{"id":14844,"date":"2017-10-26T17:03:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T17:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/?p=14844"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T15:51:11","slug":"why-isnt-my-gmat-score-going-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/blog\/why-isnt-my-gmat-score-going-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Isn’t My GMAT Score Going Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Manhattan<\/p>\n

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We\u2019re not kidding! <\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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<\/i><\/b>So, you took your first practice GMAT a couple of months ago, and you immediately knew that you could do better. You spent the last month or two studying\u2014maybe you even enrolled in our <\/span>9-week complete GMAT course<\/span><\/a>. You\u2019re feeling much more comfortable with the test, and you know you\u2019ve learned a lot. But when you took your second practice test, you got a nasty surprise: your GMAT score hadn\u2019t improved at all. What\u2019s going on?<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019re not alone. Far from it. In fact, I\u2019d be more surprised if your GMAT score <\/span>had<\/span><\/i> gone up a lot between your first and second practice tests. What happened to you happens to so many people that it even has a name: the \u201csecond practice test effect.\u201d Let\u2019s dive in to some GMAT theory and learning science and see why it happens. <\/span><\/p>\n

The first part of the answer has to do with <\/span>guessing<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>timing<\/span><\/i>. If you want to succeed on the GMAT, you have to guess. You also have to finish the whole test without running out of time. If you don\u2019t guess, or if you run out of time or have to rush, your GMAT score won\u2019t be as high as it could be. The surprising thing is, it\u2019s much harder to handle your timing on your second practice test than it was on the first one!<\/span><\/p>\n

When you took your first practice test, there were a lot of topics you just didn\u2019t know or didn\u2019t remember. It might have been ten or fifteen years since you last studied math or grammar. When you saw a question that you didn\u2019t understand at all, what did you do? You took a guess and moved on. You knew that you weren\u2019t going to get it, so there was no reason to waste time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019ve been studying for a while, and you\u2019ve seen most of the topics on the GMAT, it\u2019s going to be much harder to tell when you\u2019re supposed to guess. You no longer have that \u201cI\u2019m totally clueless about this problem\u201d feeling to guide you. On your second practice test, this may have caused you to commit your time and energy to problems that you shouldn\u2019t have attempted. You understood the problem, but you couldn\u2019t quite follow through\u2014but you didn\u2019t realize that until it was too late! Weak timing and strategy can really hold back your GMAT score.<\/span><\/p>\n

Check out <\/span>this series of articles<\/span><\/a> for more info about how and when to guess, and keep practicing. Remember that you don\u2019t have to be totally clueless about a problem in order to guess on it. Sometimes, guessing is the right choice even on a problem that you know you could solve. It\u2019s all about spending your limited time and energy on the right problems, to maximize your overall GMAT score.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the other part of the \u201csecond practice test effect\u201d: <\/span>content mastery<\/span><\/i>. The GMAT doesn\u2019t test very many different topics. Your understanding of each of those topics exists on a spectrum, from \u2018completely clueless\u2019 to \u2018100% mastery.\u2019 As you study, you\u2019ll go through a number of different stages:<\/span><\/p>\n