Couldn't beat the GMAT!

[Diyanah]

Hello,

I took the exam on January 20, 2016. I messed up badly and got a score of 430. I wasn't able to sleep the previous night due to anxiety and found it very difficult to focus during the exam. My preparation started from May 2015 and I planned to take the exam on October 30. I even took one month leave at work and prepared for the test. One week before the exam my mother was diagnosed with severe pneumonia and I decided to postpone the exam to Jan. Ever since I postponed, I've missed the flow and consistency in my preparation as I took up a new role and moved to a new organization with respect to work. To add to it, I was finding it hard to juggle between work and studies and failed to strike a balance between the two. I've used the Veritas Prep course for the preparation and found the material to be extremely useful. All through the preparation phase, I was able to understand the strategies used, but whenever I took the practice tests, my scores were not more than 550. I was able to do well with the pacing part but always felt that I wasn't able to give my 100% focus while taking these tests. I always made a study but failed to have a consistency due to hectic work schedules. I want to retake the exam and understand my weak areas so that I could start from scratch and figure out what went wrong when I took the exam for the first time. I am looking forward for some advice in helping me have a study plan so that I follow it consistently. I want to go ahead and give it another try to fight against the GMAT beast. Any kind of help in this regard would be much appreciated. Thank You!

Regards,
Diyanah

[MartyMurray]

Hi Diyanah.

From what you said something jumps out at me.

You said that you were "able to understand the strategies used."

That sounds like a good start, but not enough to get you a high score. Scoring high on the GMAT is not just about understanding certain strategies. The GMAT is basically a reasoning game, and strategies and concepts that are discussed in training materials are merely basic building blocks of what you need to have going on in order to score high.

Someone who is ready to score high generally will be well beyond talking about understanding strategies and will be talking about things more along the lines of being really good at hacking his or her way to CORRECT answers.

So my initial take is that during your preparation you have not gone deeply enough into actually playing the GMAT game, by really learning about handling question types and then doing as many questions of each type as you need to in order to learn to accurately and quickly handle similar questions when they show up on the test.

I could be wrong though. So maybe you could tell us some more about what you have done to prepare, in terms of what you have read, what types of practice questions you have used and how you have used them, how many practice tests you have taken and how you have used their results, and anything else that we can use to see what you might do differently going forward in order to score higher.

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Hi Diyanah,

I'm sorry to hear about the various struggles you've faced during your studies. Regardless of the challenges that life may throw at you, the GMAT is still the same consistent, predictable Exam that it's always been, so you CAN train to score at a higher level.

I'd like to know a bit more about your studies so far and your overall goals:

1) What materials did you use during your studies?
2) What is your goal score?
3) How did you score on each of your practice CATs and your Official GMAT (what were the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on each)?
4) When are you planning to apply to Business School?

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

[Diyanah]

Hello Marty,

Thank you for the reply. I have used Veritas prep on demand course and have also used the official guide during my preparation. I agree with you. While my understanding of strategies has some merit,I have not spent enough time in understanding where I went wrong after writing each practice test. I have taken about 7 practice tests and scored less then 600 in all of them. What I am looking forward to work on from now onwards is to have a study plan in place and understanding ways to find out my weak areas. Also I lose focus while giving the tests as I get anxious. This is one reason why I always score low in the verbal section as it comes in the last. Any help going forward on developing a study plan would be great. As I mentioned before I don't want to give up on gmat and want to win over it no matter what.

Regards,
Diyanah

[Diyanah]

Hello Rich,

Thank you for the reply.

1. I have used Veritas prep On Demand course during my preparation along with the Official Guide.

2. My goal score is 700.

3. My practice test scores include

420 - 29Q and 19V
450 - 34Q and 19V
510 - 37Q and 24V
410 - 29Q and 20V
510 - 38Q and 23V

4. I am planning to apply for business schools this year.


Regards,
Diyanah

[[email protected]]

HI Diyanah,

With your goal score and these CAT scores (as well as your Official GMAT Score), you're going to have to make some BIG improvements to how you handle BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. You'll likely need an additional 3 months of consistent, guided study and you might need to invest in some new resources.

