Need Help

[YousufK29]

Hi

I recently gave my GMAT exam.
I had been scoring 680-710 in all my mocks, but to my horror, just when i finished my exam, the score popped up.A mere 500. Q 36 V 23. I cannot even begin to express the disappointment and embarrassment I feel. I feel crushed, like someone has snatched away a dream. I have not scored well in my under grads and I need to excel in GMAT to change directions.

Please Help. I'm a ship without a sail.

I am attaching my ESR. please provide any valuable feedback.

Quant

Your Quantitative score of 36 is higher than 29% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean
score for this section is 39.93.
• Your performance on Problem Solving questions was equivalent to a score of 32. Your score is better than 21% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.91.
• Your performance on Data Sufficiency questions was equivalent to a score of 44. Your score is better than 47% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.94.
• Your performance on Arithmetic questions was equivalent to a score of 42. Your score is better than 42% of all subsection
scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 40.02.
• Your performance on Algebra/Geometry questions was equivalent to a score of 29. Your score is better than 16% of all
sub-section scores recorded in the past three years. The mean for all test takers is 39.88.
• Your performance of 33% on Geometry questions is considered Weak.
• Your performance of 75% on Rates/Ratio/Percent questions is considered Above Average.
• Your performance of 70% on Value/Order/Factors questions is considered Above Average.
• Your performance of 40% on Equal./Inequal./Alg. questions is considered Weak.
• Your performance of 33% on Counting/Sets/Series questions is considered Weak.
• You completed 31 questions in the Quantitative section.
• You responded correctly to 71% of the first set of questions, 43% of the second set of questions, 86% of the third set of
questions and 14% of the final set of questions..
• The average difficulty of questions presented to you in the first set of questions was Medium, the average for the
second set of questions was Medium, the average for the third set of questions was Medium and was Medium for the
final set of questions.
• The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 2:49, the average time for the
second set of questions was 2:14, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:57 and 1:02 for the final set of
questions.


Verbal

Your Verbal score of 23 is higher than 32% of GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score
for this section is 27.04.
• Your performance on Critical Reasoning questions was equivalent to a score of 25, which is better than 39% of GMAT
Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.59.
◦ Your performance of 50% on Analysis/Critique questions is considered Weak.
◦ Your performance of 75% on Construction/Plan questions is considered Above Average.
• Your performance on Reading Comprehension questions was equivalent to a score of 23, which is better than 35% of
GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.29.
◦ Your performance of 66% on Identify Inferred Idea questions is considered Above Average.
◦ Your performance of 75% on Identify Stated Idea questions is considered Above Average.
• Your performance on Sentence Correction questions was equivalent to a score of 20, which is better than 25% of
GMAT Exam scores recorded in the past three years. The mean score for this sub-section is 27.19.
◦ Your performance of 37% on Grammar questions is considered Weak.
◦ Your performance of 75% on Communication questions is considered Above Average.
• You completed 36 questions in the Verbal section.
• You responded correctly to 63% of the first set of questions, 43% of the second set of questions, 71% of the third set of
questions and 63% of the final set of questions.
• The average difficulty of questions presented to you in the first set of questions was Medium, the average for the
second set of questions was Medium , the average for the third set of questions was Medium and was Medium for the
final set of questions.
• The average time it took you to respond to the first set of questions presented was 2:19, the average time for the
second set of questions was 2:10, the average time for the third set of questions was 1:31 and 0:50 for the final set of
questions.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry that you had a disappointing experience on the official test. This test can be really frustrating.

The first task is to figure out why your official test score was so much lower than your practice tests. What were your Q and V scores on your 3 most recent practice exams? I'd like to get a sense of whether most of the drop came from one section vs. the other or whether it was about equal. (And what exams did you take? Official practice ones? Ours? Something else?)

And how did you feel, subjectively, as you took the test? Did it feel easier or harder than practice? Different? What surprised you or seemed odd?

A few questions:
(1) Did you take your practice tests under 100% official conditions? Time limits (no pausing of the exam), length of breaks, all in one sitting, you hadn't seen some of the questions before, etc.

(2) What did you do in the 5 days prior to the exam? What did you do the day before? (Some people take a practice test or study for hours...and tire themselves out.)

(3) How was your sleep in the week before the exam? How was your routine in general?

