I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey PPl,

Just got back from the test center. Had my worst experience today . The 22 in verbal left me speechless. The diagnostic test I took a month back had me at 610. I have seem relative improvements since. The lowest I ever got in verbal in the other tests was 32. A 22 on the real GMAT .. dont have any thoughts or words.

Q 22 was a bold face question. I thought the section was going well. AT the end I had 12 questions and 10 mins left. I rushed through the remaining questions. Not sure if the penalty for inaccuracy dragged my score down .

My concern , round 2 deadline for Harvard and Darden is on Jan 3rd. Should I hold off from applying ? I have some decent management experience packaged with good recommendations. I sure can take the GMAT again and I am very positive I will get a better score. I dont want to wait 2 years before I start school. Any advice...?

Hi GMATDUD,
Sorry to hear about your score, I seriously think that you should retake the test considering that you plan to apply to Harvard, I believe that Verbal is the key to success on the GMAT, you can always score a 46-50 in Quant without much effort, but its quite a daunting task to score a 40 + in verbal, nonetheless I think it can be done with the proper effort, one just needs to get comfortable with SC & RC's, these are the deciders.
I also face the time problem like you on the Verbal section & after some good analysis I think that the only way to make sure that you finish the section is by getting the SC's down quicky, I've noticed a good improvement in my timing since I started doing this, Lastly I'll just say that this forum is a very good resource for practicing many questions specially SC where we also have an excellent Verbal tutor in Danielle.

gmatdud

I would suggest you recommend taking the test again.

I scored poorly in verbal on my first test also. I used the MGMAT SC book to study my second time and I believe that made a world of difference.

You will feel a lot more relaxed the second time you take it also, so you should be able in increase your score with ease.

I was a silent reader on this forum all this while, but today as I was browsing (out of sheer habit, I guess), I came across the above post that reminded me of my experience and could not stop myself from adding my experience. I do not know that how many people on this forum have experienced something similar to what I felt. So my story is that I too scored a really low verbal (24), good quant (49) and satisfactory AWA (5.0). I was shocked to see my verbal because I had never scored so low, not even in my first diagnostic test of Kaplan, which is supposedly relatively harder. While taking the test, I felt that I was doing fairly ok as I was getting CR questions based on solving paradoxes, etc. But obviously, the scores told a different story altogether. So, I came home and although did not know where I went wrong, I thought I must have done something wrong somewhere and decided to retake it after 31 days. I retook it on 31st Dec 2007. This time I made sure that I do not let anything slip out of my hand. I was very very focused in the verbal part and towards the 24th question I got a really complex RC, around 60 line passage. The questions also in general looked comparatively much harder than many of my practice tests. I thought, I am doing well for sure, only to find later that I scored only 19 in verbal!!! I think, I have never ever been so shocked in my life.

I was not able to say for the first time, but for the second time I can not be surer of the fact that I did not perform so badly. I know, the first thing that would hit anybody's mind is that the test is well tested and things are secured there. Had I not been through this experience, I too would have said that. The worst is that there is no system to question GMAT scoring. I have read in the past that GMAT scoring was found faulty at two times and that the last year there was a processing error in SAT scores. I am trying to appeal but GMAC does not leave any space to question it. I find it all strange. Although I understand GMAC's point of view, there should still be some way to check the systems, as nobody is GOD and machines do go wrong.

I hope nobody on this forum ever has to experience what I did and people carry on getting 700+. I was just wondering that whether there are more people who have similar experiences like mine. I had already written my essays for round two. Thus, I have submitted my applications with my previous score only. The irony is that I have applied in top five schools of US as I never had thought before that I would score so low. I was almost done with my essays when I took my 2nd test and I have a so called 'DIVERSE' background, so I still dared to submit my applications. May be, if by any chance I get through, I will write a 'low GMAT success story' here!

Hi Everyone,

I also just finished taking the GMAT on Jan 11th. On all my practice tests I was scoring around 640 to 680. But on the actual test I only got a 560. I knew I didn't do to well on the math part, because I had to guess many questions. But on the Verbal part I thought I was doing well. Took my time, and had about 5min to spare at the end. But I ended up with only 37Q and 30V.

