I am 34 turning 35 next month. My goal is to get into UCLA Femba. Their GMAT median is 690.
Last year I scored 680 41Q and 41 V. Since then I took the GMAT 3 more times to try and break 700 and just can't do it. The reason why I didn't stop after 680 was because I was rejected with that score last year by UCLA and UC Berkeley EWMBA and USC PMBA and my college GPA is 2.15 (UPenn). Lastly, I have a bad career track, never really held down a job for longer than a couple years and never got promoted to manager level. Right now I"m unemployed (to make matters worse). Yeah, I'm hoping I am one of those late bloomers in life.
I have reasons to score 700 or higher not only to make my profile more competitive to a good MBA program, but just as a self confidence booster, and to prove myself that I'm still capable. In a way, I'm just doing it for myself as much as I want to get into a good program. I know many people might call it ridiculous to base your ability and worth on a test, but it is what it is.
Here are my breakdowns of all my GMAT results :
May 08 570 Q34 V34
Mar 09 680 Q41 V41
May 09 620 Q40 V35
June 10 660 Q44 V36
July 10 (today) 650 Q42 V38
In terms of actual test details, I made it to #30 on Quant before running out of time and blindly guessing the last 7 and made it to #39 before blindly guessing on Verbal. Both sections today were moderate level in terms of difficulty but I felt that the types of questions were not straight out of OG or GMATPrep. The testmakers are always throwing some kind of curve. But I suppose that should be expected...
As far as practice test results go, I score around 650 to 700 on MGMAT (that's just because I already took their tests before), highest score of 740 on GMATPrep everything else around 640 to 690, 660 on Knewton Practice Sample Test, and 700 on Veritas Prep sample test.
I haven't been very focused in my studying. I'm not one of those people that can shut off everything and just concentrate non stop for a few hours of concentrated studying. All of my studying for these tests has been around 1 month before each test. But those were concentrated studies. I answered problems from OG and I've already been through OG10,11,12, the OG Study guides. I did all 6 MGMAT Practice tests as well as all of their study guides. I took GMATPrep probably around 10 times. I even did other stuff like Nova Math Workbook which is pretty good and read the Powerscore CR Bible. I read the ETS Internal Quant Document. I trolled around beatthegmat.com. In many ways, I feel like I have GMAT paralysis. I'm so sick of it, but the results I have I know I will never be satisfied with.
Sometimes I just feel that in the GMAT, to get 700, either you have it or you don't. I pretty sure for those 750 scorers, they would get that kind of score regardless. In many ways, I just think the GMAT is an intelligence test and above a certain point, you really can't prepare much for it to get a good score unless you already have the genetic makeup to succeed.
Right now, I am debating whether I should just apply to UC Irvine FEMBA and call it a day, get a CPA, and just be happy with life... or to keep pushing. I have to consider my age now, and yes it does get tiring for me now, things are not the same they were even a few years ago. At the same time, I was hoping I could do so much better and the time I put into this, man I just wanted something better than this.
Can anybody offer any suggestions?
Last year I scored 680 41Q and 41 V. Since then I took the GMAT 3 more times to try and break 700 and just can't do it. The reason why I didn't stop after 680 was because I was rejected with that score last year by UCLA and UC Berkeley EWMBA and USC PMBA and my college GPA is 2.15 (UPenn). Lastly, I have a bad career track, never really held down a job for longer than a couple years and never got promoted to manager level. Right now I"m unemployed (to make matters worse). Yeah, I'm hoping I am one of those late bloomers in life.
I have reasons to score 700 or higher not only to make my profile more competitive to a good MBA program, but just as a self confidence booster, and to prove myself that I'm still capable. In a way, I'm just doing it for myself as much as I want to get into a good program. I know many people might call it ridiculous to base your ability and worth on a test, but it is what it is.
Here are my breakdowns of all my GMAT results :
May 08 570 Q34 V34
Mar 09 680 Q41 V41
May 09 620 Q40 V35
June 10 660 Q44 V36
July 10 (today) 650 Q42 V38
In terms of actual test details, I made it to #30 on Quant before running out of time and blindly guessing the last 7 and made it to #39 before blindly guessing on Verbal. Both sections today were moderate level in terms of difficulty but I felt that the types of questions were not straight out of OG or GMATPrep. The testmakers are always throwing some kind of curve. But I suppose that should be expected...
As far as practice test results go, I score around 650 to 700 on MGMAT (that's just because I already took their tests before), highest score of 740 on GMATPrep everything else around 640 to 690, 660 on Knewton Practice Sample Test, and 700 on Veritas Prep sample test.
I haven't been very focused in my studying. I'm not one of those people that can shut off everything and just concentrate non stop for a few hours of concentrated studying. All of my studying for these tests has been around 1 month before each test. But those were concentrated studies. I answered problems from OG and I've already been through OG10,11,12, the OG Study guides. I did all 6 MGMAT Practice tests as well as all of their study guides. I took GMATPrep probably around 10 times. I even did other stuff like Nova Math Workbook which is pretty good and read the Powerscore CR Bible. I read the ETS Internal Quant Document. I trolled around beatthegmat.com. In many ways, I feel like I have GMAT paralysis. I'm so sick of it, but the results I have I know I will never be satisfied with.
Sometimes I just feel that in the GMAT, to get 700, either you have it or you don't. I pretty sure for those 750 scorers, they would get that kind of score regardless. In many ways, I just think the GMAT is an intelligence test and above a certain point, you really can't prepare much for it to get a good score unless you already have the genetic makeup to succeed.
Right now, I am debating whether I should just apply to UC Irvine FEMBA and call it a day, get a CPA, and just be happy with life... or to keep pushing. I have to consider my age now, and yes it does get tiring for me now, things are not the same they were even a few years ago. At the same time, I was hoping I could do so much better and the time I put into this, man I just wanted something better than this.
Can anybody offer any suggestions?
Last edited by gmat_dawg on Mon Jul 19, 2010 1:07 pm, edited 4 times in total.
