This post written by Kiran Nasim, with editing by Trevor Klee.

How to improve GMAT score from 550 to 700

Improve your GMAT foundation

When you score in 500s, the good news is that you have a lot of margin for improvement. The bad news is that you’re probably severely lacking in foundation.

To get that foundation, you should consider using the Manhattan GMAT guides. Once you have that foundation, you’ll need to use official questions to practice those strategies. Just knowing content doesn’t mean much if you can’t apply it.

In order to remember what you’ve reviewed, you should use an error log like 21^st Night. This will help you be able to apply those strategies on test day.

Take practice tests

In between now and your test day, you’ll need to take a lot of practice tests. You shouldn’t just plow through them though. You need to review the tests after you take them.

Analyze your mistakes, and make sure you understand why you got the questions wrong that you did. 21st Night can help with that, if you take the time to categorize the questions that you got wrong.

Another helpful part of taking practice tests is that you’ll be able to see if your score is increasing. If it’s not, that’s probably a sign that you need to switch up your studying tactics.

Learn from those who’ve already taken the test

Search GMATClub for advice and learn from the knowledge and expertise of others. Group study is a great way to stay motivated, you may learn different methods to solve a problem and get to pick up shortcuts and more effective techniques. Even if you know more than the other posters, you get to practice your concepts by explaining to others.

Study consistently

We understand continuous study can be boring and we believe 1 hour of focus study is better than 4 hours of mindless reading. Set immediate goals for each day and do work every day. You need to be able to work consistently and through hard problems.

Find a workout routine or nightly relaxation routine so you don’t get overwhelmed by your studying. You can also see if the streak system in 21^st Night helps you keep studying consistently.

530 to 700 success story

Gabriel’s determination improved his score by 270 points to achieve 700. He suggests the importance of identifying your weaknesses and focusing on improvement, thus he identified that even after three attempts he was weak in the verbal section so he focused more on his weaknesses. Almohri and Gabriel both suggest using GMATClub for guidance from the experienced test-takers.

How to improve your GMAT score past 700

So you gave the test and didn’t get your target of 700, you have the advantage of experience now and you know your flaws. Earning a 700+ won’t be easy but it will be worthwhile.

Create a study plan

Make a study plan accordingly; don’t dive in without your end goal in mind. You’re going to need to figure out when you’re going to put in the hours, what strategies you’ll need to learn, and how you’re going to review.

Perfect your foundation

You need a solid foundation before you can tackle any type of question. Make sure you know the concepts and make sure you know when and how to apply them.

A lot of students forget to study when they’re supposed to apply various techniques. You need to know what are the “triggers” for using certain equations, or else those equations are pretty much useless.

Manage your time

So, the best way to get faster at an exam is to become “fluent” in the questions. By that, I mean you need to be able to do the questions forwards, backwards, and in your sleep. Then you can speed up. 21st Night will help with that.

You also need to know when to skip questions. You don’t need to do every question. If you spend too much time on a difficult question in the beginning, you won’t have enough time to do the five easy questions at the end.

Study effectively

Keep in mind that your goal is to understand the material well. Don’t just mindlessly do questions, but actually understand the questions.

• Scott Woodbury-Stewart has this Tabula Rasa Rule: that if you can’t explain a concept using a sheet of paper and a pencil to a naïve person then you need to clear your own concept first.

Stick to a routine

You need to study consistently. Aim for at least an hour a day, and more on weekends. If you use a service like 21st Night, we’ll show you your streak of uninterrupted days to encourage you to keep studying. You can also try enlisting a study buddy (or accountability buddy) for help.

Target your error patterns

The best questions to do are the ones that you find difficult. Those are the ones that will teach you the most. You need to find a way of targeting exactly the questions that you find difficult in order to make sure you learn from them.

One possibility is to create a spreadsheet with your questions. That’s a method that I used for a while.

You can also use 21^st Night, an error log app. It’s based around spaced repetition, so the questions you find most difficult are repeated for you most often.

