715 second attempt—success story
I wanted to thank everyone who gave me feedback and advice here after my first gmat attempt a few weeks ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/GMAT/comments/1sunw69/drop_from_700s_practice_to_675_actual/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I had a discouraging first attempt, scoring 675 after practice tests in the mid 700s. I followed the advice in the post linked above and got a 715 (Q84, V88, D85).
In case it’s helpful for anyone else in a similar situation seeing a big dropoff from practice to actual, here’s what I did:
—focused on streaks and accuracy in first 10 of Q. Saw my biggest score increase here.
—Also for Q, I used gmat club and got faster and more accurate at medium difficulty questions rather than focusing just on 700+ questions. I also drilled weak topics using Gemini; it was pretty good at drilling down to the areas I was actually weak or deficient on and giving me unlimited practice questions in a more user friendly interface than gmat club.
—I definitely felt test day nerves, probably more so this time around. I was better at dealing with them this time—it’s fine to take 20 seconds to calm down and reengage the question.
—Last point: I don’t know if this is true, because the scoring algorithm isn’t linear or transparent. But I did find, for both Q and DI, that both actual tests penalized wrong answers more. That is, even with similar streaks of right answers to start, I could get 4-5 wrong on the official practice to get the same score as 2-3 wrong on the actual. So aim high!
Thanks to all for the advice; good luck for those retaking!