670 GMAT - RETAKE??

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670 GMAT - RETAKE??

by rob10989 » Mon Jun 27, 2016 2:50 pm
Ok, so I just finished taking the GMAT for the second time and unfortunately didn't hit my target. The first time I took the test I got a 640, 5 AWA and 4 IR. This time I got a 670, Unknown AWA and 8 IR. Between the two tests I studied about 100 hours within a one month timeframe. I'm fairly burnt out and gave a lot to this test, but can't seem to get into the 700s. My practice tests were 680, 680, 690 and 710, all with 7s and 8s in IR.

I'm leaning towards not retaking the test right now, but I know I could do better. During my practice tests I hit 46/47 on math, but hit a 40 on test day (?!?!). Does anyone have some advice on whether or not to retake? I'm aiming for top 20 B-school, background in Private Equity but low college GPA. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

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by MartyMurray » Mon Jun 27, 2016 11:42 pm
Hi rob10989.

I think that you can break this down into two parts.

Do you need a higher score to get into the schools you want to get into?

How hard will scoring higher be?

While I am not really the guy to answer the first question, I can say that given your GPA and the Q40, that your current score will be sufficient to get you into the school of your choice is not 100% clear. It might be though.

Regarding increasing your score, given that to score 670 with Q40 you must have had a pretty high verbal section score, clearly if you were to maintain that verbal level and just score at your normal quant level, you would score in the 700's. Also, like the preparation of most people who prepare for this test at just one point in their lives and so don't become total experts at doing that, your preparation probably could have been better. With some adjustments to how you prepare you should be able to drive your score up 30-60 points without too much trouble. One way to improve how you train for the test would be to get a conversation going on these forums. Alternatively, you could go through some of the threads in the GMAT Strategy section and get some key insights.
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by rob10989 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 4:38 am
Thanks Marty. My verbal score was a 41 and still felt like I left points on the table. The odd part was that I felt as though I did incredibly on the math section while taking it. From what I've read so far, it seems that a low quant score will hurt me a lot during the admissions process. I'm in the 80% bracket for most of the school's I'm applying to.

I'm going to comb through these boards and see if I can find some better test prep. I did the Manhattan Prep quant introduction, verbal introduction, and then the entire 9 book course. During the last couple weeks I honed my math skills with practice problems on the GMAT Prep practice software (bought all the extra packs). Not really sure what more I could have done. Also went through all the problems in the OG.

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by rob10989 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 4:40 am
Would you suggest retaking sooner rather than later? I think I am going to plan to retake the test in mid-late July - do you think that is enough time between tests?

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by MartyMurray » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:33 am
rob10989 wrote:Would you suggest retaking sooner rather than later? I think I am going to plan to retake the test in mid-late July - do you think that is enough time between tests?
My preferred way is to set a goal and wait to schedule the test for then you have some visibility regarding when you will hit the goal. In other words, if your goal is 740+ with Q47+, then when you start scoring at or near that on practice tests and feel as if you have things under control, you would schedule a test for a few weeks out.

Some people prefer to schedule the test and put themselves to make the deadline, and of course for a $50 fee you can always push it back if you decide at least a week before that you need more time.

Given how close you seem to be, late July sounds good, as long as you feel that you are ready to get back on that horse pretty soon and finish the job. I could see solidly hitting your goal taking maybe five or six weeks though. Not an easy call for me to make though, obviously, given my limited awareness of what you have had going on.

As far as continuing to prepare goes, it sounds as if you have covered pretty much everything. Now, you have to shift to performance based training. You have to go over those practice tests and see what have to be better at in order to hit your goal. Then address what you find, aspect by aspect, topic by topic.

You know there are some types of quant questions which you are not as comfortable with as you are with others. Become an expert at handling those types and you can be pretty sure that your quant score will be higher next time.

You can set up a free practice account here, https://bellcurves.com, and work on quant questions type by type. Working type by type is the way to learn to totally destroy GMAT quant. By the end of July you could score Q49+ training that way.

Also, maybe your accuracy in quant is not consistent enough. That would explain the surprise in your quant section score. So when you are doing quant questions in practice, make sure to focus on getting a high hit rate, at least 80 - 90%. Some of those BellCurve questions have issues. So if you use that question bank probably you won't achieve a 100% or even 90% hit rate, but you get what I am saying.