Success story in scoring above 700

Laksh tells his story of scoring 730 in 8 days and recommends using Khan Academy. Khan Academy shows someone else going through the problems and is really advantageous when you are burned out of doing the calculation by yourself and your mind needs a break. Moreover, he suggests sticking to the official guide and using e-book formats to study so that you can get used to the test-room environment.

How to improve GMAT verbal score

Many students, especially native speakers, underestimate the value of verbal practice. You should understand that verbal section tests a particular set of skills that needs to be learned and practiced.

In other words, you can get pretty far on verbal just by being a native speaker. But, you’ll never get a great verbal score unless you study verbal extensively, the same way that you would quant.

Stewert suggests in his guide; “mastering GMAT verbal section”, to spend an equal amount of time on both quant and verbal if your goal is to score 700+. He recommends alternating between quant and verbal, this will prevent you from exhausting yourself over-studying one topic.

How to improve Reading Comprehension

Learn the technique of reading and digesting. Regularly read comprehensions to analyze and summarize faster and learn skimming method. Spend some time organizing and analyzing the data before attempting the questions. Write short notes next to paragraphs to quickly refer back.

How to improve Sentence Correction

Brush up your grammar. Make sure you learn basic grammar rules and can pinpoint the violations of these rules such as misplaced or dangling modifiers, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun usage. Practice these rules in your daily life, for example, instead of saying “I don’t know if it will rain” say, “I don’t know whether it will rain”. Learning to dissect answers and eliminating choices will eventually leave you with the correct choice.

Sherlock Holmes once said: “Once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

How to improve Critical Reasoning

In order to improve critical reasoning, you have to improve your understanding of the stimulus. Make sure you can pick out the conclusion and understand the reasoning that leads to it.

Don’t get fooled by your eyes and pick answers that seem overly bold, these are often overstatements designed to tempt you. Laksh suggests going over these with a friend to get a different point of view and test your own logic against theirs.

How to improve GMAT quant score

Perfect your basics

Math needs clear and strong fundamentals. You need to brush up your concepts of algebra, learn to do unit calculations and have arithmetic shortcuts at the top of your fingers. Laksh has provided some Random notes on the Math Topics, make sure you go through all of these:

• Ratios
• Factors and Multiples: memorize divisibility rule, Ex: A number is divisible by 9 if the sum of the digits is divisible by 9
• Memorize the square of 1 through 20
• Rates: Drawing a picture of the problem helps
• Systems of Equations
• Overlapping Sets: quickly draw and label a Venn diagram
• Right Triangle rules: use Manhattan GMAT book and the Official GMAT book
• Inequalities: Rearrange the inequality
• Exponents
• Percentages: Practice by drawing and shading
• Coordinate Geometry: Draw and count spaces carefully

Data sufficiency problems

Spend extra time on data sufficiency problems to make sure that you’re setting up the problem properly. The setup is key in data sufficiency, even more so than with problem solving. One way to address this is substituting appropriate values for the variables and testing their sufficiency

Be present

Focus on the current step instead of thinking in the future. Allowing your brain to be fully immersed in the current step of the problem will result in more accurate answers. You need to practice calculations by hand and have your pen, eye, and mind in sync. Usually, students are doing one step and thinking about the next step to work faster, but this will only result in inaccurate calculations.

Use an error log

Remember that one of the most powerful ways to grow is to learn from your mistakes. Analyze your mistakes through 21^st Night: are you missing concepts or techniques, or just making silly mistakes? Careless mistakes can destroy your GMAT score, therefore, double check if you’re answering the right question after you finish solving a problem.

How to improve your GMAT score in a week

Have a clear learning objective in mind. Quickly go through fundamentals of math and verbal and note your weaknesses. You don’t have time to learn new concepts but you can strengthen old ones by studying mistakes using an error log, like 21^st Night. Make a study plan and 21^st Night will make sure that you follow it as you can’t afford distractions in this timeframe.

Check the timing for every problem you are solving. If you can’t solve a problem in targeted time, skip it rather than wasting time. Have shortcuts in hand to be quick and fluent. If you use 21st Night, its mastery system can create fluency by providing skills to identify similarities between what you practiced and what you are attempting in the exam.