(4) Everyone feels at least some anxiety and mental fatigue when taking these exams—but sometimes either or both can get very bad. Did you experience any of the following: physical symptoms, such as sweaty palms, racing heart, dizziness or nausea; severe inability to concentrate, such as reading something and realizing you had no idea what you just read and you have to re-read the entire thing; stronger than normal decision fatigue, such as agonizing back and forth forever on verbal, unable to make a decision, or the flip: you start making rash decisions / not following your usual process / moving way too quickly (and therefore likely increasing the incidence of careless mistakes)

(5) How was your time management? Did you finish either the Q or V sections more than about 5 minutes early? Did you have to rush to finish, guessing on some questions or answering more quickly than you would have liked? Or something else? Tell me anything you remember about your time management in general.

Next, your ESR data. Quant first.

There's a significant difference in performance between DS and PS. You were quite good at DS, but PS was more of a struggle. This often means that you understand the concepts well, but you struggle to do actual computations. It looks like you were fine on arithmetic-type computations but algebra / geometry / more "textbook-like" math was a problem.

Ah. And you did have quite a significant time management issue. You averaged close to 3 minutes for the first quadrant and right around 2 minutes for the second and third, so you had to rush in the fourth quadrant. 1 minute per question is definitely going to hurt your performance significantly. How did that last quadrant feel to you? Were you rushing on every problem? Did you work normally on some and then just rush to guess at the end in order to finish? (On how many problems did you straight-up guess?) Etc.

The GMAT is a "where you end is what you get" test—so even if you lift your score quite high earlier in the section, if you drop during the last part of the section...where you end is what you get. Given the timing and % correct data, your score was higher than 36 (I would guess it was in the lower 40s...maybe even 44-45) until you got to the fourth quadrant, and then you dropped to 36.

It's also the case that missing a lower-level question hurts you more than missing a higher-level question. When you get to the end of the section, the test has honed in pretty well on your "appropriate" scoring range, so if you start missing a bunch of those questions, your score is going to go down quite a bit.

It's also possible that some of your content areas weren't as bad as the data looks—if you happened to get, say, 3 out of 4 geometry questions in that fourth quadrant, then it's not that geometry is terrible. It's that you had to try to answer those questions in a minute each and of course that's going to cause mistakes.

Verbal. Your performance across the three question types was more equal. The only significant difference was on grammar vs. communication (I'm not quite sure what they mean by communication, as all sentences are presumably about communication, but I suspect they mean what we would call meaning).

And you had a similar timing trajectory—rushing in the final quadrant. You didn't have the same drop in % correct in this quadrant as you did in quant, so you didn't drop quite as much at the end of this section, but the fact that you had to rush as much as you did means you almost certainly made at least a couple of careless mistakes (or just had to guess to finish) and that would have eroded your score some. Not as much as on the Q side, but some.

So the good news is that there is work to be done just from a time management perspective that will help to lift your score. Let me know the answers to my questions above and we'll figure out where to go from here.

[YousufK29]

A few questions:
(1) Did you take your practice tests under 100% official conditions? Time limits (no pausing of the exam), length of breaks, all in one sitting, you hadn't seen some of the questions before, etc.I gave only the Q And V sections each time i gave the test. I did not pause between the tests.

(2) What did you do in the 5 days prior to the exam? What did you do the day before? (Some people take a practice test or study for hours...and tire themselves out.)I gave a mock test 3 days prior to the exam. Following up the test day, i was only solving OG questions.

(3) How was your sleep in the week before the exam? How was your routine in general?Pretty much the usual.

(4) Everyone feels at least some anxiety and mental fatigue when taking these exams—but sometimes either or both can get very bad. Did you experience any of the following: physical symptoms, such as sweaty palms, racing heart, dizziness or nausea; severe inability to concentrate, such as reading something and realizing you had no idea what you just read and you have to re-read the entire thing; stronger than normal decision fatigue, such as agonizing back and forth forever on verbal, unable to make a decision, or the flip: you start making rash decisions / not following your usual process / moving way too quickly (and therefore likely increasing the incidence of careless mistakes)I did face anxiety, I was being extra sure about each question

(5) How was your time management? Did you finish either the Q or V sections more than about 5 minutes early? Did you have to rush to finish, guessing on some questions or answering more quickly than you would have liked? Or something else? Tell me anything you remember about your time management in general.I had to rush. I had 2 seconds each for the last 6 questions

Is it possible to score a 700+ by the end of July? I am willing to do what it takes. I need advice on how i can achieve it.

