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GMAT Score 610 - Impossible score.. I am shocked!

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GMAT Score 610 - Impossible score.. I am shocked!

by upendra549 » Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:36 pm
Hi,

My story is that I got a horrible score, which i didnt expect even in the wildest of my dreams. I don't know why i got such a bad score? Last time when I wrote GMAT, I got 660 (M 50, V 29). So I thought I can do much better in verbal. I studied hard for the past 4 months slogging day and night just to make sure that i am thorough in all verbal concepts. I practiced my SC, RC and CR with time limits. I wrote on all prep tests very well. Then on Aug 8th I gave my second attempt. The GMAT test very well, verbal part was especially very satisfying experience this time and therefore i was expecting 700+, but to my utter disbelief, I got 610 in GMAT( M 49, V 25). I am shocked and devastated.

My practice scores of MGMAT after the 1st cat never came below 700 with the maximum of 740. I never got my verbal score below 35 in any of the practice test. Just to make sure, that I was on right path I even wrote Princeton review, veritas, and knewton free mock cats. In all of these tests I got more than 35 in verbal. Even scores in my GMAT preps were 730 and 720. I did og12, OG 11 and OG10. I also did Kaplan verbal work book. I kept an error log and revised it every week diligently. I went through Manhattan GMAT and Beatthegmat forums for all concepts in verbal. I also went through all "Thursdays with RON sessions" taking appropriate notes and re reading them to make sure that I mastered them. But a score of 25 in verbal doesn't justify the tremendous amount of hard work that I had put in. If some body questions my verbal concepts I am confident that I can answer them.

For maths I just prepared 15 days and got 49, but for verbal I prepared for about 4 months and got 25. I had a strategy for every type of question related to CR and RC. For SC, also I had my strategies built in. I am really really shocked. I have no words to speak.

Please advise me as to what should I do, I want to apply to the best B schools in India , Shall I take my GMAT exam again? I am confident that i will get good score this time as I think that I just had a bad day. I want to apply for 2012 ISB batch, so I have to write in another 1 month as second round deadline of ISB ends on November 30th 2011. But want to know how to approach this time as I have no idea as to what went wrong?


Also, I am still hoping that my official score report will be different from my unofficial score report though i know that there is only 0.01% chance. Does anyone know of any such incident?

Please help me!

Thanks and Regards,
Upendra
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by prateek_guy2004 » Thu Aug 11, 2011 11:57 pm
Hi Upendra

Its just look like a bad day....Because i dont see any reason why got low score in verbal.

Your practice material is extremly useful and recomended by most professionals...

You have almost practice all gmat mock tests.....

My recomendation is that , dont give up...This time try and reach 40 in verbal...start reapiting all mock test and go through verval review once.....

I am sure this time you will fetch easy 700+.

Best of luck mate.

Chaw
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by upendra549 » Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:35 pm
My Official GMAT score is unchanged. There is no difference between my official and unofficial score.
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by XLogic » Wed Aug 17, 2011 6:23 pm
upendra549 wrote:My Official GMAT score is unchanged. There is no difference between my official and unofficial score.
I came back to this post cos I was hoping (praying) that your official score was different (better) than your unofficial score. I'm sorry to hear that this is not the case.

Take a break -- vent, relax, reflect -- then come back even stronger. I've seen posts where people had to take it three+ times! And indeed, they did crack 700. If you know that b-school is for you, and you know you have it in you to succeed in b-school, then please try again with the GMAT.

It must have been one of those days when the stars were not aligned. Third time's the charm. Take care... AND GOOD LUCK!!
my post helped --> thank me!
don't thank me --> my post = what the..??
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by mk2889 » Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:10 am
As well, I had a similar experience on Aug 13. Scoring well on all the CATs going into it and Verbal was my weakness. Then I got my result and was devastated. My Verbal score was terrible, and like you I felt completely comfortable and had a "very satisfying" experience.... aside from the score.