Another important thing is to create a test-center environment to familiarize yourself with the physical and mental circumstances of the test day as much as you can. Don’t take breaks and always stick to the time limits of the actual exam.

Your time is valuable so you should spend it on the material that will reward you in the greatest run. Laksh tells his strategy of scoring 700+ in a week by using these e-books so that you get in the habit of using a computer to be prepared for the test day. It’s important to note that, if you do only have 7 days to prepare, you should use only the Official Guide for GMAT Review (OG) as you don’t have time to consult other sources.

How to improve your GMAT score in 2 weeks

Week 1

Take a mock test and note your error log to be used in 21^st Night for the revision stage. You can only afford targeted study at this time so for the first-week focus on quantitative practice. Go quickly through the topics you think you are strong at and focus on your weaknesses using 21^st Night.

A few topics tend to be seen in the practice tests and official tests more often than the others. Jinaru suggests in his 2-week study plan, to go through the first three chapters of the Number Properties Guide and the Word Translations Guide respectively, and chapters 1,2 and 5 of the Geometric guide.

Week 2

You should do targeted verbal practice in this week. Solve a few problems and check your English comprehension level, you may not need to spend too much time on the verbal section if you are a native speaker but you do need to revise grammar rules. We do recommend not under-estimating the verbal section by assuming English fluency is enough; check your skills and plan accordingly.

Review what you have studied. 21^st Night is helpful for this. Lastly, relax to be prepared for the test day.

How to improve your GMAT score in a month

The more you do quality study and effective practice, more all the chances of improvement. Laura presented a breakdown of how long test-takers study, on average for GMAT from a survey conducted in 2014 by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC).

Based on GMAC data, below are the estimates of how long to study corresponding to how many points you need to improve:

        0 – 50 point improvement: 50 hours

        51 – 100 point improvement: 100 hours

        101 – 150 point improvement: 150 hours

Week 1: Polish your concepts: utilize the time you have. Take a mock test and pinpoint your weaknesses

Week 2:Work on new topics and concepts but also review the old ones. 21^st Night will keep you on track in this aspect by repeating the questions you marked difficult more often and the one you find easy less so that you will be accustomed to both types.

• Take another test
• Quantitative focus

Milliman suggests spending 2 hours on algebra, geometry, word problems and number properties each. Pick three top topics for GMAT from each of these and build your knowledge, exercise and point your weaknesses.

Week 3: Analyze your weak points and spend more time on correcting the mistakes by measuring your proficiency level using 21^st Night.

• Take another test
• Verbal focus

Again Milliman recommends in her 50-hour study plan, spending 2 hours each on the verbal section, sentence correction, and comprehension.

Week 4: Check your progress by taking a practice test in one sitting. Review your difficulties using 21^st Night, this will make sure that you don’t get stuck reviewing topics that won’t have a big impact on your score.

Lastly, don’t overwhelm yourself right before the test. Eat a healthy meal, go through your normal night routine and get a good night sleep. You have done a lot of studies this last month; last-minute cramping won’t do any good, you need to have a clear and calm mind for the next day test

This post authored by Punsala Navaratna.

Ah, grad school.

If you have aspirations of getting into graduate school, we know how daunting the application process can be.

A big part of the grad school application process is crossing the GRE mountain – a long, frustrating, and somewhat perplexing journey for most.

A typical GRE candidate will probably spend hundreds of days knee-deep in books and lessons, only to end up with a disappointing score.

There’s no doubt that GRE test-takers work hard. But the GRE is a highly specific, intensive exam that requires a strategic study approach and extreme test preparation.

While there’s no secret sauce or magic bullet to cracking the test, one general principle holds true: the smarter you work, the more results you’ll reap.

What’s a good GRE score?

Unfortunately, there’s no straight answer to this question. Successful GRE scores vary from school to school, and from program to program – a good GRE score for a Ph.D. engineering program at MIT is 162 Verbal/167 Quant, while the average student earning M.A. in psychology from Ohio State University has a 162 Verbal/ 158 Quant.

It’s important to do your research depending on what kind of program and institute you’re aiming for. Top schools will, unsurprisingly, be more demanding.

