Disappointing GMAT score - Review of ESR and next steps

[AlexanderM539]

Hi Manhattan Prep Forums,

I would really appreciate some help reviewing my Enhanced Score Report (copied in below) in order for me to determine (i) what to focus on in my future GMAT studies to achieve my target score of 700 and (ii) what to do differently on my next GMAT test.

This week I took my first official GMAT test and was super disappointed about the outcome. I was expecting a score in the 640-700 range (as my Official Prep and MGMAT practice tests had indicated) but scored a disappointing 580 (Q39, V31) ...

I was expecting a slightly higher quant score and a much higher verbal score since I had been scoring in the range Q40-45 and V38-40 in my practice tests. I know that I messed up my time management in the verbal section of the test since I had to guess on the last four questions which I did not have time to read properly because of bad timing. I guess this affected my verbal score significantly (and also the SC subsection which I usually do pretty well on). Also, I should mention that I experienced the quant questions were not very challenging making me think that I probably answered some easy quant questions wrong in the beginning of the test.

I am thinking of focusing my studies primarily on the quant section (by doing specific question drills on identified weaknesses in relevant quant subsections) since I believe this is the area of the test where I can improve my score the most. I do not have a quant background and I am stilling lacking some solid quant foundations. I know that I will need to improve my time management in the verbal section as well but I believe that I can do this if I practice Reading Comprehension questions where I tend to spend too much time.

I would really appreciate any help I could get in terms of reviewing my Enhanced Score Report and determining the next steps in my studies. Please let me know if I should provide any further information.

Thank you very much for your time!

Alexander

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ENHANCED SCORE REPORT


YOUR GMAT TOTAL SCORE:
580 (48th percentile)
Q39
V31


/// VERBAL:


YOUR OVERALL VERBAL SCORE:
31 (61st percentile)

CR 37:
Your performance of 100% on Analysis/Critique questions is considered Very Strong.
Your performance of 60% on Construction/Plan questions is considered Average.

RC 32:
Your performance of 80% on Identify Inferred Idea questions is considered Above Average.
Your performance of 40% on Identify Stated Idea questions is considered Weak.

SC 25:
Your performance of 57% on Grammar questions is considered Average.
Your performance of 40% on Communication questions is considered Weak.

VERBAL PERFORMANCE PROGRESSION:

In the first set of questions you answered 50% correctly and 50% incorrectly.
In the second set of questions you answered 71% correctly and 29% incorrectly.
In the third set of questions you answered 86% correctly and 14% either incorrectly or did not answer.
In the final set of questions you answered 38% correctly and 62% either incorrectly or did not answer.

DIFFICULTY OF VERBAL QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

Average Difficulty of questions answered correctly/incorrectly broken down into four sections:
In the first set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the second set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the third set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the final set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.

VERBAL TIME MANAGEMENT:

Average time per correct response:
In the first set of questions you spent an average of 1:22 minutes on each correct answer and 2:27 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the second set of questions you spent an average of 1:36 minutes on each correct answer and 2:28 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the third set of questions you spent an average of 1:55 minutes on each correct answer and 0:40 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the final set of questions you spent an average of 1:33 minutes on each correct answer and 1:18 minutes on each incorrect answer.


/// QUANT:


YOUR OVERALL QUANTITATIVE SCORE:
39 (34th percentile)
PS 38
DS 41

Arithmetic: 38
Algebra/Geometry: 41

Your performance of 66% on Geometry questions is considered Above Average.
Your performance of 66% on Rates/Ratio/Percent questions is considered Above Average.
Your performance of 53% on Value/Order/Factors questions is considered Average.
Your performance of 75% on Equal./Inequal./Alg. questions is considered Above Average.
Your performance of 100% on Counting/Sets/Series questions is considered Very Strong.

QUANTITATIVE PERFORMANCE PROGRESSION:

Average Difficulty of questions answered correctly/incorrectly broken down into four sections:
In the first set of questions you answered 43% correctly and 57% incorrectly.
In the second set of questions you answered 57% correctly and 43% incorrectly.
In the third set of questions you answered 86% correctly and 14% either incorrectly or did not answer.
In the final set of questions you answered 71% correctly and 29% either incorrectly or did not answer.

