I wanted to take this opportunity to say that the GMAT makes absolutely no sense to me. I took the test for a second time this afternoon, and while my score improved to a somewhat-respectable 640 (up from a dismal 550 on my first attempt), I can say without much hesitation that the extra studying I put in did not help me. Allow me to elaborate:
My first attempt on the GMAT was made with virtually no preparation. I took a diagnostic test, read through the answer explanations, and basically just winged it on the exam because I was eager to get a baseline score.
In preparation for my second attempt, I spent the next 1.5-2 months doing a lot more practice questions. My schedule is tight, so out of all the different types of questions that appear on the GMAT (word problems, data sufficiency, sentence correction, critical reading, etc.) I chose to prioritize my time solely with word problems.
So when I took the exam today, I was ready to take on the quantitative section of the test. Unfortunately for me, it seemed that I kept getting one Data Sufficiency problem after another. It was a lot more DS than I recalled getting on my first exam. DS is not one of my strengths, so I felt like all my preparation was for nothing. While I didn't keep track of how many DS problems I received, it certainly felt like more than half of the questions on the quantitative section of the exam. Furthermore, out of the few word problems I did receive (which seemed very few and far between), all of them seemed extremely simple to me, which I could only presume was because I was guessing on virtually all of the DS problems, getting them wrong, hence lowering the difficulty level of the word problems.
So yes, while I ended up managing a 90-point increase, I'm not sure what to make of it. On my first exam, I finished with about 20 minutes remaining at the end of each section (quant and verbal) and guessed on an overwhelming majority of questions, so I felt that the 550 was a somewhat pleasant surprise. By comparison, on my second attempt today, I actually felt even worse and was expecting to see a sub-550 score because it felt like I had done even more guessing than when I took the test the first time.
I'm not sure what to attribute the 90-point increase to - I studied only word problems, and seemingly received almost none of that question type on my exam today. I'm half-tempted to spend the next month focusing on DS and maybe breaking through to 700..
My first attempt on the GMAT was made with virtually no preparation. I took a diagnostic test, read through the answer explanations, and basically just winged it on the exam because I was eager to get a baseline score.
In preparation for my second attempt, I spent the next 1.5-2 months doing a lot more practice questions. My schedule is tight, so out of all the different types of questions that appear on the GMAT (word problems, data sufficiency, sentence correction, critical reading, etc.) I chose to prioritize my time solely with word problems.
So when I took the exam today, I was ready to take on the quantitative section of the test. Unfortunately for me, it seemed that I kept getting one Data Sufficiency problem after another. It was a lot more DS than I recalled getting on my first exam. DS is not one of my strengths, so I felt like all my preparation was for nothing. While I didn't keep track of how many DS problems I received, it certainly felt like more than half of the questions on the quantitative section of the exam. Furthermore, out of the few word problems I did receive (which seemed very few and far between), all of them seemed extremely simple to me, which I could only presume was because I was guessing on virtually all of the DS problems, getting them wrong, hence lowering the difficulty level of the word problems.
So yes, while I ended up managing a 90-point increase, I'm not sure what to make of it. On my first exam, I finished with about 20 minutes remaining at the end of each section (quant and verbal) and guessed on an overwhelming majority of questions, so I felt that the 550 was a somewhat pleasant surprise. By comparison, on my second attempt today, I actually felt even worse and was expecting to see a sub-550 score because it felt like I had done even more guessing than when I took the test the first time.
I'm not sure what to attribute the 90-point increase to - I studied only word problems, and seemingly received almost none of that question type on my exam today. I'm half-tempted to spend the next month focusing on DS and maybe breaking through to 700..
