So I took the GMAT back in March. I got a 630, which is technically ok, I guess. However, the problem is my verbal score was perfect, I got a 6 on the essay, the integrated reasoning was near perfect, and my math score was ABYSMAL.
I have always gotten As in math, including stats and calculus. I am very good at math, so I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and what I can do to improve. It seems like the data sufficiency problems and geometry and even some algebra ones are messing me up. What do I do?
5-Day Free Trial
5-day free, full-access trial TTP
Available with Beat the GMAT members only code
MORE DETAILS
630 on first take, but scores are lopsided. What can I do?
This topic has expert replies
-
MartyMurray
- Legendary Member
- Posts: 2131
- Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 am
- Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/
- Thanked: 955 times
- Followed by:140 members
- GMAT Score:800
Hi jbeau06.
GMAT quant is not really a math test. It is more a reasoning game that uses math as building blocks for the questions. So while starting off being skilled in math is certainly useful, it's not really sufficient for scoring high on GMAT quant.
For one thing, the data sufficiency questions are rather unlike most math based things that people do in forums other than the GMAT. So generally people have to practice some and get used to figuring out which answer to a data sufficiency question is correct in order to consistently get data sufficiency questions right in the amount of time allotted for each by the test.
I am sure that you can score as high as you want to. So really how you prepare is the key to hitting your goal.
Before I seek to answer your question, maybe you could outline what you have done so far to train for the GMAT.
GMAT quant is not really a math test. It is more a reasoning game that uses math as building blocks for the questions. So while starting off being skilled in math is certainly useful, it's not really sufficient for scoring high on GMAT quant.
For one thing, the data sufficiency questions are rather unlike most math based things that people do in forums other than the GMAT. So generally people have to practice some and get used to figuring out which answer to a data sufficiency question is correct in order to consistently get data sufficiency questions right in the amount of time allotted for each by the test.
I am sure that you can score as high as you want to. So really how you prepare is the key to hitting your goal.
Before I seek to answer your question, maybe you could outline what you have done so far to train for the GMAT.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
GMAT/MBA Expert
-
[email protected]
- Elite Legendary Member
- Posts: 10392
- Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pm
- Location: Palo Alto, CA
- Thanked: 2867 times
- Followed by:511 members
- GMAT Score:800
Hi jbeau06,
First off, a 630 is a pretty good score (it's a bit below the 80th percentile overall), so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Given what you describe about most of the GMAT, it's understandable that you would want to retest though. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you're looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What materials have you used?
3) What were your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on the Official GMAT?
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to retake the GMAT?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
First off, a 630 is a pretty good score (it's a bit below the 80th percentile overall), so it could be enough to get you into your first-choice School. As such, a retest might not be necessary. Given what you describe about most of the GMAT, it's understandable that you would want to retest though. Before I can offer you the specific advice that you're looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:
1) How long have you studied?
2) What materials have you used?
3) What were your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on the Official GMAT?
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to retake the GMAT?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Just looked back at my score report. Apparently my verbal wasn't a perfect score....thought raw scores went up to 40, not 51. Regardless it wasn't bad.
Verbal: 40 (91%)
Quantitative: 36 (35%)
Total: 630 (70%)
Analytical Writing: 6 (91%)
IR: 6 (67%) (I thought I had gotten a 9 on this, must have forgotten....regardless, the schools I want to attend don't care about it)
For studying, I used Kaplan and GMATPrep to study. It's frustrating, because I got a 700 on the quant section of the GRE back in 2006. I have a masters in nursing and use math in my everyday life for my job.
I want to do higher on quant because I will be concentrating on finance in school. The funny part is I have gotten As in all the accounting and finance classes I've taken, yet they want a good quant score on the GMAT! I also want to do better on the quant as I will likely qualify for a full tuition waiver if I do, according to the schools I've been speaking with.
I plan to start business school in the fall of 2017, so I'll be applying in January. I can retake the GMAT any time between now and then. Honestly, I don't have a goal score; I just want to be at least above the 50th percentile in quant, as I have always been better at math than the vast majority of my peers and if I did well on the word problems in the verbal section, I should theoretically not be getting tripped up by word problems in the quant section, right?