When you took your CATs:
1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take them at home?
3) Did you take them at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during your CATs that you couldn't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)?
5) Did you ever take a CAT more than once?

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

[Diyanah]

Hello Rich,

Thank you for the reply. Would you recommend any specific material in addition to what I am using now? When you mentioned that there should be a consistent study plan for the next three months, could you suggest how effectively can I make use of the improvement charts each time I practice questions? How best can I assess where I am going wrong?

With respect to my CATs

1. I did take entire CAT including all the four sections but not often
2. Yes, I have taken all the tests at home
3. Yeah, I have taken all the CATs at the same time as my official GMAT
4. I attempted only the Quant and Verbal part for most of the CATs I took, and I had to sit for 4 hours on the test day.
5. No, I havent take a CAT more than once.

Regards,
Diyanah

[[email protected]]

Hi Diyanah,

Test Day is a rather specific 'event' - the details are specific and they matter, so you have to train as best as you can for all of them. The more realistic you can make your CATs, the more likely the score results are to be accurate. The more you deviate, the more "inflated" your scores can become - and that's what happened here. By skipping sections, taking the CATs at home, etc., you weren't properly training for the FULL GMAT 'experience.' Focusing your attention for 4 hours can be a challenge, but if you're not training yourself to do that, then you won't be able to perform well on Test Day.

Thankfully, this is a relatively easy set of problems to fix. The big question now is "how long will it take you to properly get 'used to' taking the full GMAT?" You'll certainly need a new set of practice CATs to work with and you have to put in the necessary time to train your brain (and body) for the FULL GMAT.

I have a few additional questions:
1) Since your practice scores were all in the 400s and 500s, but your score goal is 700, why did you take the GMAT (instead of paying to reschedule it)?
2) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
3) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

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

[Diyanah]

Hello Rich,

1. I wanted to take the GMAT to get the test day experience and see how it goes. I have already rescheduled the GMAT in October last year to January. Change in my job and taking up a new role was quite challenging and I ended up being successful from work point of view but couldn't make it to the GMAT due to inconsistent study schedules. I felt rescheduling it time and again would make me relax until the month before the test. That's when I decided to give it a try.

2. I am planning to apply this year end or in early 2017.

3. I am planning to apply for IESE school, Melbourne Business School, Indian School of Business, Darden School of Business and Manchester Business School.

Regards,
Diyanah

[[email protected]]

Hi Diyanah,

Based on everything that you've described, I think that you would find the EMPOWERgmat Total Score Booster to be quite helpful. Most of our clients complete that Study Plan in well under 2 months, so the time commitment wouldn't be that bad. We have a variety of free resources on our site (www.empowergmat.com), so you can 'test out' the Course before setting up an Account.

If you have any additional questions, then you can feel free to contact me directly.

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

[MartyMurray]

Hi Diyanah.

However you work going forward, you need to get a higher verbal score in order to achieve your score goal. So here are some thoughts on doing that.

While sentence correction seems to require knowledge of rules, critical reasoning involves many types of questions and reading comprehension can be handled in various ways, achieving a high hit rate in the GMAT verbal section requires some basic things.

For instance, just as getting data sufficiency questions right is not exactly about knowing all about math, getting sentence correction questions right is not exactly about showing that you know all kinds of rules. Rather getting sentence correction questions right requires noticing the logic of what's going and noticing key details.

Guess what, getting CR questions right also requires noticing the logic of the questions and the answer choices and noticing key details of what is being said. Meanwhile to get RC questions right, guess what, you need to notice what the passages do and do not say, to notice the logic of what's written and to find key details in the passages that support the correct answer and not the other answers. Possibly the most important thing to be good at in order to get RC questions right is noticing the difference between answer choices that say something you might think that you read and answer choices that ACTUALLY MATCH what the passages say.

In your case, another thing that is going to be important is learning to not get anxious. Anxiety is not going to help, and you have to figure out what underlies the anxiety that you are experiencing and address it somehow so that you remain calm and focused throughout the entire time you are taking the test.

Possibly one thing that will help you to be less anxious is, in fact, seeing that, rather than being all about knowing how to apply some random strategies that one learns somewhere, the test is basically a logic based reasoning game, and that making sense of things and seeing the logic of what's going on are key to scoring high.