prepared, but you now need to use some official materials and tests, possibly combined with materials from a different company, ones that are slightly different from the Kaplan materials and will give you another perspective.

Did you use GMAT Prep practice tests? If so, when, and how did you score on those?

If you have used GMAT Prep tests, have you used all 4?

Did you use the Official Guide? If not, I recommend getting the e-book version (Making paper is destructive, and using it is also bad karma.) and using the questions that provides.

Hey, if you can rock a Kaplan test, you can rock the actual test. So either your test day was a fluke in a way, or you have a little more preparing to do, or both, but whatever the case may be, you can be confident that you can figure all this out and achieve your target score.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
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