Verbal: 40 (91%)
Quantitative: 36 (35%)
Total: 630 (70%)
Analytical Writing: 6 (91%)
IR: 6 (67%) (I thought I had gotten a 9 on this, must have forgotten....regardless, the schools I want to attend don't care about it)
For studying, I used Kaplan and GMATPrep to study. It's frustrating, because I got a 700 on the quant section of the GRE back in 2006. I have a masters in nursing and use math in my everyday life for my job.
I want to do higher on quant because I will be concentrating on finance in school. The funny part is I have gotten As in all the accounting and finance classes I've taken, yet they want a good quant score on the GMAT! I also want to do better on the quant as I will likely qualify for a full tuition waiver if I do, according to the schools I've been speaking with.
I plan to start business school in the fall of 2017, so I'll be applying in January. I can retake the GMAT any time between now and then. Honestly, I don't have a goal score; I just want to be at least above the 50th percentile in quant, as I have always been better at math than the vast majority of my peers and if I did well on the word problems in the verbal section, I should theoretically not be getting tripped up by word problems in the quant section, right?
-
MartyMurray
- Legendary Member
- Posts: 2131
- Joined: Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:26 am
- Location: https://martymurraycoaching.com/
- Thanked: 955 times
- Followed by:140 members
- GMAT Score:800
Hi.
First of all, maybe you could do me a favor and consider never using the word "frustrating" again. That word seems meaningless to me, at least in this context. There is only seeking success, and finding things "frustrating" has no place in that.
As I said above, GMAT quant is not exactly a math test, and so "being good at math" is just the beginning of rocking GMAT quant.
Q36 is a decent starting point. If you can score Q36 you basically get most of the math involved in GMAT quant. Now, in order to score above 700, you have to learn to get right answers to some of the harder GMAT questions in about two minutes each.
I find that the best way to do that is to go over your GMAT Prep practice tests and analyze them to figure out what types of quant questions you had the most trouble with. Then work on each type one by one, until you are really good at each one in turn. The types of stuff you will see in GMAT quant are pretty predictable. So if you get good at getting answers to the various types of questions, you will hit your goal score.
This post is a great one to use to get a sense of what you have to accomplish to score high on GMAT quant.
How To Increase Your GMAT Quant Score
There's always the Official Guide as well. I always recommend the e-book version. Making paper books is destructive, and using them is not the greatest for your karma. The e-book comes with the online question bank just as the paper books do. So really there's no advantage to getting the paper books. The test is on a screen too.
Whatever resource you use, the key is to get good at getting to answers. I mean, often people think that they need to focus on "proper" ways to handle questions, but really all that matters is getting to RIGHT answers, however you do it.
To go from Q36 to, say, Q48, you need to get, rather roughly, about a dozen more right answers, and the questions will be harder too. So you have to figure out what you have to do to get to the point where you can expect to get that many right answers to the harder types of GMAT quant questions. Probably what you have to do will come down to improving accuracy, improving efficiency and getting familiar with the question types so that you can readily find answers to them.
As you said, you should be able to see the tricks etc. in the questions without too much trouble. Maybe you just have to practice a little and get a more familiar with the types of things you will run into. For instance, if you don't see that 0 is a possible value in a data sufficiency question, you might get it wrong even if you totally see what's going on otherwise. With some experience, you will know to consider 0, and fractions, etc. etc.
Meanwhile, I say keep working on verbal some too. You might as well get some more points in that section. With V44, for instance, you position yourself to score rather high if you get your quant score into the upper 40's.
The GMAT is a big ol' game. Have fun playing!!!
First of all, maybe you could do me a favor and consider never using the word "frustrating" again. That word seems meaningless to me, at least in this context. There is only seeking success, and finding things "frustrating" has no place in that.
As I said above, GMAT quant is not exactly a math test, and so "being good at math" is just the beginning of rocking GMAT quant.
Q36 is a decent starting point. If you can score Q36 you basically get most of the math involved in GMAT quant. Now, in order to score above 700, you have to learn to get right answers to some of the harder GMAT questions in about two minutes each.