[StaceyKoprince]

What were your Q and V scores on your 3 most recent practice exams? I'd like to get a sense of whether most of the drop came from one section vs. the other or whether it was about equal.

I had to rush. I had 2 seconds each for the last 6 questions

Bingo. This significantly affected your score for the reasons I mentioned last time—where you end is what you get and your score is obviously going to drop right at the end when you have that happen.

If you are able to fix those decision-making / time-management issues, then your Q score would probably really be closer to maybe 43 right now (in terms of your Q knowledge), even with the anxiety that you experienced during the exam. Call this phase 1: You need to learn how to be able to score consistently on the exam. Next, since, Q is your stronger area, so to hit 700, you'd need to get that up into the higher 40s. Lifting Q (and V) is phase 2.

Most people need a solid 4 to 6 weeks to address significant timing / decision-making issues. You can also be working on content at the same time—but you can't do all of the content while you're still addressing the timing stuff. The end of July is only 5 weeks away. So I'd say: Anything's possible, but there's a good chance it's going to take more than 5 weeks.

You can still go for it. Just be aware that this is an ambitious goal and you may need more time.

So the first big thing to fix is your mindset / decision-making / time management. Start here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... lly-tests/

And then here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... -the-gmat/

And then:
blog/2016/08/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

You will definitely keep coming back to that last post many times—it's a three-part post that takes you all the way from single-question timing to timing over the entire section. You may need to read the first two several times over the coming weeks (or watch the webinar linked in the second article multiple times)—you'll keep getting more out of them as you continue further in your studies.

For content, what study materials do you already have access to?

And I need more analysis from your most recent practice tests. There are two levels of review: The overall test data and the individual problems.

For the practice test data, use this:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... ts-part-1/

That article is based on our practice tests and assessment reports, so ideally use it to analyze MPrep CATs. If you haven't taken any of those recently, then try to adapt the principles discussed for whatever practice test you took.

For individual problems, figure out:
1) for the incorrect Qs: why you got them wrong and what you would need to have known / done to get them right. Then decide whether that's actually reasonable in 2 minutes (or the average timeframe for that question type) or whether you should leave those kinds of things as guesses for future (and learn how to make an educated guess).

2) for too-slow questions (whether right or wrong): where the "extra" time went and whether you could learn to do them in a more reasonable amount of time.
— If so, then how you're going to remember / be able to do that in future.
— If not, how you're going to know when to cut yourself off and how you're going to make a guess.

3) for too-fast Qs (whether right or wrong): why you went so fast (absolutely forced at the end? chose to in the middle because you knew you were a bit behind?).
— For any where you *chose* to go too fast, ask yourself whether it was a good decision. (Hint: it's NEVER a good decision if you actually do know how to do the problem, because then you risk making a careless mistake!)
— Try the problem again. What should you have done if you hadn't been trying to cut corners? Etc.

4) For any correct questions in a not-too-long length of time, ask yourself whether you can spot any additional shortcuts and how you would make an educated guess. Both of those things are easier to learn on problems that you actually got right without too much trouble.

And for the performance anxiety, start here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... mat-score/

Mindfulness practice is very good for learning to manage intrusive thoughts and keep yourself focused on the exam. Practice it twice a day for 5 to 15 minutes at a time.

[YousufK29]

In my last 3 Mocks, quant score ranged from 47-49 and verbal 36-39.

I will try giving the exam MAX by August 10th. I feel with a bit more practice in Quant and a couple of better strategies in Verbal, I might be able to bring up my score.

Is there any study plan you could suggest?

[StaceyKoprince]

Our live and Interact courses come with study plans, as does our Self-Study Toolkit—but there's a fee for these programs, of course. Alternatively, if you would like to come up with your own study plan and run it by us here, we'd be happy to tell you what we think.

This article can help you to set up your own study plan:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2014/01/15/new-years-resolution-get-your-score/

Okay, so your Q and V scores both dropped (your V dropped a little more, but it was roughly about the same). Did you have to guess randomly on a bunch of questions at the end of both sections? If so, then that explains at least part of the drop in each section.