DIFFICULTY OF QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

In the first set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the second set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the third set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.
In the final set of questions the average level of difficulty for questions presented to you was Medium.

QUANTITATIVE TIME MANAGEMENT:

Average time per correct response:
In the first set of questions you spent an average of 1:49 minutes on each correct answer and 2:38 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the second set of questions you spent an average of 1:47 minutes on each correct answer and 2:09 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the third set of questions you spent an average of 1:35 minutes on each correct answer and 3:06 minutes on each incorrect answer.
In the final set of questions you spent an average of 1:56 minutes on each correct answer and 2:00 minutes on each incorrect answer.

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi! Just an FYI that your post got caught in the spam filter, most likely because it was really long. In future, it's a good idea to break up long posts into 2-3 separate posts.

Next, I would be very happy to tell you what I think—but I'm going to make you work for it. You have to tell me what you think first. (Since you can't talk to me, or someone like me, every day of your studies, I want you to get good at analyzing / interpreting data for yourself so that you can be tweaking your study plan appropriately as you go. We'll start by you telling me what you think and then me telling you what I think, so that you can see what I might have noticed that you didn't.)

Also: I just posted a new series on how to analyze your ESR. Use that to help you do your own analysis:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/enhanced-score-report-part-1/

You have some hypotheses below, but I don't see all the data we'd need to validate those hypotheses, so you may need to give me more data in your reply. For example, you say you spend too much time on RC, but I don't see the timing data specific to RC. (I do see a tendency on both Q and V to spend a lot more time on incorrect problems than on correct ones in some of the quadrants...)

[AlexanderM539]

Hi Stacey,

Thank you very much for reaching out! I will remember to break up long posts.

That makes great sense! Below are my thoughts on the ESR, my performance on test day and suggested future focus. Let me know if you want me to elaborate on some of it.

Is there any way for me to upload my ESR so you can get all the necessary data? If not, could I forward it to you in an email?

Best,
Alexander

***

Verbal:
As mentioned, I had timing issues on test day with the verbal section causing me to guess on the last four questions which I did not have time to read properly. I guess this is reflected in the decline in the percentage of correct answers in the final set of the test (incorrect answers amounting to 62% in the final set compared to 50, 29 and 14% in earlier sets).

I think part of the reason for this is that I might be spending too much time on SC questions (average of 1:36 min. - which may in fact be somewhat deflated since I guessed on 2-3 SC questions at the end of the test spending no more than 5-10 seconds on these which would have brought down the average of time spent on SC questions). I should probably limit SC questions to 60-75 seconds. In general, I dwell too much on the details and double check answer possibilities, which I should probably stop doing. The ESR indicates I should practice SC (39th percentile) but I actually think this is not very accurate - I feel quite comfortable with SC and my guess is that the SC score is so low because of my bad time management causing a mess at the end of the test.

When that is said, I could probably benefit from spending a bit more time on RC and CR questions (average of 1:48 min.) , which may have resulted in more correct answers.

Quant:
In general, I think I will need to hone my overall/general quant skills in order to get a higher score and practice a more strategy based approach to the quant section. Problem solving and in particular arithmetic seem to be my weak spots (32nd and 31st percentile, respectively).

I spent an average of 2:15 on problem solving and 1:39 on data sufficiency, which should probably be closer to 2 min. for each section. Even though I felt my time management on quant went fine I might want to practice a different pacing approach not focusing too much on the clock - my approach until now has been to spend approx. 2 min. on each quant question (and in no event any more than 3 min.), however, I have realized that it might not always be a good strategy to limit myself to 2 min. per question since some quant questions I think I might be able to solve if I give myself a bit more time before guessing/moving on.

From the overview of correct/incorrect answers in the different sets it seems as though I might have answered a number of easy quant questions wrong in the first set making it hard for me to progress very much throughout the test (I went from 43% correct in the first set to 57, 86 and 71% in the later sets).

I agree on your comment that I am spending too much time on questions that I get wrong. I should probably practice letting go of tough questions more quickly.