Keep in mind that GRE score statistics will always require a little bit of interpretation from your end.

Average GRE scores, for instance, differ from GRE cutoff scores – just because you meet an average score doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get accepted. Cutoff scores, on the other hand, represent the minimum score you’ll need in order for an admissions team to even consider you.

It’s equally important to look at which population a GRE statistic applies to. For instance, does the number relate to all applicants, or admitted students only?

Not all schools will provide clear-cut guidance about how they approach GRE scores, so sometimes all you can do is deduce what would be a good score.

You can do this by carefully looking at their average GRE score for their admitted students.

My score isn’t enough for my target school. Should I retake the GRE?

In an ideal world, admissions teams should judge you holistically and not reduce your application to a single score.

And this is indeed what they will tell you – but do they really practice what they preach?

It’s not impossible to enter a program where you don’t have a high score or don’t meet the minimum GRE requirement, but the reality is that it can be very challenging.

Unless you can pen a life-changing personal statement, have the absolute best recommendations, and/or showcase a considerable amount of high-quality work experience or extracurriculars, you’re better off simply retaking the GRE.

The good news is you’re not alone. Tons of applicants end up having to retake the GRE, and ETS statistics do show that retaking tends to boost your score.

If you’re worried about the admissions team penalizing you for doing this, don’t be. It’s an accepted way of trying to get into a target program, and universities understand that it’s sometimes necessary.

There are limits to how often you can retake the GRE, though. There should be a 21-day gap between tests, and, within a year, you can sit for the GRE only five times.

This means that any re-attempt should be your best possible one. After all, you want to make sure that all the time, money, and energy you spend were not in vain!

Should I keep or cancel my GRE score?

At the end of every GRE test, ETS presents you with this question: do you want to keep or cancel your score?

It’s a deceptively simple question.  And if you felt you just didn’t do a good job, cancelling can feel tempting.

Don’t make the impulsive decision to cancel your score based on the surge of anxiety and exhaustion you’re probably feeling right after completing the GRE.

It’s risky, and here’s why: unless you went into the exam with zero prep and a no-can-do attitude, you should already have a good chance of getting an acceptable score.

Do you really want to put your efforts down the drain? We hope not!

ETS cunningly does not allow you to see your score before cancelling it. And if you felt you didn’t do well on the quantitative section but aced the others, you still can’t selectively cancel scores for each section.

So unless you felt you did catastrophically, exceptionally bad on the test, or you’re psychic and you know your performance was unsalvageable, keep your score!

What GRE score do I need for graduate school?

The best (and easiest) way to answer this question is to visit the admissions webpage for your desired program(s).

Often times, there will be an indicator regarding what would be an acceptable GRE score – whether that is in the form of a cut-off, average, or even median scores from past students or applicants.

Merge this information together to understand your minimum required GRE score for admission, and set your own personal score goal for each of the verbal, quantitative, and analytical writing sections.

It’s a good idea to set your target a little higher than it needs to be. This way, you’ll be working smart – and providing yourself with a safety net for the actual test.

Keep in mind that admissions departments look at GRE percentiles too – in fact, some would say they’re much more important than your raw score.

Percentile rankings can look confusing but it really doesn’t need to be. All it tells you is how well you did relative to other test-takers.

Scoring around the 75th percentile on all three sections is typically a good target, because it tells the admissions team you outperformed 75% of the test-takers. The more competitive a program is, the higher the percentile rank you should aim to beat.

Your target scores should take into account the type of program as well. Remember, the whole point of standardized testing is to evaluate a candidate’s potential to succeed in a particular program.

It makes sense, then, that a grad program that weighs heavily on math skills will evaluate your quantitative reasoning score more carefully compared to other sections. A humanities program where you’ll need to write a lot to succeed, on the other hand, won’t mind if your quantitative score is relatively low.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should throw GRE math out of the window, but what it does tell you is where your study efforts should be directed in order to get the best possible outcome.

Why didn’t I perform well on my actual GRE test?

We know how frustrating it can be to put in hundreds of hours into GRE prep only to end up with a lackluster score. If this is you, don’t fret.

