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Help please - 620 to 480

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Help please - 620 to 480

by ffra » Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:47 pm
Hello,
I have been studying for the GMAT for a while and tried most of the courses and tutors out there and suggested on this forum, which have been great as I feel I have definitely improved.
Lately I was studying on the material from MGMAT - study guides and CATs.
Great books, only good things to say on them.
I can't make sense on why though, while I was scoring around 620 on their CATs with the verbal around 70% or more, I got 480 on my real test yesterday and the verbal was 31%.
I stress the verbal because the quant is harder to judge for me.
That score was even lower than the 580 I got when I took the GMAT in August.
I feel that the test environment and its A/C help me be more focused, less tired and keep the concentration for longer.
I would appreciate any suggestions / thoughts on what it could be, similar experiences, and what anyone thinks I could do to improve the score on the real test.
thanks!
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 3:40 pm
The first thing I am wondering is whether you used official practice tests, such as the GMAT Prep tests, in addition to the Manhattan practice tests. Here's why.

Test prep company practice tests can be subtly different from official tests, and so sometimes people who have practiced via using mostly or exclusively test prep company tests find that they have prepared for the tests of a particular test prep company rather than for the actual GMAT. This type of issue could be further exacerbated if the person had been preparing via using mostly the prep materials from that same company. By using both the prep materials and tests of one company, one runs the risk of getting a perspective of the GMAT that is somehow biased.

So is it possible that that type of issue is part of what underlies the discrepancy between your practice test scores and you official score?

If so, maybe you should continue to prepare and should use official materials and materials created by other prep companies so that you get other perspectives on the test and what it takes to get right answers.

Other than that, did you sleep well the night before the test?

Did you party or something the day before or the night before the test?

Did you take extra breaks during your practice tests?

Is there anything about the way you practiced that does not match the way the actual test works. For instance, did you complete all the sections when practicing?
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by ffra » Sun Nov 15, 2015 4:35 pm
Hi Marty,
First off, thanks for your response and attention - much appreciated!
You brought up good points - yes, I studied on both the 2015 and 2016 OG.
I did all of my homework on them and honestly found them easier.
This is my 4th time taking the real test and honestly prob the one I had less pressure as I don't have an upcoming deadline.
I slept well, I had healthy food, I cut all of the feelings and paranoia out, I was only focused on the questions and got the lowest score I've ever gotten.
Can't make sense of it.
Thanks again!
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:16 pm
Hmm. What were your section scores? and what section scores do you typically get when you take practice tests?
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by ffra » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:35 pm
my section scores on the OG 2016 for all of the homework I have done in the past months were around 75% for all verbal and 71% for all quant.
My quant score in July on the test from mba.com was 48% quant and 81% verbal.
my MGMAT scores in the past weeks were around 45% quant and 705 / 80% verbal.
my final score on the real test was 21% quant and 31% verbal
thanks again!
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 8:25 pm
So both sections were well on the low side for you.

This is still a mystery. Let's keep working.

Here are two more ways I see people's scores swing around.

Guessing Strategy/Right Wrong Answer Pattern - One can get the same number of questions right and get different scores. If you blow many questions at the beginning or break up strings of right answers with missed questions, then your score can be lower than if you get the same number of right answers in a different pattern.

Here's an example. One guy had the following guessing strategy. When he got behind the clock, he would guess, regardless of whether he felt he could get the guessed question right. He just didn't want to get too far behind the clock. The problem with doing that was that he would break up strings of right answers, or, even worse, get an easy one wrong. Either way he was keeping his score low by using that guessing strategy. Just by changing that one thing, he started generating higher scores.

So the point is that the pattern of your right answers could explain why your score might not match your skill level.

Flawed Question Answering Approaches - Another thing that causes people's scores to jump around is question handling approaches that are not tight and that sometimes work, and sometimes do not. Here are some examples of approaches that are not that tight.

When doing CR questions, one can choose answers using some vaguely effective strategy rather than by clearly seeing the logic of what is going on and making choices based on that logic. For instance, one can eliminate choices based on their seeming too extreme or weird without really seeing exactly why they do or do not fit the scenario being discussed. In SC, one might choose between choices by looking at which one is longer, rather than by really determining which version of a sentence is more effective. I see this type of thing less in quant, but still I guess there too there are things one can do that seem effective while leaving one open to getting wrong answers.

All of these strategies can generate right answers sometimes and wrong answers at other times, and depending on how they fit with the questions that show up, one can score on some occasions much higher than one does on others.

So that's a possibility you could consider as well, that there are flaws in your strategies that somehow allowed many wrong answers to slip through on this occasion.

