Location: Calgary, Canada
Starting GRE Score: N/A (Pivoted from GMAT)
Final GMAT Score: 169Q 164V (equivalent to 760 GMAT)
School Attended: Stanford GSB
Mark makes for an interesting case study for a couple of reasons. The most important is that he came to me with an already high GMAT score looking to get it even higher, but ended up pivoting to the GRE and succeeding on that test after not quite being able to get there on the GMAT.
Mark came referred by an admissions consultant and possessed an already impressive 710 on the GMAT. He was better at Quant than Verbal, so we started exclusively on Verbal and almost entirely on SC at first. Like many people who have studied a lot for the GMAT, he tended to view SC as a purely grammar exercise and failed to see the importance of meaning. He also didn’t quite appreciate the finer points of good SC strategy, so we focused on the above issues and he saw significant improvement.
Mark was better on CR, so when we turned there, it was really a matter of getting into very specific and very nuanced tactics such as really understanding common wrong answer patterns, traps on CR, etc. This is where, to be honest, experience as a tutor becomes critical. I would never have been able to pick up on these subtle inefficiencies if I hadn’t gone through this process with so many other students.
Since we wanted to make sure we squeezed the lemon for all the juice we could get, we eventually focused on Quant too, even though he was very strong there. Just as Mark was treating SC as though it were a purely grammar exercise, so he tended to approach the Quant section as though it were a test of his pure Math ability, and he had to be disavowed of this misconception. Since he was already at a 48-49 Quant, we were really just trying to guarantee that he got at least that on his next GMAT but were hoping we could get it to a 50. Mark really appreciated the pivot in mentality and the refocus in the direction of reasoning and problem-solving as opposed to pure Math.
Unfortunately, Mark was on a very tight timeline (he came to me in December hoping to bump his score for R2 deadlines), and although he saw great improvement on his practice tests, he just couldn’t get it to materialize on the actual GMAT.
So we pivoted to the GRE as a last ditch effort. Mark is a very hard-working student, so we decided that we would do just 2 weeks of GRE prep before having him take the test. Since the GRE and GMAT are so similar and since he was already so strong at Quant, I knew he had a chance to get a great score in that short of a time-frame. So we met 4 times over those 2 weeks, focusing entirely on Verbal, and Mark put in A LOT of time on his own, particularly studying vocabulary. And just 2 short weeks later, he got a 169Q 164V on the GRE (equivalent to 760 GMAT).
One could view this as evidence that he just should have prepped for the GRE in the first place and that his GMAT studies were a waste. But what I have learned over the years is that preparing for the GMAT, especially the Quantitative section, is a HUGE benefit when it then comes time to take the GRE. Indeed, when we at RTP prepare people for the GRE, we make sure that they do a significant number of GMAT quant questions to make sure that the GRE Quant section feels, if not easy, at least comfortable!