The game’s not over yet! There are three big reasons why you got a bad GRE score, and all three are fully solvable.

First, examine what kind of study methods or techniques you were using. Inadequate or ineffective study methods is probably the number one reason you scored worse than you expected.

If you approached your studying in a haphazard way, spent hours staring at a textbook instead of actively processing key concepts, and tried to cram without thinking about how you’re going to retain it all in three months’ time for the actual test, your study strategy unfortunately worked against you.

A spaced repetition learning technique is absolutely vital to help you remember everything you learn for the GRE. The GRE is a test where you have to remember a ton of complex and varied information items – so, simply put: the better your memory, the better your score will be.

If you don’t know what spaced repetition is, it’s when you introduce time intervals in between studying and revisiting a particular concept or topic.

So instead of cramming in lots of information at once and praying your brain remembers it, you space it out, revisiting it every couple of days at first, for example, and then less frequently as time goes on.

By doing this, you’re overriding your brain’s natural process of forgetting and encouraging the formation of long-term memory connections, making the concept stick in your mind.

Second, think about whether you attempted to simulate or match your study conditions to the actual exam.

For example: did you take the time to familiarize yourself with the test format and exam tools, such as the on-screen calculator? Did you have a go at solving timed practice problems? Did you have a go at doing full four-hour practice tests closer to the exam date?

Discrepancies between test and study conditions is a big reason why many test-takers fail the GRE. Acing a reading comprehension question when you have all the time in the world to read, analyze, and choose your answer doesn’t mean much if you can’t do the same thing in about a minute’s time when your heart is racing and you’re battling against the clock during the actual test.

Your test-taking ability is a huge factor affecting your GRE score. To succeed, you will have to incorporate all of its test elements into your study plan.

Lastly, a low GRE score could be the result of simply not paying enough attention to your weaker areas and learning from your mistakes.

Not doing so means that you essentially wasted time going through material you were already good at, rather than lasering in on those that would have made a higher impact on your score.

Think of it like this: studying without any knowledge about what your difficult areas are and what kind of errors you make is a bit like running in a race blind. You have no idea where you’re going and where your studying will take you. And you’ll never reach the finish line – at least not in time.

Practice tests can provide you with crucial insight into what kind of error patterns you display.

This in turn should inform what topics you focus on, based on questions such as: what are the topic areas you make errors on? How frequently? What kind of errors are they?

Doing this kind of error analysis will catapult your study success. You can do one manually via Excel or Google Sheets, but this will of course take time. Another option is to use an app or program that does this automatically for you, like 21st Night.

I’m retaking the GRE. How can I improve my study technique to boost my score?

Retaking is a simple fact of GRE life. What’s not so simple is actually making sure you improve your GRE score the second time around!

A big part of this, as we mentioned before, is making sure your studying and test prep revolves around a smart and efficient strategy.

The first thing you need to do is put together a GRE retake study plan. Think about the three factors behind a low GRE score we spoke about – how could you incorporate them to make sure your studying is optimized?

If your study sessions include active recall and other memory-promoting aids such as spaced repetition, practice tests designed to simulate the actual GRE test (be sure to check out the free practice tests by ETS), and are informed by personal error analysis, you’re miles ahead of the average test-taker.

To further boost your chances of success, choose – and use – your GRE resources wisely. There are so many GRE-related books, blogs, tutoring services, online sites, apps, and videos out there that it’s easy to fall into the trap of quantity over quality.

Apart from whatever textbook(s) you use as your study foundation, choose one good online resource as your personal self-study companion.

Ideally, this online resource should be versatile enough to support you with a range of question content, including vocabulary items, quantitative problems, and reading comprehension questions.

It should also promote learning retention via spaced repetition, and personalize the content you learn so you can quickly practice what you need to boost your score.

In short, whatever you choose as your GRE study companion should become a powerhouse for your studying: making it easier, smoother, faster, and more effective.   

If you want a resource that can do all these things and more, you might want to consider the 21st Night app.

It uses a powerful spaced repetition and error analysis algorithm, meaning you’ll spend more time revisiting the concepts that are likely to be the stumbling blocks to your GRE score.