Do something similar in verbal. Go over your practice tests and figure out what about your processes could be better and make them more solid. Also, when you are doing verbal questions, really seek to clearly understand why each wrong answer choice is wrong and each right answer choice is right. You can take all kinds of time per question when you are practicing, seeking to develop an eye for what you have to see in order to be more consistent in verbal. Generally it's better to take a half hour on a CR question and get it right than to take two minutes and get it wrong. You have to develop skill in seeing what you need to see, and as you get better at handling the questions, you will naturally speed up.

You can find out more about all of this stuff by continuing to look around in these forums.

By doing topic by topic work in quant, keeping accuracy in mind, and by working on more clearly seeing what you have to see to get verbal questions right, I think that you can get your score to a significantly higher level within about a month, maybe a little sooner, maybe a little later.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Tue Jun 28, 2016 7:42 am
I'm leaning towards not retaking the test right now, but I know I could do better. During my practice tests I hit 46/47 on math, but hit a 40 on test day (?!?!). Does anyone have some advice on whether or not to retake? I'm aiming for top 20 B-school, background in Private Equity but low college GPA. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
The thing I consistently hear from admissions folks is that they need to see quant proficiency somewhere. So the real question is whether your background in Private Equity will suffice. You could ask the admin experts on this page, but I'm almost certain that they'll suggest retaking. And I'd agree with them. Though it's possible you could get into the school of your choice with your current score, it's also quite possible that your GMAT quant will work against you. If you think about this investment, both in terms of expense and in terms of income forgone, you don't want to feel as though you're leaving anything to chance, particularly because there was such a gap between your practice test quant and your actual quant. If you're feeling burnt out, you might want to give yourself a little time to regroup, but I think there's every reason to believe that you could take the test in a few weeks and hit 45+.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Tue Jun 28, 2016 7:43 am
(And if you do decide to retake, and you're looking for additional quant practice, feel free to check out our question bank: https://www.veritasprep.com/gmat-question-bank/
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by [email protected] » Tue Jun 28, 2016 8:49 am
Hi rob10989,

First off, a 670 is a strong score (it's above 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. The Q40 won't impress anyone, and at certain Schools/Programs, it's might be a 'red flag' (with Finance Programs or other Specialty Programs, it could be a big issue). Thankfully, the application process involves many pieces, and the GMAT is just one of them. Business School Admissions Officers are savvy people - they know that not every great applicant is a great standardized test taker. Thus, if you craft the proper application, you will likely be fine.

If you did decide to retest, then you should do so sooner rather than later. GMAC has publicly stated that the Official Score that you earn on Test Day is within +/- 30 points of actual ability. Since your two Overall Official Scores are relatively close to one another, they imply that your current ability is somewhere in the mid-600s. To significantly improve these scores, we really need to analyze WHY you're getting questions wrong.

1) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
2) Since you took the GMAT twice, did you ever take any of your practice CATs more than once?

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by rob10989 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 9:54 am
Thank you all, this information has been very useful. Given how fresh all the information is in my head, I'm taking today off from studying and going to begin studying again tomorrow. First, let me answer any outstanding questions. Rich, I am planning on applying in September. Secondly, I took 4 CATs, but all different (GMAT Prep has 6 available). My scores were fairly consistent in math, ranging from 46, 46, 47, 47. My verbal, however, ranged from a 38-40, with the 41 on the actual test being my highest performance to date.

My gameplan as of now is to take the test July 16th. Through July 4th weekend I will be going back over all content (re-read all the Manhattan Prep books and re-read all flash cards/study guides). From July 5-13th, I will be doing silo'd practice problems (based on each practice problem type) to sharpen my abilities on each type of question. The 14th and 15th I will review my notes one more, interspersing practice problem sets (all types of questions) on the 14th. In addition, I am going to take a practice test the weekend before the test.

Does this sound like a solid plan, or am I cramming too much studying into a couple of weeks? I feel as if, had I taken the test 10 times, 670 would have been my lowest score. Any advice would be much appreciated and again, all the help you all have provided so far has been very helpful in guiding my study plan.

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by rob10989 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 10:06 am
Didn't realize that I wasn't allowed to take the test that often. Looks like I'll be taking it again in August... The same gameplan still applies, however, just with a longer period for review problems.

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by rob10989 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 10:19 am
With an August test date I'm starting to wonder whether or not it will be too late, as I have essays to begin writing and recommendations to pursue as well...

