Starting GMAT Score: 670
Final GMAT Score: 730
School Attended: Wharton
Since the other case studies provide a lot of detail about how the process unfolds with many of my students and since David’s situation wasn’t really much different in that regard, I am introducing his case because it illustrates one important fact: sometimes you need to take the GMAT multiple times to achieve the score that you deserve.
When I first met David, he had just taken the GMAT (after being tutored by a Kaplan tutor who he was not happy with) and scored a 670. Obviously that is already a very good score, but in our very first session I realized that David had the ability to achieve a much higher score. I have only done this a few times with my students (I did it with Aaron, mentioned above) but I told him at the end of our first meeting that he SHOULD have a score in the 700’s and that, as long as he was willing to not give up, he should keep going until he achieves a score in that range. I warned him that it may not happen on the very next try since sometimes people underperform on the real test, but his ability (in my opinion) dictated that he really was capable of a score significantly higher than 670.
I will spare the details of what we worked on in our sessions (suffice to say it was focused on getting him to be more strategic in the way that he approached both Quantitative and Verbal questions), but as he approached his next GMAT he was scoring in the 700 to 730 range on his practice tests. Nevertheless, on the actual exam he scored a slightly disappointing 690. He planned to take the exam again without any tutoring and on this next try he did worse: 680.
At this point he was frustrated, but I encouraged him to take the test one more time. I don’t normally push people like this, but I was very confident that he was capable of a higher score. I told him that he didn’t necessarily need to see me anymore since he was already operating at a very high level (as indicated by his practice test scores and by my own assessment of his performance in our sessions). He just needed to get back on the horse and try again. In the end I did see him for one more session before his 4th GMAT just to make sure he was really in game shape and finally he achieved the score that I think he probably should have had on the previous exams: 730.
When you take the GMAT and don’t achieve the score that you want, there are really two separate situations that tend to present themselves. In some cases, you are not really operating at the score level that you want to be at. In this case you need to do additional prep and change some of what you are doing to push yourself to a higher level and close the gap between the level that you are actually at and the one that you are hoping to reach. But for many other students, they are already operating at a level consistent with the score that they are hoping to achieve. They are achieving scores on official practice tests that match or exceed the score they desire. In many of these cases, however, the student will score well below that level on the actual GMAT. When this happens, it might mean that there are some anxiety issues that need to be dealt with or that the person needs to do more full length practice tests to try to get more accustomed to the stress and fatigue that occur when taking the actual test. But in the end, people in this latter category should generally aim to get right back in there and take the test again because sometimes you just don’t have the best game day performance and all you really need is another opportunity to shine.