Don't give up! 3rd time will be the charm for both of us!
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by upendra549 » Sun Aug 21, 2011 3:52 am
Thank you all, thanks a lot
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by prateek_guy2004 » Sun Aug 21, 2011 8:50 am
Welcome
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by lunarpower » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:16 am
hi -- responding to a private message (i have a huge backlog of such messages, after being on vacation for a couple of weeks).

here are a couple of lines that may contain the crux of the problem:
I studied hard for the past 4 months slogging day and night
...
I had a strategy for every type of question related to CR
from these two lines, i'm getting the idea that you may not really understand how the critical reasoning section works -- it seems that you think that you can just memorize a bunch of strategies and then turn around and execute them on exam day.
that's not how this test works. the critical reasoning section is just what it says it is: a test of your reasoning and thinking skills -- especially on the most common question types (e.g. strengthening and weakening questions).

the point of the CR section -- especially strengthening, weakening, and "explain the situation" questions -- is to mimic FLEXIBLE REAL-WORLD THINKING.
if you study too much for these types of questions, or if you try to memorize rules for them, then you will get WORSE at solving them.

as an analogy, imagine trying to memorize rules for common-sense situations in the real world -- situations involving personal relationships and interactions, everyday situations involving purchases or other such life decisions, etc. i think it's pretty obvious that any sort of memorization-based approach would be a horrible failure in these kinds of situations.
my point is that most of the critical reasoning section is the same kind of thing! these questions are basically meant to test your real-world, common-sense-type thinking skills; if you approach them by intense studying and memorization, you are not going to do well on them.


for further improvement, the most important thing you can do is change the entire way in which you view this exam. you won't improve on the verbal section until you get COMPLETELY RID of the "study study study memorize memorize memorize" mentality.

this is the biggest problem i see in the above. it's also a very common problem, especially among the demographic that populates this forum, but being very common doesn't make it any less of a problem.

good luck
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by srivats_nps » Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:16 am
hi Ron,
I completely agree with you on this method.
the point of the CR section -- especially strengthening, weakening, and "explain the situation" questions -- is to mimic FLEXIBLE REAL-WORLD THINKING.
if you study too much for these types of questions, or if you try to memorize rules for them, then you will get WORSE at solving them.
During the early days of my prep, I found that CR was my real strength. Got about 60-70% right. But I always had timing issues on the verbal. I could finish only 30-32 questions on the mock CATS. On analysis I found that I took about 3-4 min on an avg to solve each CR question. Hence in an attempt to improve my speed on CR, I practiced more and more questions on this type with time limit. But eventually I found my success rate in this category to drop to about 40%.

Now even when I practice in untimed conditions, I find my success rate to be 40-50%. Am totally confused on how to improve on this.

If solving too many questions on this category would lower my score, then what is the best method/strategy to improve my success rate under timed conditions on this section ? Could you please help me out on this ?
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by sam2304 » Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:27 pm
Whatever Ron mentioned above was very true. :( If you are by any chance following powerscore CR and trying to apply any of the techniques to find the answer. Please try changing your approach. I recently found out i was making more mistakes because of that. Very few takeaways from that book. I got so much used to the rules to eliminate an answer choice than the actual reason on which the argument is built upon. Spend more time on why the reason stated is wrong than applying rules probably that might improve your hit rate. The point is eliminate an answer choice based on a reason instead of a rule or strategy which you might have learn t or devised. It worked with me. Hope this helps.
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by lunarpower » Wed Oct 12, 2011 5:30 pm
srivats_nps wrote:If solving too many questions on this category would lower my score, then what is the best method/strategy to improve my success rate under timed conditions on this section ? Could you please help me out on this ?
the most important element of success at cr is truly understanding the nature of the problems -- and understanding that will give you the right mentality.

namely:
critical reasoning questions REQUIRE you to "reason critically" -- in other words, to apply normal human intuition / common sense, combined with close attention to what is and what isn't the actual subject of the argument. it is impossible to defeat the cr section with a set of memorized rules, no matter how extensive.

here's a little bit of perspective on the situation:
students who try to defeat cr through memorization are, in effect, trying to find a set of rules that will approximate or replace human intuition / common sense.
there is actually a name for that kind of effort -- "strong artificial intelligence" (strong ai) -- and that effort has so far been a total failure, despite the investment of literally decades of research and trillions of dollars.
so, basically, any student who tries to defeat cr by memorizing a set of rules is trying to invent strong ai, single-handedly, in his or her living room. needless to say, that will fail, and it will fail spectacularly.

also -- it gets worse: if you try to learn cr by memorizing rules, you WILL get worse at it.
think about the purpose of memorization: the purpose of memorization is to get rid of thinking. this is actually the only purpose for any memorization of anything, ever -- to bypass the "thinking" part of the problem. that is a good thing, of course, in certain situations -- for instance, you really wouldn't want people having to think about which side of the road they should drive on -- but it won't work here.

instead:

whenever you learn any kind of rule, always treat it as a GUIDELINE for your NORMAL THOUGHT PROCESSES.