Overall thoughts:
I would think my two main areas of focus before taking the test again should be to practice time management in primarily verbal section and developing my general quant skills.

[StaceyKoprince]

Before I dive into the meat of your post: We don't offer full ESR analysis for free, unfortunately. (That would be something you could do in a tutoring session, if you want it enough to pay for it!).

SC questions (average of 1:36 min)

Okay, so if 2-3 of those last 4 were SCs, and we typically see around 12-13 of these on the real exam...let's say you had 3 that you answered in 5 seconds each. And then 9 more that were at some time longer than 1:36 on average to get you to that overall weighted average. So you'd have averaged around 2m per problem (worst case scenario).

The "standard" average for SC is around 1m20s per problem, so that puts you about 40s over per problem on average. If you get 12-13 of these, you're losing about 8-8.5 minutes.

But you also said that you averaged about 1:48 for RC and CR? So you're a bit fast on those—RC (with reading time) would normally average around 2m10s all-in and CR would average 2m. So on one RC passage, you're saving about 60-80 seconds (for 3 or 4 problems), and on one CR, you're saving about 10s. For all RC and CR, you're saving about 5-6 minutes.

So you have about a 3-4 min deficit to make up. That's doable.

I dwell too much on the details and double check answer possibilities, which I should probably stop doing.

Possibly—but this is something you'll need to study! Let the evidence drive you. When you're reviewing SC after the fact, figure out where your double-checking and dwelling was valuable and where it wasn't. If it's never valuable, you'll know to stop doing it completely. If it's valuable in certain specific circumstances, then you'll be learning which signs should trigger a closer look—and you can stop doing it if those signs aren't present.

Really, everybody will be bailing on something at some point. The question is just how much control you have over it. One of your goals is to study to the point that you can quickly identify a few problems throughout the exam that just aren't good investment opportunities for you for whatever reason. You'll guess quickly on those and then you'll have your 3-4 minutes that you need to finish the rest of the test on time.

Re: SC vs. RC vs. CR, it is true that we can't totally tell what's going on with SC since you know that 2-3 out of the final 4 were SC (and so those problems skewed your SC results). But we can tell that you're strong on CR overall and in particular on Analysis / Critique type plans. Go look in OG to see what those are so that you know how to recognize when to invest. (Still within reason. If it takes you 4 minutes to get a CR right, that's not worth the investment even if you're guaranteed to get it right.)

And we also know that, on RC, you're better with inference than with stated idea—and that's very interesting. Inference questions are often trickier. So it is possible that you lost some points on stated-idea RC problems just due to rushing.

Overall, dig into all three question types to figure out which subsets you are the most annoyed by or are most likely to miss. You're looking for characteristics that you can identify quickly (so that you can save as much time as possible when you bail). It could be a super technical science paragraph on RC (and so you'll bail on any problems that ask about that paragraph). It could be a specific type of question on RC or CR.

For SC it's a bit harder, but you might notice that you don't do as well when the entire sentence is underlined or something like that.

in analyzing all of this, your entire goal is to identify certain characteristics that will tell you in future "LOW ROI ALERT! LOW ROI ALERT!" You're going to bail on ~3 of those (maybe it'll end up being 2 or 4 on the real day, we'll see) and that will be all you need to get yourself to the end of the section comfortably.

From the data and what you're saying, it does sound like that's going to be your main task on Verbal: fixing this executive-decision-making issue.

On quant, I just want to check that you put in the correct numbers. In your first post, you listed the following scores but in your second post you listed the following percentiles:
PS: 38 (32nd percentile)
DS: 41

Arith: 38 (31st percentile)
Alg/Geo: 41

If both PS and Arith had scores of 38, then their percentiles should be the same. Did you possible mistakenly list the same score pairing (38 and 41) for both categories but they were actually slightly different?

By itself, the difference between 38 and 41 is likely "noise"—there's probably not a huge difference in underlying skill there. But if one of those pairings was supposed to be further apart, let me know.

I spent an average of 2:15 on problem solving and 1:39 on data sufficiency

But couple the above with this, and things are getting very interesting. You spent 35 seconds longer on PS, and yet your PS score was a bit lower than PS. So you were likely *hurting* your DS performance in order to prop up your PS performance more. We definitely need to do something about this.

