Target Score: 580

[roymonik]

Hi everyone,

I took the GMAT last month and scored 500. Prior to taking the test I scored a 560 on the MGMAT CAT, however this score was inflated as I did it without AWA and IR. On the day of the test I had a bad morning and I think this caused my score to be lower than it could have been,

I need to retake it on April 11th in order to complete my application. The school requires a score of 580. So far I have taken two more MGMAT CATs and scored 540 and 530. I have been studying using the OG 2016 and MGMAT strategy set. Not really sure what else I can do, as the score seems to be obtainable. Sometimes I find I burn out during the practise CATs as well.

6 days left to improve my score to 580. How realistic do you think this is? Also, any tips or tricks are welcome.

Thank you,

M

[MartyMurray]

Hi roymonik.

Getting to 580 by the 11 is doable. Really to go from your practice tests scores around 530 to a score of 580+, you need to get maybe 5 or 6 more right answers. That's all. Of course the order of right answers matters, but a rough estimate of that type works pretty well.

You could use the Manhattan test analytics to see what types of quant questions you are missing most and work on maybe four types. Probably exponents would be one of the types that you should work on. Get better at exponents questions and a few other types and you can expect to get a few more right answers in quant.

Here is a site with many exponent questions in the question bank. It also has many other quant categories. https://bellcurves.com. You can access the questions by going to the GMAT self study area and setting up a practice account.

For verbal you could focus on one type out of the three types of questions, maybe CR. Get a little better at CR and you can expect to get one or two more right answers.

If you can just get four more quant right answers and two more CR right answers, you should get to somewhere around 580 - 600.

Also, even by working on accuracy or timing you could get some more right answers. So there are multiple levers that you could pull to drive your score up.

Here's a post I wrote on finding ways to drive up your score. https://infinitemindprep.com/raising-you ... the-board/

[[email protected]]

Hi roymonik,

You're currently 'in range' of a 580, but you'll have to make some adjustments to how you handle the Test to pick up those missing points. To start, you don't need to correctly answer ANY 'hard' questions to hit your score goal, so it's actually better for you to quickly 'dump' those questions and spend that extra time on the 'gettable' questions that you face (taking more notes, double-checking your work, etc.).

1) What is the application deadline for the School that you're applying to?
2) If you don't score at least 580, how would your plan change?

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

[ceilidh.erickson]

Marty is right: use the Mprep Assessment Report to get a detailed breakdown of your strengths and weaknesses. https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/onli ... eports.cfm

Better yet, you can share screenshots of those reports here, and experts can give you much more specific advice.

[roymonik]

Update:

I took another CAT on Thursday, scored 580 on MGMAT. Was happy with the result after taking the advice I received on here.

Took the official GMAT practise for the second time today, and scored a 410. I really don't know how the discrepancy occurred, and I am extremely worried at this point. The first time I took the official GMAT practise test, I scored a 500.

Any last minute advice would be appreciated before tomorrow. Here's to hoping that I just had poor luck this morning and that this is not reflective of my performance for tomorrow.

[MartyMurray]

Update:

I took another CAT on Thursday, scored 580 on MGMAT. Was happy with the result after taking the advice I received on here.

Took the official GMAT practise for the second time today, and scored a 410.

Any last minute advice would be appreciated before tomorrow.

Hi. Probably you need to focus on the fact that the GMAT can be tricky.

Official quant questions can look very simply and as if they are easy to answer, and at the same time can have tricks to them. If you miss the tricks, you can easily get them wrong even though the math they involve might be basic. So as you are doing quant questions tomorrow, look out for trick and traps.

Official verbal can also be pretty tricky. Really being careful to not get tricked into choosing trap answers can make a big difference in your score. In SC look at the sentences from end to end to make sure that you have not missed something. In CR don't be too quick to pick answers that just sound right. In RC make sure that you go back to the passages to confirm which answer choices really matche what the passages say.

This latest score sounds as if it's a fluke. At the same time, something did happen. Probably that something has something to do with accuracy and getting tricked. So keep those things in mind tomorrow, stay cool, focus on seeing how many right answers you can get, and let's see how high you score. It's possible that with the right mindset you could break 600.

Enjoy the GAME!!!

[roymonik]

Thank you Marty. I noticed I made some careless errors. I am stressing out over this more than I should, and that is ultimately resulting in me over-complicating very basic problems.

Thank you again for your suggestions, fingers crossed!!!

[MartyMurray]

I have found that no matter how I feel that I am doing, if I just focus on getting as many right answers as possible to whatever questions I have left to do, I will be pretty satisfied with the result.

So no matter how you might feel during the test, just focus on the question at hand and handling it well.

Also, if you have some time before the test, do some practice questions to get warmed up. Doing that can really get you into the answer getting mindset, and the test can feel like an extension of a practice session, in other words, no big deal.

[diegocml]

Good luck on your test today, roymonik!