here's an example (not from cr, but you get the point):
when you analyze a business transaction, one very generally applicable principle is always examine the self-interest of the parties involved.
this is obviously not a formula that can be memorized -- there are no hard rules that govern what "self-interest" is in any particular situation -- but it is a useful guideline. once someone has it in mind, he or she can use his or her own common sense and intuition to determine exactly what "self-interest" means in the situation at hand.

this is also what you should do with cr "rules" and principles. they should NEVER replace human intuition and common sense (because that's impossible); they should just complement or guide those things.
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by sunman » Mon Oct 17, 2011 6:14 pm
Yeah, to be honest - to this day I still don't understand how you can "study" for RC and CR...

I just focus on quant and SC, and allow my inherent deductive abilities to take over on RC and CR...
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by pemdas » Mon Apr 16, 2012 12:12 am
sunman wrote:Yeah, to be honest - to this day I still don't understand how you can "study" for RC and CR...

I just focus on quant and SC, and allow my inherent deductive abilities to take over on RC and CR...
is your notion of "inherent abilities" standing close to "gut" feeling? If so, a few mistakes will occur in the verbal section by applying "gut" feeling, as one will be directed by emotions and not literal translation of the CR stimuli and RC passage texts into logical structures.
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by lunarpower » Mon Apr 16, 2012 1:23 am
pemdas wrote:is your notion of "inherent abilities" standing close to "gut" feeling? If so, a few mistakes will occur in the verbal section by applying "gut" feeling, as one will be directed by emotions and not literal translation of the CR stimuli and RC passage texts into logical structures.
it's unlikely that "emotions" will become involved, since these passages are about topics that are as unemotional as topics can possibly be.

the problem here is that you're confusing intuition with emotion. they aren't the same. in order to process ANY reasonably complex system adequately, humans have to use intuition -- our brains just don't have a fast enough "clock speed" to apply rules to everything all the time, and/or we don't understand what the rules even are but can still reason by analogy.
for instance, think about watching someone walk, and deciding whether that person is "walking funny" (injured, or disabled, or whatever). sure you could probably formulate rules by which to judge this, but the judgment is always going to be mostly intuitive -- there are way too many variables involved in something like walking for us to process the problem with conscious rules.
the same thing is true for CR problems.

in fact,
human critical reasoning is so complex that NO ONE has EVER been able to simulate it with rules.
there's actually a name for the attempt to do this: it's called "strong artificial intelligence", and it has never been successfully accomplished by anyone, ever.
if you are trying to solve CR problems purely with "logical structures", then you are basically trying to invent strong artificial intelligence all by yourself while you study for the GMAT -- not gonna happen.

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this whole "logical structures" thing also ignores the fact that many -- maybe even most -- CR problems have steps that are NOT strictly logical structures.
for instance, in OG12 CR 109, in order to realize that the correct answer is correct, you need to realize that "people will probably get caught doing X" translates into "people will do X less often".
this is NOT a logical structure; it's a common-sense intuitive deduction, based on the way people operate in the real world according to incentives and disincentives. if you try to solve this problem using purely "logical structures" you will probably mistakenly conclude that the correct answer on that problem is "irrelevant" because they don't spell out the idea that prank callers will be less bold if the potential of being caught is out there.

this problem is not unique in this regard. MOST strengthening/weakening/evaluation problem require some step that is a common-sense extension of the statements in the answer choices.
this is actually the whole point of the CR section -- to be impenetrable to people who think of things in terms of X's and Y's and NAND gates and DeMorgan laws, but to be accessible to people who combine an appropriate focus with the judicious use of real-world intuition.
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by pemdas » Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:32 am
Then if human thought process cannot be broken down with scientific pieces and structured in the logical way where is the guarantee that GMAT CR was composed in the right way? It's not likely that GMAT makers bring such a subjectivity to their exam. I still believe that there is no reason to lead GMAT aspirants to superstitious beliefs about the logical reasoning part of exam. By the way your example of human walking might be interpreted differently by different populations - chin-and-chest up Englishman's walking might be expressed as vigorous foot-staging by Latin Americans who are more relaxed physically.

Be it intuition or emotions, or a common sense culminating with words such as *gut* feeling or visceral behavior, we may be exposed to flaws and errors in CR.

@Ron, I see you have aced the style of GMAT through many years of productive tutoring career and now switched to automatism in thinking over CR entries. The latter is not the same as intuition which will inevitably lead the inexperienced test taker to choose a wrong answer.
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