GMAT Strategy

Hi - I took the GMAT today and did not perform as hoped. My total score was 640 (Q44, V34). I've taken 6 practice tests (MGMAT and GMAT Prep) with the following results
8/23 - GMATPrep - 710 (Q47, V42)
8/19 - MGMAT - 650 (Q43, V35)
8/11 - GMATPrep - 720 (Q47, V42)
8/5 - MGMAT - 600 (Q36, V36)
7/14 - MGMAT - 640 (Q39, V40)
6/2 - MGMAT - 550 (Q31, V35)

Besides not entirely understanding why my GMATPrep scores were so different from my actual score and my MGMAT score, I'm facing the reality of needing to retake the test. My target schools are NYU, Wharton, and Yale with Columbia and Johnson in a distant 4th and 5th. My 640 is pretty far out of range given my 3.4 undergraduate GPA (Business major). I will have 7 years of work experience with 5 of them in management/supervision at matriculation, and I have a strong history of leadership in my extracurriculars.

So that said, does anyone have good recommendations for retake strategy - particularly in light of my particular set of scores? My verbal performance today was far less than needed, expected, or preferred. I was using the Manhattan GMAT guided Self Study, but I'll admit that I was a bit over confident when it came to verbal (unwarranted now that I see the numbers all lined up). I have those books available and a set of Princeton Review LSAT prep materials (my fiancé is a law student, and I've heard their helpful).

I'd love any good tips or hints! Thanks!

Looks like you need improvement on both sections to get into the schools that you are looking at... #1 thing is to go through old exams and questions and identify what your weak areas are. Then review, review, review. The secret to this test is to have a firm grasp of all of the fundamental concepts.

I got the same exact score and breakdown as you on my last test, had a 710 and high 600s on my practice tests. From my experience verbal on the actual gmat is way harder than the gmatprep or mgmat stuff. Right now I'm just doing more practice sets and building up my stamina by reading more newspapers. hope you do better on your retake, it's so frustrating that the practice scores can be so misleading to many people

gracieb,

Did you take the GMATPREP and MGMAT tests along with the IR and Essay sections? Did you emulate the actual exam by taking the 8-min breaks? If not, there could be a huge discrepancy between the actual GMAT and mock test scores. The first couple of sections tend to drain out a lot of energy - so by the time you reach the Verbal section you are pretty tired. So, if you skip those sections you are relatively fresh when you get to the Verbal section. Also, I am not sure what your background is but your Quant seems pretty low. Try to work on the basics first before you dive into the practice tests. Moreover, you really do not need to take that many practice tests - 2 or 3 are good enough. (as long as you don't have issue with completing the exam)

Hi everyone - thank you so much. I appreciate your feedback. This is such a frustrating position to be in, as I spent the bulk of my study time focusing on learning the conceptual basis to questions so that I would "know" the math and verbal basics cold (or close to it).

I went through all of the MGMAT study guides and did each in-action exercise. I listened to the class recordings and labs while cooking dinner or in the morning before work. I did quite a few questions from the OG 12 (about 50/day towards the end) using the MGMAT OGArcher to track my performance and I'm squarely in the green box (60%+ accuracy, 2 minutes/question). I took the tests in as close to the actual setting as possible - using a mouse with my laptop, 8 minute breaks, IR and AWA for each of them. For the MGMAT tests, I printed all of my incorrect questions and reworked them - sometimes multiple times and used any I still didn't "get" for my office hours with MGMAT tutors.

To be honest, I mentally and emotionally felt awesome during the test. IR didn't feel quite as brutal as it had in the practice tests. I was crunched for time at the end of quant and had to do a fair amount of non-strategic guessing on questions 30-37. I felt great through verbal - maybe too great - and as I finished the background questions and clicked to see my score, I was fully expecting to see a 710 or 720 like my GMATPRep tests. It was quite a shock to see my score. bond0007, it's good to hear that I'm not the only one.

I've submitted to get a Post-Exam Assessment with MGMAT, but in the meantime, I think the game plan is:

• 1. Revisit and condense the 9 week MGMAT syllabus for a 5 week study schedule. I know that I need to spend some time with all of the content - not just some of it.
  
  2. Spend extra time, from the start, on Critical Reasoning and Sentence Correction. I plan to supplement the MGMAT materials with Kaplan Premier (I have it from a long forgotten start to studying) and PowerScore CR + making flashcards of the key idioms (I just don't recognize some of them as quickly as I'd like). I know these are my biggest content gaps.
  
  3. OG. From the start. Everyday. I don't know if this is the right approach, but I'm comfortable with the content, but not necessarily applying them to GMAT style questions.
  
  4. Stay calm and hopeful

I'd love feedback or suggestions for this plan

If I were you, I would take a break from GMAT at least for a week and not think about it during that time. That helps reset your mind which has been busy for months preparing for the exam. And then, if your Quant basics is quite good, then you should look at your post-exam assessment on MGMAT to figure out where exactly you are making those mistakes. Also, I would highly recommend buying "Additional Question Bank" (350 questions, I think) from GMATPREP. Those questions are totally new from GMAC - they are not present in OG. You can start by coming up with a mixed bag of questions (for example - 10 questions in 20 min consisting of 4 RC, 3 CR, and 3 SC questions or something equivalent). There is no point going over the entire MGMAT material, instead you should identify the areas of your weakness and go over the basics. Once you have done this exercise for about 3 weeks, take a GMAT PREP exam to see if it has helped. When you retake GMAT prep, there may be questions that you would have seen before (esp. CR). Make sure you spend 2 min on those questions by killing time so that you emulate the actual exam. Good Luck!

thanks kenny_kar! Got it. Good point. I'll try really hard to take this week off, but my natural tendency is to "get back on the horse". I didn't know about the extra question set - I will definitely get it.