I've never posted on this site but wanted to give a quick recap since this site helped me prepare.
I took the Gmat the first time around and got a 650 (40Q, 39V). It was pretty dissapointing because I had done better on some practice tests, and also because I had studied a lot already (went HARD for like 7 weeks).
I made two mistakes the first time around, and here's how I corrected them on the second one:
1.) On quant test #1 I took extra time solving the first question, because it was a slightly weird geometry one, and I hadn't practiced too many of those. I panicked that I was "behind pace" already, and as a result, I kinda rushed through the next 9 questions or so. While I did take double the time on that question, in reality, I was only 2-3 minutes behind pace.
Rushing on questions 2-10, I must have made some careless mistakes, because I never saw any really high level questions. The moral of the story is TAKE THE TIME YOU NEED on the first ten questions.
The second time around, I deliberately took a LOT of time on the first 10 questions. by the end of the test, I ended up having to "chuck", or skip, a total of 6 questions. Yeah, my quant score would have been better if I had gotten to do all of them, but not at the expense of making mistakes on the early questions. For anyone who's not a quant whiz and faces time pressure like I did, I would practice being very careful early, getting a little behind pace, and then strategically guessing on a few time consuming questions after about the question 22-23 mark or so (if you need to). It's better to run out of time at the end than screw up at the beginning. By taking this strategy, I definitely didn't have an exceptional quant score, but it was "in line" with my practice test scores, so by playing it conservative and careful early, I did 4 raw score points better than speeding through the whole thing with even pacing the whole way through.
2. The first time around, I thought I had verbal locked down, but I didn't. I was killing the verbal on practice tests, getting only like 3 or 4 wrong. Taking the test felt fine, and then I was shocked to see that I was only in the 89th percentile on verbal. In my practice tests, I was relying on "instinct"- particularly on sentence correction. That worked for me in practice materials, but bottom line, it didn't work on the real thing. To prepare for the second time around, I did every single SC question in the OG, and the verbal supplement, and most importantly, I analyzed WHY each and every wrong answer choice was wrong. I didn't analyze every WRONG answer for CR, but I did review all of them to verify what the OG said was the argument, etc. Often times you can kinda "gut instinct" your way on the critical reasoning questions, but when you take the time to really verify the gmat's process of rationalization, that's how you take your situation up a notch. Finally, on reading comprehension, I just did a bunch of OG problems and then reviewed, once again, why the right answers were right. For some of the harder passages, I found that even the right answer was a bit of a STRECTCH from what was actually in the reading. Sometimes I found it helpful to seek PROOF in the passage that 4 of the answers were NOT supported in the passage. Then you go fishing and try to find a case for that fifth answer. Once again, reviewing the OG's rationale gives you a feel for how far they can stretch things and what exactly "suggest" and "infer" can mean.
Another note: Towards the end of the verbal section, I was WAY behind schedule. I had spent an ungodly amount of time deconstructing a passage about Sea Otters that, were it not for the fact that I was high as a kite off of coffee and anxiety, would have put me straight to sleep.
With 13 minutes left in the section I had a mini panic attack. I felt my entire test was going to shambles because there was no way I could race through these last questions. I took a deep breath and went through a bunch of SC and CR questions HELLA fast. I finished at the buzzer and felt a sinking sensation of massive failure. A two paragraph passage about the mating habits of different kinds of sea otters had ruined my entire life.
I clicked through the end of the questions and closed my eyes. I opened them and looked at the score for 30 seconds, certain that the Pearson staff were playing a very cruel joke on me. Apparently this was not the case. My intense verbal training had paid off, and I was able to nail a flurry of questions under the gun.
The moral of the story is, don't panic, and stick to it!
for those of you still on the grind, keep on trucking
I took the Gmat the first time around and got a 650 (40Q, 39V). It was pretty dissapointing because I had done better on some practice tests, and also because I had studied a lot already (went HARD for like 7 weeks).
I made two mistakes the first time around, and here's how I corrected them on the second one:
1.) On quant test #1 I took extra time solving the first question, because it was a slightly weird geometry one, and I hadn't practiced too many of those. I panicked that I was "behind pace" already, and as a result, I kinda rushed through the next 9 questions or so. While I did take double the time on that question, in reality, I was only 2-3 minutes behind pace.
Rushing on questions 2-10, I must have made some careless mistakes, because I never saw any really high level questions. The moral of the story is TAKE THE TIME YOU NEED on the first ten questions.
The second time around, I deliberately took a LOT of time on the first 10 questions. by the end of the test, I ended up having to "chuck", or skip, a total of 6 questions. Yeah, my quant score would have been better if I had gotten to do all of them, but not at the expense of making mistakes on the early questions. For anyone who's not a quant whiz and faces time pressure like I did, I would practice being very careful early, getting a little behind pace, and then strategically guessing on a few time consuming questions after about the question 22-23 mark or so (if you need to). It's better to run out of time at the end than screw up at the beginning. By taking this strategy, I definitely didn't have an exceptional quant score, but it was "in line" with my practice test scores, so by playing it conservative and careful early, I did 4 raw score points better than speeding through the whole thing with even pacing the whole way through.
2. The first time around, I thought I had verbal locked down, but I didn't. I was killing the verbal on practice tests, getting only like 3 or 4 wrong. Taking the test felt fine, and then I was shocked to see that I was only in the 89th percentile on verbal. In my practice tests, I was relying on "instinct"- particularly on sentence correction. That worked for me in practice materials, but bottom line, it didn't work on the real thing. To prepare for the second time around, I did every single SC question in the OG, and the verbal supplement, and most importantly, I analyzed WHY each and every wrong answer choice was wrong. I didn't analyze every WRONG answer for CR, but I did review all of them to verify what the OG said was the argument, etc. Often times you can kinda "gut instinct" your way on the critical reasoning questions, but when you take the time to really verify the gmat's process of rationalization, that's how you take your situation up a notch. Finally, on reading comprehension, I just did a bunch of OG problems and then reviewed, once again, why the right answers were right. For some of the harder passages, I found that even the right answer was a bit of a STRECTCH from what was actually in the reading. Sometimes I found it helpful to seek PROOF in the passage that 4 of the answers were NOT supported in the passage. Then you go fishing and try to find a case for that fifth answer. Once again, reviewing the OG's rationale gives you a feel for how far they can stretch things and what exactly "suggest" and "infer" can mean.
Another note: Towards the end of the verbal section, I was WAY behind schedule. I had spent an ungodly amount of time deconstructing a passage about Sea Otters that, were it not for the fact that I was high as a kite off of coffee and anxiety, would have put me straight to sleep.
With 13 minutes left in the section I had a mini panic attack. I felt my entire test was going to shambles because there was no way I could race through these last questions. I took a deep breath and went through a bunch of SC and CR questions HELLA fast. I finished at the buzzer and felt a sinking sensation of massive failure. A two paragraph passage about the mating habits of different kinds of sea otters had ruined my entire life.
I clicked through the end of the questions and closed my eyes. I opened them and looked at the score for 30 seconds, certain that the Pearson staff were playing a very cruel joke on me. Apparently this was not the case. My intense verbal training had paid off, and I was able to nail a flurry of questions under the gun.
The moral of the story is, don't panic, and stick to it!
for those of you still on the grind, keep on trucking
