GMATPrep: 720, 760 Actual GMAT: 660

[lmaura429]

Hi Stacey or Joe or anyone from MGMAT :),

Feeling kind of defeated. I took the GMAT in March and scored a 570 (well below my practice CATs; I had timing issues). I worked hard over the past few months on timing and strengthening my fundamentals on quant. 3 weeks ago, I scored a 720 on GMATPrep's exam (Q47 73 %tile, V42 96 %tile), and 2 weeks ago, I scored a 760 (Q50 90 %tile, V44 97 %tile). On the second test, my quant may have been inflated a bit because I recognized some quant Q's from my practice.

So as you can see, I'm very strong in verbal. I was only getting maybe 6 questions wrong on each GMATPrep test: 3-4 SC or 3-4 CR and no wrong RC Q's. I kept up with my verbal practice by doing a few CR, SC, and 1 reading passage every night or so.

Actual score today: Q44, 63 %tile; V38 84 %tile. I don't know what happened on verbal. it's obviously not BAD, but I'm depending on verbal to be super high in order to boost my score. Every practice test I did was under official test conditions with essay and IR sections. I stuck to healthy snacks during breaks, did jumping jacks between breaks to keep me going, and honestly, i was feeling psyched, energized and ready to get this test done. I was so confident i'd be scoring in the 700s.

What can I do to help against another verbal slip up?? My verbal score dropped on my 1st actual GMAT, too, but I was overall a hot mess that test day so i'm not sure if what drove that decline drove this test's decline. I'm also not sure if i have it in me to retake again, and at this point, I am running out of resources with which to practice. I also don't know that I want to keep continually practicing for another month (and i'll be away on vaca in Italy for 2 weeks this month and want to be GMAT free).

As always, thanks very much.

[StaceyKoprince]

First, you increased your score by 90 points from your first official test. That's fantastic. I know you were hoping for more, but take a moment to acknowledge how far you've come. The average improvement from first test to second is only 30 points. You tripled that! :)

Okay, so now what. Most important: go on your Italy trip without studying for or thinking about the GMAT. Even if you weren't going away, I'd tell you to take a break. This stuff is stressful. So you now have "your" GMAT teacher's permission to go on vacation and not think about this.

BUT! Before you go, I want some more from you on how things went on test day. Do you think you were experiencing some mental fatigue? Read this article to see how mental fatigue manifests - you can feel physically energized and still suffer from mental fatigue.

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... you-crazy/

One common manifestation is the feeling that you just want this over with already, and so you speed up and/or don't take as much care when making decisions, which leads to careless mistakes.

Another is the feeling that you're paralyzed and can no longer make decisions. You keep re-reading something without actually doing anything about it and then end up having to rush later (once again leading to mistakes).

What did you do in the last several days leading up to the real test? Is there a chance you overdid things and tired yourself out? Were you super keyed-up / stressed? Were you able to get a good night's sleep for several nights before?

What we're doing here is trying to figure out why what happened happened so that you know what you need to do when you get back from Italy. If we can do that, then you can go happily off on vacation knowing that you're set up to go when you get back.

The one thing I'll suggest that you look into now, before you go, is this:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... mat-score/

That might not work for you, but if you think it's something that might be worthwhile, then you can just check it out before you go and see whether there are any meditation exercises you can practice while you're traveling.

[lmaura429]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you so much for getting back to me. Throughout this whole experience, your posts in forums and on the blogs have been tremendously helpful. So thank you very much for that!

I've decided to brush myself off and take the test a third time, mainly because my practice exams showed I have the ability to score in the 700s. It's just something about the test experience that's hurting me.

There was DEFINITELY a moment during verbal where I literally said to myself, "ugh. I just want this to be done." I let myself sit back and take a few deep breaths before continuing. Maybe I was rushing, without realizing it? Throughout verbal, I was 3-5 minutes ahead of the timing benchmarks at checkpoints.

I didn't do a lot of work during the weekdays leading up to the GMAT, which actually made me worry a little bit. I mostly reviewed index cards, did a timed set of 10 quant q's, practiced verbal a little bit. The saturday and sunday before my test (i took it on a Sat), I probably spent 4ish hours each day studying (index cards, timed sets, review). I took a personal day from work the day before the test, and I spent the day reviewing my notes from Thurs. w Ron, doing a lot of index card review, 10 verbal q's, 10 quant q's, and r-reading a few of your strategy blog posts. The day of the exam, I was feeling totally calm and confident (i actually listened to this guided meditation -- it does help me de-stress).

I'm worried about not studying during my trip - what if I forget things? How will I know when I'm ready to take the test again? I'm not sure exactly how to study at this point!

Thank you!
Lindsay

[StaceyKoprince]

Were you normally 3 to 5 minutes ahead during practice? Or was that atypical? If the latter, then yeah, you were rushing. (You still could have been rushing even if that pattern was normal - but you were definitely rushing if you aren't normally ahead like that.)

You'll forget some things during your trip - but you'll get them back quickly. It's only 2 weeks. If you were going to take 4 months off, that'd be different - but even then, you can relearn anything you already know. It'd just take more time.

Okay, so there was some mental fatigue going on, at least partially due to stress, and there were possibly some timing / rushing issues going on.

If possible, continue with the meditation stuff while on vaca - I believe that the UCLA site includes podcasts that you can download. Doesn't have to be much - a couple of times a week.

When you get back, you're going to do some exercises geared towards helping with the mental fatigue issues, while continuing to study in general.

For study sessions, plan out what you're going to do over a 2-hour period. Then GO for 1 hour, no stopping, no checking email, no getting up for something to eat, etc. Take a 10-15 minute break, then GO again for 1 hour. Then take a more substantial break.

(Note: I'm specifically NOT recommending that you do what I just described for 3-4 hours. It's actually *more* mentally taxing to study than to take a test, because when you're studying, you're trying to create new memories, not just access old ones.)

Continue your practice of taking practice exams under 100% official conditions. Consider doing so in a slightly uncomfortable / artifiical environment (office conference room, library) if possible, just to more closely replicate the stress of the testing situation.

Think about where you felt the most fatigue during the test. Was it on all question types equally, or were some harder to slog through?
When you get back, schedule yourself for a practice test and analyze it. Pay particular attention to when you're feeling impatient, wanting to rush, etc. Also look at the actual data to see when / where this is happening. Add this to your "gut feel" and then we'll know where to concentrate on building more systematic processes that won't be so likely to break down when you're feeling fatigued.

Go enjoy vacation. You won't forget much, if anything. Tell me the answers to the above and I'll give some advice at that point, but also come back and post again after your post-vaca practice CAT analysis and we'll put your plan together. :)

Oh, and I forgot to mention one more thing: If you took our course or one of our Guided Self-Study packages, then you're eligible for a free Post-Exam Assessment (if you haven't done it already). This is a phone call with an instructor to figure out what went wrong and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment.

I recommend that you request it immediately after you take your post-vaca practice CAT - that'll give the instructor very good, very recent data with which to assess your case.

[lmaura429]

Thanks, Stacey!

I think maybe I'm normally a bit ahead of time on verbal, maybe 2-4 minutes, so I could have been rushing a bit.

I can't pinpoint exactly when I felt most fatigued during the verbal portion, but I think it was probably 1/4-1/2way through when a lengthy CR question popped up on the screen!

I'll post again after taking my post-vaca CAT test. I've run out of MGMAT and GMATPrep tests, but my plan is to reset the MGMAT CATs and take one of those.

Thank you!

[StaceyKoprince]

Have fun on vacation. :)