Location: Westchester, NY
Starting GMAT Score: 590
Final GMAT Score: 710
School Attended: Wharton
At the time, Josh’s case was unique for me in that he was starting a ManhattanGMAT class at the same time that we began meeting (I had worked with students who had previously taken classes with all of the major GMAT prep providers, but never with someone who was going to be starting a class while I was tutoring them, although I have now done that many times as well). So I crafted an overall game plan that involved moving through the material in synchronization with what he would be doing in the class.
Partly because of his own nature and partly because of the nature of the ManhattanGMAT emphasis (both in its books and in the live classroom), Josh became overly focused on the content aspects of the test and was really missing the larger strategy perspective. So, as with most of my other students, I really inundated him with the message that the GMAT Quant section is a thinking and reasoning measure not a measure of pure Math ability and worked with him on changing his approach to the questions.
He also had issues on Verbal, particularly on Reading Comprehension, where he was not reading the passages correctly. Like many other GMATers, he was focusing on the details and completely missing the larger picture, so I taught him how to read with a focus on the author’s intention. The other issue that he was having on Verbal questions, and again one that is common to almost all GMATers, was that he failed to understand that the questions will have 1 correct answer and 4 incorrect answers and that there is not any real ambiguity about which one is correct. In other words, he tended to pick what he thought was the “best” answer instead of realizing that the right answer was right not because it was great or perfect but because it was the only answer that was acceptable and because all of the other answers were technically wrong for one reason or another. Once he understood this and how to differentiate between right and wrong, he became much more methodical on the Verbal section and his score really jumped.
On his practice tests leading up to the actual exam Josh was scoring in the 700 to 720 range. It is very common for students to slightly underperform on their first try at the GMAT (which is why so many people take the test more than once), but in Josh’s case he nailed in on the first try and got a 710. This was a fantastic score and right in line with what he was getting on practice tests so Josh was extremely satisfied and in the end it was good enough to get him into Wharton.