I'm thinking about applying to the schools anyways, and see if I could get in at the lower end of the GMAT range. I know one of the schools say their range is 550 to 780. But the average is around 640. If I don't get in then I will go take the test again. I think I know what I need to focus on now. There is no point on trying to do too many practice questions or practice CAT tests (if your timing is good). I think once you reach a certain point you need to focus on really really really understanding the different topics in both math and verbal.

Good luck everyone.

i think you guys are focused too much on things that make you "think" you're doing well, i.e. Bold Faced questions, and RC section sentence length. Getting or not getting those things isn't going to prove anything. I'm not trying to rain on your parade, but i'm fairly certain the GMAT score didn't get it wrong. Go back and focus on areas you can improve, it's just how you've got to do it. Do the OG11 and really study the grammar rules and apply them when you do the verbal section.

I didn't get a single bold face question in my verbal section, yet i got a 41 and was 93%. I didn't count the RC sentence length, instead i read and answered the questions.. Seems to me like you're focusing too hard during the test on how you think you're doing based on the difficulty level of the questions and as a result you're not doing your best on the actual test.

Try to forget about "guessing" your score range while you're taking the test.

@thunderdogg:

First of all, I am very happy for you. Secondly, the point made above was not about what one got and what one did not get. But there is something that is called an aptitude of a person. Till date, I am trying to figure out that how wrong one can go to score a 19! And I was none of these- tensed, hyper, or any other kind of absurd state of mind-on my test day. I had been scoring in 40s in my practice tests and I am confident of what I did on test day. But obviously, you would not be able to understand all this. More importantly, as I have mentioned in my previous post too, I find it strange that there is no way to cross check things. I hope you have gone through those articles which published stories of faulty GMAT scores and SAT scores. I am glad that you were not one of them.

The more important thing in all this was not to point on who is faulty, but to advocate for a change that is only justified.

BTW, I find it strange when people get 41, and yet commit common errors, which are a complete no-no in GMAT, in their language.

when you folks say your scores on practice tests were in so and so range, do you include your scores in the 2 GMATPrep tests you can download from mba.com?

--edited-- I just saw Guest's post and I'm not sure how you managed to take GMATPrep 5 times without any test questions being repeated----

the verbal on the GMATPrep is really as close as it gets to the actual GMAT, and i'd be very surprised if there was a huge difference between your GMATPrep verbal score and your final GMAT verbal score.

and i think some of us would take offense at it being "easy" to score 46-50 on the quant section of the GMAT.

Solaris,

I had a 38 and a 36 on the first and second GMAT prep tests respectively. I was in a very stable state of mind all through the exam . I dont have an excuse for the 22 I scored on the actual GMAT. I did complete the MG SC 3 times and did OG 11 twice before the real test . I did have to guess on the last 11 questions , but that would not justify such a significant drop in performance. The least I ever saw on the MG mock test , that too in a public library , where it was hard to focus on the test.

The real GMAT experience has left me burnt out. I have the GMAT rescheduled in 3 weeks and am hoping to pull myself to attack it again. As ishi mentioned , its hard at times when you give it your best shot and still cant figure how u missed the boat? If it helps I too the GRE a few years back and had a 90 percentile. The 56% definitely left me bruised. This is not to take away from the achievement of others who scored equally well during the same time frame.

The only lesson I learnt is to let it go as I cannot figure where I faltered. I am going back to the basics of learning what a noun is and hopefully will build back up to be able to master written English. Ishi, wish you luck . In all honesty , I know of folks from work who have made it in the top 10 world over with scores in the 500. Looking forward to your success story .

GMATDUD wrote: I did have to guess on the last 11 questions , but that would not justify such a significant drop in performance.

I think that might be key here, I get the impression you know the content but just suffered from an unlucky case of nerves on test day and your timing suffered as a result.

I wish you all the best for your next effort. I'm sure now that you've gone through the experience once, you'll be a much more confident test taker on your next attempt.

Thanks a ton GMATDUD.

I really appreciate your sensitivity and your words of comfort. It did boost my faith again. I hope to come back and write a successful story here. Thanks for the wishes once again.

I would look forward to hearing your ‘I beat the GMAT’ story as well. I am sure you will hit your target this time. My story, I believe, is as rare as a Halley’s Comet visiting earth!