GMAT 680- IR5 Q45 V38; First Attempt- Retake?

[shrutixn]

Gave my GMAT today after 2 months of prep, got a 680, pretty disappointed with the score. I had been struggling with quant since early prep days so was expected the low score there but the verbal was much tougher than I thought, almost ran out of time on that front
I mainly used Manhattan GMAT study books and exams for prep

The biggest mistake would be that i invested in gmat prep materials quite late, and during the exam i thought that the gmat prep questions and practice tests closely resemble the actual exam as well

My final gmat prep exam also had a score of 680 , I am planning to retake the exam within 2 months, but i am not sure if i will be able to keep up with the study schedule like i did for the past month, I just want to score 700+ for a good shot at the top schools, I am planning to apply at Kellog and Berkley.

Any advice and suggestions will be appreciated, thank you

[[email protected]]

Hi shrutixn,

First off, a 680/Q45 is a great score (it's just shy of the 90th percentile overall), so this score might be enough to get you into the Business Schools that you named. Remember that your OVERALL application has to be strong, and since you've named two Schools that are remarkably competitive, no GMAT score (not even an 800) would guarantee you anything.

As it stands, you're actually not far from a 700, so studying for another 2 months before retaking the GMAT (if you choose to) shouldn't be necessary. To find those missing points, you should take a good look at your last couple of practice CATs. Ask yourself WHY you were getting questions wrong - was it because of a silly/little mistake? Was it because the question was too hard? Defining those issues would give you something to focus on.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[MartyMurray]

Two months is not that much prep time, and it sounds as if the time you spent in any intense preparation was even less. So now you are familiar with the test and with the types of questions you will face, and with a couple more months of preparation you can build on that and drive your score higher.

Over this next two months you can figure out where your best return on invested time will be and also seek to maintain your current skill set.

That verbal score is actually pretty high. Can you make it a little higher without too much trouble? Probably. Practice makes perfect. So one thing you could do is use a question bank such as the Veritas question bank and do sets of questions keeping the time in mind. While the questions in that bank are not all exactly like actual GMAT questions, in my experience if one can get around 85 percent of them right, one will score somewhere around 50 on the actual GMAT. You would not even need any intense practice on verbal, just enough for you to pick up a few more things and hone your skills a little. For one thing, you will develop an eye for the subtle differences that I suspect were giving you trouble on the test.

As far as quant goes, you can assess what your best ROI might be by seeing what your weak areas are. While it may not make sense to go crazy to learn how to answer tough probability questions, for instance, there are probably more general areas such as inequalities, algebra or exponents with which you could develop more familiarity and in so doing drive up your score. So that's where you could invest time. One tool for doing this is a BellCurves practice account. Their quant questions are pretty good and can be broken down into categories so that you can focus on one area at a time, getting each down before moving onto the next. Myself, I play that question bank as if it were a video game.

Anyway, whatever materials you use, that's the basic idea. Find weak areas and work on them until you get them and are pretty skilled in answering those question types. Then find more and do the same. A little here and a little there and you will drive that score up 20, 30, 40 or more points.

Also, taking some more practice CATs and analyzing what you could have done to get a higher score is another thing you could do. GMAC has a couple more you could buy. There's also PowerPrep, an older GMAC software, which you can download from here. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/resources

Overall, just remember that this is not really a test of your knowledge of what's in some book. This is more a test of skill in solving things and analyzing situations. So developing vision and problem solving skills is for the most part the thing on which to focus.

[shrutixn]

Thank you for you advice
A little bit more about my prep process for last 2 months
I used the 60 day gmat emails with manhattan gmat material uptil 45, then i started giving the manhattan gmat tests
Needless to say i scored horribly on those, especially on the quant section, but always did better on verbal. So spent better part of last month trying to get my quant score up. My biggest struggle was finishing the quant in time

Breakdown of my test score
Gmat prep 1 - 600
mgmat 1 - 560
mgmat 2 - 580
mgmt 3 - 620
mgmt 4 - 650
mgmt 5 - 670
gmat prep 2 - 680
mgmt 6 - 660

After the last 2 tests i decided that the mgmat quant sections are very different form gmat prep and invested in the gmat prep pack 1, and the exam pack. Unfortunately i was running out of time and i manage to do only 50% of questions from the prep pack and one exam that also gave me a 680 score.
I also paid less attention to IR and AWA till the final few days, all in all i was so worried about just finishing the quant section that everything else took a backseat.

My plan is to utilize the gmat prep materials i have thoroughly and then take the exam again, the mgmat books were good for understanding concepts but the exams were a poor reflection of the actual exam

[MartyMurray]

Hmm.

If you haven't used the Official Guide, which is what I gather, possibly incorrectly, from what you said, then the PowerPrep tests could really be a good tool for you too, because you won't have already seen some of the questions. In PowerPrep, there are two more official tests with official questions. Brent even suggests reusing official tests to get even more questions and more practice. One way you could use the two PowerPrep CATs is to take only the quant section of each. While that's not the same as taking the entire test, it would be pretty good practice.

[[email protected]]

HI shrutixn,

With the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores you earned on this GMAT, you have a fairly equal opportunity to pick up points in either section. With a few small adjustments, you could certainly score 700+, but since you never quite hit that level during your practice, there are some aspects in "your way" of doing things that are keeping you from that score. If you're going to continue approaching your studies in the same way, then it's likely that your scores will stay the same. Since a book can't force you to work differently, you might need to invest in some new online resources.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[killlereye]

Their quant questions are pretty good and can be broken down into categories so that you can focus on one area at a time, getting each down before moving onto the next. Myself, I play that question bank as if it were a video game.

Anyway, whatever materials you use, that's the basic idea. Find weak areas and work on them until you get them and are pretty skilled in answering those question types. Then find more and do the same. A little here and a little there and you will drive that score up 20, 30, 40 or more points.

[shrutixn]

Sorry i guess i should have been more clear, i did use the OG13 along with mgmt books for the prep, will look into all the other resources that are mentioned. Thank you all for your valuable input!

[shrutixn]

Is the power prep gmat only available for windows?

[MartyMurray]

I don't know for sure, but I believe it is only available for Windows.

You may get some more insight and confirmation from this post.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/powerprep-on ... 46333.html

Other ways to work more on Official CATs are to reset and retake GMAT Prep 1 and 2 and to buy GMAT Prep 3 and 4.