GMAT Strategy

Hey all..

My test date has finally come, and it's tomorrow Sept 8th. I feel confident going in, but my score has been in the low to mid 500's on my GMATprep practice tests. My goal it to get atleast a 600, but I don't know if it's within reach.

I decided not to postpone my test date as I've been studying for several months (last couple months aggressively) and took a Kaplan class earlier this year.

I'm starting to get more and more nervous as it gets closer to tomorrow.. so if anyone has any words of advice it is very welcome. Thank you all!

your not alone
my test is on friday and i feel the same way
i think the best thing we can do is try to relax
stress will not give us better scores
we know what we know and there is nothing we can do about it
at this point
i wish you luck

And best of luck to you as well my friend.. we can just go in and do our best at this point.

Cheers

Best of luck, be sure to de-brief everyone on how it went and what you did to prepare for it. Just take it easy and realize it is just one piece of your application portfolio for B school.

jchatwani wrote:Hey all..

My test date has finally come, and it's tomorrow Sept 8th. I feel confident going in, but my score has been in the low to mid 500's on my GMATprep practice tests. My goal it to get atleast a 600, but I don't know if it's within reach.

I decided not to postpone my test date as I've been studying for several months (last couple months aggressively) and took a Kaplan class earlier this year.

I'm starting to get more and more nervous as it gets closer to tomorrow.. so if anyone has any words of advice it is very welcome. Thank you all!

My word of advice for what it's worth: Get off this forum and stop thinking about the test or studying. Do something fun like watching a movie. Go to bed early and get lots of sleep. Depending on when you write the test ... do some light practice questions for 20 mins - 45 mins tomorrow.

Good Luck. You'll do great

How did the test go ?

Not good.. I got a 490. I got a fairly good score on the verbal, better than I ever have before.. but I also did the worst on the math than I've ever done on my practice tests (including GMATprep). I was in like the 20th percentile in quant which is just pathetic. I also ran out of time so had to guess on the last 3-4 questions which I know I could have done because they weren't super difficult.

Is a 610-620 even possible for me!? I can't believe I did so horribly and I'm really discouraged. Anyone been in my situation that can give me some much needed advice?

sorry to hear that you are disappointed with your score
Im sure you will do better you seem determined
my test is on friday can you tell about the quats(what type of questions appeared teh most least)

I didn't see as many geometry questions as I thought I would.. but definitely several problem solving questions. Again, since my quant score was so bad, I got questions from an easier bin of questions.

My first question was in regards to adding exponents, not very tough. I really had a problem with data sufficiency though, that's where I just struggled. I also had a couple permutation and factorial questions as well.

As for verbal, I think I had 4 RC passages.. one was VERY short, one was medium length (didn't require scrolling down to read the rest), and two were really long. Again I did fairly well on the verbal but SC and CR questions weren't really that tough. One thing I did notice with RC questions.. I noticed that the wrong answers were noted in the answer choices but they were just slightly different than what the passage said.

For example, if the passage said something about the clouds in the atmosphere causing cooler temperatures... one of the wrong answer choices would be that the temperatures in the atmosphere were causing clouds to be formed. That's just an example of the type of wrong answers I would notice and not an actual question I received, so I knew to just read the answer choices extra extra carefully and refer back to the passage to ensure I was reading it correctly. Hope that helps.. let me know your exam goes and best of luck!

thanks it does
so i guess there were a lot of word problems
if blank saved 10% of salary this year and got a 5% raise next year and sved 12% what was the differnce in teh savings
something like that?

Yeah.. several data sufficiency word problems which confused me.. problem solving has generally been easier for me than everything else.. but if it was anything like mine, definitely expect that. Make sure you got exponents and factoring down well also. I only had couple DS problems related to Geometry

Sorry to hear that your test did not go as you had hoped. Don't be discouraged! I have seen people go from 490 to 600, so it is certainly possible. You should look at some of the stories from "I beat the GMAT" to give you inspiration.

The worst thing to do is to let the stress get to you. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but I think it is good to envision yourself doing really well on the test. I remember reading one post where a test taker mentioned watching Bruce Lee movies as part of his test prep... so that he could imagine he was Bruce Lee kicking the problems' butts!

It sounds like you have an idea of the areas you need to review, so try working through some problems similar to the ones you missed, and make sure you understand the correct way to solve these.

Best wishes,

Tatiana

Love the Bruce Lee comment. I found music helped. During my prep the most inspiring part of the day (every day for 3 weeks) was to walk over to Starbucks and grab my morning coffee while listening to music

Btw ... 6am is a very peaceful time in Toronto downtown ... if you ever make it to this neck of the woods. Good Luck !!

Thank you Tatiana that information is very helpful, I'm glad to know it may be within my reach! I definitely know my weak areas, going to attack those and signup to take it again in 6-7 weeks with a lot of hardcore preparaion.

I definitely need to be more confident going on, that's one big problem for me (especially with quant!)

My suggestion is to take a step back for a bit and focus on your math basics. Don't even worry about the GMAT for a little while. Go out and buy yourself some sort of easy/mid level algebra book and practice doing non-GMAT problems. That should go a long way towards improving your quant scores.

People with very low quant scores need this review first, before moving on to the complexity of applying those fundamental concepts to GMAT questions.

Good luck - and as Tatiana said - I've seen many students go from high 400s to low 600s. Just maintain a positive outlook and keep at it.