I just Beat The GMAT!

690 44Q, 40V - Austin, TX

I went outside for a break after the AWA and came in over 3 minutes late!! (The testing center was in an office building, and I had to be buzzed back in, go up some elevators, use the restroom, it took some time to sign in with the fingerprint reader... also, they won't let you take your watch if you choose to leave.)
I calmly hid the timer and went to work trying to get the first 10 questions right. I think I got the first 10 right, but I had only 3 minutes left with about 7 questions to go, and ended up guessing on the last 5 or so. It's amazing that I even got 44. I feel I got REALLY lucky, because even before the last 7 questions, I there were at least 3 or 4 that I just had to guess on.

I was a liberal arts major in college, and I haven't taken any form of math since I was a junior in HS (over ten years ago). So quant was what really worried me, but I strangely I did better in quant than verbal. I'm fairly sure I got one of the first 5 questions wrong in verbal, which probably hurt my score.

Some notes about my studying - I used the official GMAT guide, and went through most of the questions twice. I also went through all of the Kaplan GMAT premier program book.

I studied for about 30 minutes each day for the past month. I was shooting for over 700, but I'm happy with what I got. I'm trying to get into a top 10 school, so I'm debating whether to take it again or not.

Another advice to test takers who like me ... I was really confident in my writing ability, so I didn't study for the AWA at all. What I didn't realize was that I'm really SLOW at writing. 30 minutes to write a well thought out essay with 4-5 paragraphs is not a lot of time. It may be wise to write a couple of essays before the test.

Right now I can't believe I close I got.

congratulations!

Congratulations man on A nice score.

I think 690 is a decent score and even if you are applying to top 10 B-schools you might be able to get more out of your application by focusing on other aspects of it rather than just managing to increase your score by 10 or 20 points.