I find that the best way to do that is to go over your GMAT Prep practice tests and analyze them to figure out what types of quant questions you had the most trouble with. Then work on each type one by one, until you are really good at each one in turn. The types of stuff you will see in GMAT quant are pretty predictable. So if you get good at getting answers to the various types of questions, you will hit your goal score.
This post is a great one to use to get a sense of what you have to accomplish to score high on GMAT quant.
How To Increase Your GMAT Quant Score
There's always the Official Guide as well. I always recommend the e-book version. Making paper books is destructive, and using them is not the greatest for your karma. The e-book comes with the online question bank just as the paper books do. So really there's no advantage to getting the paper books. The test is on a screen too.
Whatever resource you use, the key is to get good at getting to answers. I mean, often people think that they need to focus on "proper" ways to handle questions, but really all that matters is getting to RIGHT answers, however you do it.
To go from Q36 to, say, Q48, you need to get, rather roughly, about a dozen more right answers, and the questions will be harder too. So you have to figure out what you have to do to get to the point where you can expect to get that many right answers to the harder types of GMAT quant questions. Probably what you have to do will come down to improving accuracy, improving efficiency and getting familiar with the question types so that you can readily find answers to them.
As you said, you should be able to see the tricks etc. in the questions without too much trouble. Maybe you just have to practice a little and get a more familiar with the types of things you will run into. For instance, if you don't see that 0 is a possible value in a data sufficiency question, you might get it wrong even if you totally see what's going on otherwise. With some experience, you will know to consider 0, and fractions, etc. etc.
Meanwhile, I say keep working on verbal some too. You might as well get some more points in that section. With V44, for instance, you position yourself to score rather high if you get your quant score into the upper 40's.
The GMAT is a big ol' game. Have fun playing!!!
Last edited by MartyMurray on Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Marty Murray
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
Perfect Scoring Tutor With Over a Decade of Experience
MartyMurrayCoaching.com
Contact me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
GMAT/MBA Expert
-
[email protected]
- Elite Legendary Member
- Posts: 10392
- Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pm
- Location: Palo Alto, CA
- Thanked: 2867 times
- Followed by:511 members
- GMAT Score:800
Hi jbeau06,
Many Test Takers find at least one part of the GMAT (whether in the Quant section or the Verbal section) to be challenging, so you're not alone. It's important to remember that the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Test, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. The Quant section of the GMAT isn't really a 'math test' in the way that you're probably used to thinking about these things - it's a critical thinking Test that uses math steps as one of the activities. A certain percentage of 'math thinkers' end up having serious difficulty scoring at the higher levels in the Quant section because they try to use 'just math' to get through the section, when there's really a lot more to do with Tactics, patterns, number properties, logic, etc.
With a Q36, you would have erred on a number of the 'math' questions that you faced, made a number of little mistakes throughout the section and missed out on a lot of 'strategy-based' points. Raising a Q36 into the Q40s shouldn't be too difficult, but you're going to have to adjust how you 'see' (and respond to) the Quant section. As such, you'll likely benefit a great deal by investing in some new resources and learning/practicing some new Tactics. With a month of proper study, you could absolutely retest and score at a higher level.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Many Test Takers find at least one part of the GMAT (whether in the Quant section or the Verbal section) to be challenging, so you're not alone. It's important to remember that the GMAT is a consistent, predictable Test, so you CAN train to score at a higher level. The Quant section of the GMAT isn't really a 'math test' in the way that you're probably used to thinking about these things - it's a critical thinking Test that uses math steps as one of the activities. A certain percentage of 'math thinkers' end up having serious difficulty scoring at the higher levels in the Quant section because they try to use 'just math' to get through the section, when there's really a lot more to do with Tactics, patterns, number properties, logic, etc.
With a Q36, you would have erred on a number of the 'math' questions that you faced, made a number of little mistakes throughout the section and missed out on a lot of 'strategy-based' points. Raising a Q36 into the Q40s shouldn't be too difficult, but you're going to have to adjust how you 'see' (and respond to) the Quant section. As such, you'll likely benefit a great deal by investing in some new resources and learning/practicing some new Tactics. With a month of proper study, you could absolutely retest and score at a higher level.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