On another note, just yesterday someone told me that he scored on a practice test much lower than he usually does, because during one of his breaks he experienced something that continued to weigh on his mind for the remainder of the test. From what you said it doesn't sound as if you had something like that going on, but I might as well mention it in case you somehow did without realizing that you did.
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 8:31 pm
Also, while you said that you used the OG, I am still not clear regarding the degree to which you used official practice tests. Yes, in a way they are easier than Manhattan Prep tests, but differences between practice tests and official tests can throw people off.
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by ffra » Sun Nov 15, 2015 9:01 pm
Hi Marty,
Thanks again - I truly appreciate your help.
the Guessing Strategy/Right Wrong Answer Pattern and Flawed Question Answering Approaches are two very good points.
Unfortunately, it is hard for me to say if either apply to yesterday as I don't have access to the questions/answers and I thought at the moment the test was going well.
How could I answer that accurately without assuming it?
I had nothing weighing in my mind, and - leaving the quant a side for now - I was positive the verbal was going better. I applied the same logics and techniques I used at home. I learned to find the assumptions in CR and to look for verbs, pronouns etc. on the SC.
I wouldn't have been surprised of a 10-15% drop, but from my last 80% to 31% was a shock.
This year I used all of the 4 official practice tests and, as I reviewed them multiple times and remember the questions, I decided to not use them again in these past months.
I am obviously not giving up on the GMAT and am not aiming for a perfect score. I would be very very happy with a 670 - yesterday I'd have been thrilled with a 650!
However, I tried private tutoring, the Veritas online course, the MGMAT live course, targettest, and I am still here telling you I got a 480... I promise I am not stupid, even if this test made me question it! :D
I even bought more questions from GMAC, but I have a hard time with those as it's hard to understand the explanations from them / OG - at least for me - and that is why I gave up on them.
I guess I am trying to learn from the past to figure out how to move forward, but if that's not possible, any suggestions on what to do next differently will be very much appreciated!
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 10:04 pm
One thing jumps out at me so far, "to look for verbs, pronouns etc. on the SC".

I have seen a guy who is now scoring above 700 score in the low 500's partly because he was chopping up SC answer choices rather than looking at them holistically.

What looks like a decision point in an SC question may turn out to not be a valid one, and one may not see that if one is looking only at parts of sentences rather than entire sentence versions created by answer choices.

For example, maybe three choices start with the same word. You look over one of the choices and see that the word does not fit somehow, maybe seeing a subject verb agreement issue. So, using the splits method, you eliminate all three choices, without noticing that somehow that word works in one of the choices and that that choice is the OA.

That's one way people's SC hit rates can jump around. When the splits actually work, things go ok. When they don't, people get smoked.

I am not saying that that is exactly what you are doing, but from what you said, it seems likely that there are holes in your overall SC approach. Probably you are rather knowledgeable about the rules and concepts, but somehow that is not translating into your generating a consistent hit rate.

Here is another clue. "I even bought more questions from GMAC, but I have a hard time with those as it's hard to understand the explanations from them / OG - at least for me - and that is why I gave up on them."

When a person's strategies involve really seeing what's going on, when he misses a question, he often barely even needs to see an explanation because he goes back and sees what he missed the first time. Also, the fact that you are looking at explanations to that degree tends to indicate that you are seeking to use fairly formulaic approaches, i.e. what worked one time can be applied another time, and that's another way people get smoked. In other words, often people get the idea that if they just understand enough explanations, they will be good at answering GMAT questions, but that's not really the case. In a way the explanations barely matter. What matters are things like skill in noticing details, seeing the logic of situations and being good at using available resources.

I think we have basically figured out much of what is going on in verbal. Your approach to verbal has been too formulaic and based on certain specific flags or concepts, and so you are vulnerable to getting smoked by questions that don't fit your strategies for getting to answers.

Also, given the resources you have used, I bet you understand the concepts that are necessary for getting quant questions right without necessarily having developed certain skills that underlie a consistently high quant hit rate. I could be wrong, but I bet you have to do more topic by topic work in quant in order to build depth of skill and depth of understanding of how to get right answers to questions of each type.
Last edited by MartyMurray on Sun Nov 15, 2015 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by MartyMurray » Sun Nov 15, 2015 10:15 pm
So going forward, for verbal, in SC you probably need to look at the sentence versions in a different way, one that takes meaning into account more and that involves seeing more clearly how all the parts of the sentences are working together.

In CR and RC you probably have to work on using strategies less, on more clearly seeing the logic of what is going on and on noticing key details.

To tighten up quant probably you need to get closer to a point such that, rather than looking at explanations, you can practically write the explanations and you mostly get questions wrong only because you don't see a key thing in the two minutes you have or because you run into a question that somehow you just are not prepared to answer, for instance, because you haven't spent the last two years learning how to answer every conceivable GMAT probability question.
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