Can I raise my score 60-100 points in 1 month?

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Hello everyone, despite what my UserName suggests, my score is nowhere near 800. I recently scored a 630 on the GMAT and was wondering if I could raise my score to 700-730 with 1 month of studying. I scored 630 after studying for about 2 weeks for about 4 hours per day. For the next month I'll have about the same amount of time per day to study.

My score breakdown is as follows:

Q36
V40
IR6 (I didn't study at all for IR)

Ideally I'd like my score to get up to 730 but 700 will suffice. However, is that possible to do with 1 month left?

Thanks for the replies!
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by [email protected] » Tue Jan 06, 2015 9:40 pm
Hi GMAT800FTW,

Improving from a 630 to a 700+ in a month's time will be something of a challenge. You'll have to get out of your "bad habits" quickly and implement some new tactics, but you do have an interesting opportunity in the Quant section - there are a LOT of points to be had there that you currently aren't getting. With a Q36, I think that you probably have the necessary "math knowledge" and can do most calculations without too much trouble, but you're not thinking in a tactical way, you're probably missing a lot of DS questions and you're making a bunch of silly mistakes throughout the section. To be fair, that's a variety of things that need to be 'fixed', but I'll grant that it's possible if you can make the necessary adjustments and if you use the proper material.

How far back can you push your Test Date?

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by MartyMurray » Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:56 pm
Sounds doable. Two weeks of preparation left you pretty much still a newbie. So by taking things to the next level you could push up your score as much as you are looking to.

Have to play a tight game though.

Every move has to have decent ROI. For instance, it might bug you that you can't do much with a certain specific quant problem type, such as permutations, but working a lot on that topic does not have great ROI. Probably you would gain more from working on things that can be applied more generally, such as algebra.

It looks as if you are pretty skilled in verbal already. What that might mean is that with a little more knowledge of how the questions work you could get significantly more right. For one thing, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension are so logic based that you barely need to learn anything new to rock them. You just need to get more skilled at reading carefully and seeing the logic of what is going on. Also, if you learn a handful of key things like the fact that on an inference question the inference has to be true based on the information in the prompt, then you will do the questions more quickly and answer more accurately.

Beyond that, by getting a little more clear regarding things like placement of modifiers, subject verb agreement and parallelism of lists, you could improve your accuracy in Sentence Correction.

On quant, as Rich said, likely there is plenty of low hanging fruit. For instance, if you just get a little better at handling certain things such as Data Sufficiency, triangles and absolute value, things that will definitely or likely show up on the test, you will gain points quickly, both from getting those questions right and from speeding up your calculations so that you have more time for other questions.

Another cool thing to consider is that logic similar to what you are using to get verbal questions right can be applied to getting quant questions right. You may just need to get skilled in using the mathematical building blocks of the quant questions.

So yes, if you really spend the amount of time you said you have to spend, and invest it wisely, you can really develop some skill in playing this game called the GMAT. So achieving that goal, especially the 700, is totally possible. Push the verbal up to 44, which is not very far, and the quant up to 44, which is reasonable, and there's 710 - 720, and who knows, maybe you will score even higher.

Be sure to use official GMAT practice CATs from GMAT Prep along the way.
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by manyaabroadtpr » Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:55 pm
Hi GMAT800FTW,

One month time is sufficient enough to pull up your score from 630 to 700+, however you will have to plan a strategy and need to stick to that religiously.I would advice you to start by giving a mock test first, take out time and analyse your test thoroughly.Identify your strong and weak areas.Create a study plan for yourself accordingly and study for at least 6 hours daily.

Follow this for at least two weeks, then start giving as many practice tests as possible.If you spend 2 hours in giving the test, spend 4 hours in analysing the same.Go back to your solutions and try to find out better and smarter ways to solve those problems.

If you keep practicing this way, it will really help you to bring your scores up considerably.

Hope this helps.Let me know if you would have any further queries regarding your gmat preparation.Wish you the best.
www.manyagroup.com