GMAT Retake Strategy - Need Advice

[nystrom]

Just wrote the GMAT yesterday and achieved a 530, which is not necessarily where I wanted to be. I mainly studied Kaplan material and discovered this forum before it was too late.

I'm just curious as to how others approached a retake strategy. Is it beneficial to continue to study while the material is still fresh or to take a break and restart using a different study strategy in the future?

[Jen Kedro]

Hi,

How were your practice test scores? Did your actual score differ much from those? Generally I’d advice not taking TOO much time off, but if you need a break, a couple of weeks can be refreshing enough. When you re-take may also depend on whether you are aiming for any particular deadlines as well. If you were scoring quite a bit higher on practice tests, it is likely that you are already capable of a higher score, and your test-day could have been a bad experience due to other issues such as time management, anxiety, your psychological state, etc, in which case it’s probably better not too delay very much in re-taking. If you hadn’t been scoring much above that 530 even on your practice tests, then you may need to spend some more time focusing on the areas you are weakest….building your math foundation skills for example if needed, and so on.