The result? Difficult topics you’ve learned two months ago stays as fresh in your mind as it would’ve been if you’d learned it today. It’s a pain-free solution to the information overload problem so many GRE candidates face.

21st Night also allows you to personalize your questions quickly and easily. Why is this important? So many apps out there, while useful in the sense they can promote learning, are ultimately ineffective study companions.

Pre-set flashcards (especially the free ones), for instance, can be super inefficient because you’re just wasting time doing questions you already know.

With 21st Night, you don’t need to spend hours trying to manually input or create personalized flashcards. Have an existing word list from Quizlet or Anki? Simply import it. Have a question on your textbook that you can’t bother typing up? No problem – just take a picture using the 21st Night app.

As soon as you encounter a difficult problem or concept, capture it, load it into the app, and practice consistently. You don’t need to worry about analyzing your errors or spacing your learning – the app will take care of that for you.

The GRE is a challenging exam – no doubt about it. But it’s not an insurmountable mountain.

If you want to succeed, make sure your study strategy and resources are working for you rather than against you. Don’t run the race blind. Study smart, not hard. Your GRE score will thank you!

UWorld is a terrific resource for the MCAT, but you can’t just use it blindly.

UWorld’s value is in its explanations. It’s a teaching tool, but it’s not imitative of the MCAT. In other words, you can’t get MCAT experience just from UWorld.

So how should you use UWorld? As part of a plan, but not the entirety of it.

1. The first element of your plan should be content. It can be a book, if you like, although I think Khan Academy has really excellent MCAT content. I’ve actually created a guide for it. This is your foundation.
2. The second element of your plan should be UWorld. Use it to test you knowledge and fill in gaps in your foundation.
3. Finally, you need practice tests from AAMC. UWorld won’t test you the way the AAMC full lengths will. Plus, you’ll be able to see if your scores are improving (i.e. if you’re actually getting better at the MCAT).

In the meanwhile, to keep yourself organized, remembering all the content, and not overlooking any weak spots you should use an error log.

This is basically all the questions and content you find difficult, organized so you can see why and how you’re finding it difficult.

It might be a detail, a concept, or a process that’s off, but you can’t tell unless you reflect and analyze through your error log.

In the error log that I’ve designed, 21st Night, I’ve also made sure to employ spaced repetition. That is, difficult content comes back periodically, so you can make sure that you remember it and the lessons that you drew from it.

Neat, huh? Stick with this plan, and the MCAT will be a piece of cake.

Well, maybe not a piece of cake, but it’ll at least be clear how to succeed on it. And that’s almost as good.

Magoosh is a pretty good resource for GRE. The questions are pretty good, as are the video explanations.

They also have pretty good study plans, and pretty good auxiliary resources.

In fact, if I were to describe Magoosh overall, I’d describe it as (drum roll please) pretty good.

But it’s not the most straightforward process to go from signing up for Magoosh to scoring well on the GRE. Believe me: I’m a tutor, and I get plenty of students who didn’t make that transition.

If you use Magoosh for GRE, the most important thing is to first of all realize its limitations.

1. Magoosh questions are not official questions. They’re ok practice, but you need to do questions from ETS in order to get the real GRE experience.
2. You need to do official practice tests from ETS! This is the same as point 1, but I wanted to emphasize. You need to do at least the 2 free practice tests from ETS before you take your official GRE.
3. It’s easy to get in the habit of just watching videos. Don’t fall for it! You need to do lots of questions in order to do well on the GRE. Videos are only to be used to make you better at questions.
4. Just doing questions isn’t enough. You need to reflect on what you get wrong.

Let’s talk about that last point for a bit: reflection. Reflection means looking at what you get wrong and learning what you can from it.

Magoosh, actually recommends that you use an error log to reflect. They says it’s the single best way to pinpoint weak areas.

Well…it just so happens that I agree. And, in fact, 21st Night is an error log designed to do exactly that and more.

Magoosh can be valuable, but you can’t just use it haphazardly. Using 21st Night with Magoosh will result in a lot more success.