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by MartyMurray » Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:24 pm
rob10989 wrote:With an August test date I'm starting to wonder whether or not it will be too late, as I have essays to begin writing and recommendations to pursue as well...
They don't make you wait over a month between tests. They used to make you wait 31 days, but they recently changed the period to 16 days.

I don't really get what you are saying anyway. I mean, if you want to get into a certain school and you can get the scores to get into that school, then I would think you would figure out how to make it happen, and not say something like, "I'm starting to wonder whether or not it will be too late". Am I missing something?

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by MartyMurray » Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:43 pm
rob10989 wrote:Thank you all, this information has been very useful. Given how fresh all the information is in my head, I'm taking today off from studying and going to begin studying again tomorrow. First, let me answer any outstanding questions. Rich, I am planning on applying in September. Secondly, I took 4 CATs, but all different (GMAT Prep has 6 available). My scores were fairly consistent in math, ranging from 46, 46, 47, 47. My verbal, however, ranged from a 38-40, with the 41 on the actual test being my highest performance to date.

My gameplan as of now is to take the test July 16th. Through July 4th weekend I will be going back over all content (re-read all the Manhattan Prep books and re-read all flash cards/study guides). From July 5-13th, I will be doing silo'd practice problems (based on each practice problem type) to sharpen my abilities on each type of question. The 14th and 15th I will review my notes one more, interspersing practice problem sets (all types of questions) on the 14th. In addition, I am going to take a practice test the weekend before the test.

Does this sound like a solid plan, or am I cramming too much studying into a couple of weeks? I feel as if, had I taken the test 10 times, 670 would have been my lowest score. Any advice would be much appreciated and again, all the help you all have provided so far has been very helpful in guiding my study plan.
That sounds like slightly a lot, and maybe not sufficiently performance based.

While I could be wrong, overall I get the impression that you are too focused on what you are reading and not sufficiently focused on developing skill in playing the game. I mean, for one thing as you do practice questions you could, as necessary, refer back to the Manhattan books, or to this forum for instance, to get ideas, and that would be more performance based that just going over all the Manhattan books again.

Also, in verbal, you can read books and explanations all day long and not get much better at handling verbal questions, as what you really need for scoring high in verbal are solid skills and effective processes, and those are things that you develop by doing more than by reading.

So, yeah, your plan sounds decent, and it could work. At the same time, I wish that it felt a little more performance based.
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by [email protected] » Tue Jun 28, 2016 9:29 pm
Hi rob10989,

If you just took the GMAT for the 2nd time on June 27th, then you should be able to take the GMAT again sometime around the middle of July (or later). The Testing Center that you want to take the GMAT at will only have a limited number of available appointments though, so you might have to consider pushing back your Test Date or taking the GMAT at a different facility. As it stands, your general study plan sounds fine though. The Q40 means that you made a number of little mistakes throughout the Quant section on Test Day and you likely missed out on a lot of 'strategy-based' points. Given your score goal and past performances, the bulk of the missing points that you're looking for are going to be found in the Quant section, so you really have to work on your 'precision' and eliminate the little mistakes from how you respond to Quant questions.

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by rob10989 » Wed Jun 29, 2016 5:10 am
OK, thank you. Taking all of that advice into account, it sounds like performance-based practice will be the best bet going forward. I've read through all of the books multiple times and my flashcards multiple times, so a brief review of the content will be useful as well. On the sentence correction front, I'm going to read two chapters a day and do practice problems, focusing not only on getting the answer right, but then reviewing the wrong answers and understanding the pitfalls. As for quant, I am going to review each topic by doing practice problems and applying the same methodology as I do for the sentence correction section. To stay familiar with RC and CR, I will review those questions as well.

I'm using the Manhattan Prep iPhone/ipad app for the questions, as they have a fairly large bank of questions with good explanations. Do you have any other suggestions for question banks? Marty, you mentioned Bell Curve has a solid bank of questions.

My daily routine is to study 3 hours per day, 1 in the morning, 1 during lunch, and 1 after work. During the weekends, studying 5 hours per day. I signed up for the test on the 16th of July, so that should allot me around 50 hours of study time before the test. I started this morning by doing a half an hour of algebra questions, then reviewing a couple of the chapters of sentence correction and doing a few problems.

I'm not going to take a practice test this weekend, but instead am going to take one next weekend. Depending on feedback, however, I may end up taking one this weekend. I'd just rather allot my time to studying material and drilling in the different topics. I have never practiced for IR and have consistently hit 7-8, so I am going to keep that review as is.