What was your average time for Arith vs. Alg/Geo?

Generally speaking, when I see the PS/DS pattern that you have, that tells me that you know the quant rules and concepts—the theory, if you will—and so you can think your way through to the answer (which is mostly what DS is about), but you struggle when it comes to doing computation...literally having to do out the math (which is required more—sort of—on PS...but we'll talk more about that in a minute).

So then the next question: Is that any math or is it weighted more heavily towards Arith or Alg/Geo? The average timing can help us tell. If it's skewed higher on Arith, then you were both spending more time and not doing quite as well, so Arith is definitely the issue. But if timing is skewed higher on Alg/Geo, then you were propping up Alg/Geo with extra time and it's likely the case that the two skill areas are more even. (And if the avg timing is about the same, then again, it's likely that they're more even.)

Now, let's go back to my "literally having to do out the math...which is required more—sort of—on PS." It's definitely the case that you have to do more actual math on PS than on DS. But it's also the case that you can get away with avoiding a ton of computation / actual math even on PS.

On many questions with real numbers, you can estimate or ballpark or otherwise back-of-the-envelope your way to an answer, especially if you do understand the overarching theory / concept (which your DS performance says you generally do).

And on both real-number and algebraic questions, you can use the various strategies (smart numbers, working backwards, even testing cases on some PS problems) to avoid the "textbook math computation" thing that is probably messing you up on certain kinds of questions right now.

You may also have some holes in your content foundation—you'll have to keep an eye on that as you study. But your ESR shows that you were pretty good across most topics in general—nothing's jumping out as obviously far inferior to the others. So just keep an eye on this in your practice tests and problem sets. When something does jump out as problematic, put that content on your to-do list for the next week or two. But from what we've seen so far, I suspect that your overall math focus is going to be on "How do I get to the right answer letter as fast as possible—and train myself away from trying to find the right mathematical / numerical answer all the time?" The real test only cares that you picked correct answer (B)—it doesn't care that you know exactly what correct answer (B) stood for and precisely how to get there.

I agree with your assessment that you need to rethink how you manage timing on Q. 2m is the average, but you should expect most questions to be in the 1m to 2.5m range. I don't consider anything up to about 2.5m to even be long.

You'll also have a small number (2? 3?) in the 2.5m to 3m range. Here, you just want to make sure that you're making a good call to go that long. This is, "I'm really good at these and know exactly how to do this problem, but it happens to be a hard one, so it's going to take a little longer than usual." Emphasis on little. These should not be, "I did something like this last week, I just have to remember....ugh, if I just spend a little more time, I'm sure I can figure it out..." No. Get out.

In the 0m to 1m range, you'll have three kinds of problems:
– I'm purposely bailing fast and guessing randomly
– I'm so good at this that not only can I finish it in under a minute but I even have time to check my work to make sure I didn't make a careless mistake...
– I made a careless mistake.

(I rarely have problems under 1m because, if I really think I'm done in under a minute, I check my work. And by the time I'm done with that, I've usually broken the 1m mark.)

Do you use our yellow pad timing technique? See the session 6 Interact lesson Preparing to Face the GMAT or read this article:
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2016/08/19/everything-you-need-to-know-about-gmat-time-management-part-1-of-3/

This allows you to manage your timing in "clumps" of questions, so you don't have to hold to 2m every time. As long as you're close enough to on time at each increment (every 4 questions, ~8 minutes), keep going. When you get too far out of whack (ahead or behind), take corrective action as soon as you spot it (at the next checkpoint).

And, in general, when you're behind on time, the best corrective action is to guess as fast as possible on as few questions as possible to get caught back up. You don't have to do this on the immediate next question, but you'd want to do it in the next clump or two. (Ideally, you catch any issues soon enough that you only have to guess on 1 or maybe 2, in which case, do it in the next clump.)

So 100% yes to this comment of yours:

I should probably practice letting go of tough questions more quickly.

Really think of this as, "Am I going to get sucked into blowing money on a bad investment? Sometimes, sure. But ideally, I recognize at least some for what they are and don't put any money down in the first place."