700 (39V/47Q, AWA 6.0) Hooray!

On June 3, 2008, I took the GMAT and scored a 700 (92nd overall): 39V (88th percentile) and 44Q (81st percentile). AWA: 6.0.

It took me four solid months. I learned a good score is not a reflection of your IQ, as some claim. A good score is a result of confidence, knowing how to “manage” the GMAT, and substantive and committed preparation.

Background:
I’m an Asian American female, 24 years old, and went to a top-10 research university in the U.S. (the same one as the moderator who started this forum). I majored in Computer Science but was always more liberal-arts minded. I work in the high tech industry on the business side and look forward to going to business school after 3 years of work experience.

I’ve always found standardized tests difficult, and never felt natural about taking them. The SATs were hard but I got a good score, so I knew that in many ways, the GMAT was going to be the same. For those of you reading this right now and thinking, “is this ever going to end?” The answer is: YES. The GMATs will end and you will get a score you are satisfied with! Not kidding at all on this point.

Preparation:
I got these books:
OG 11th edition
OG Quant Review (Green one)
OG Verbal Review (Purple one)
Manhattan Sentence Correction (the one Eric the moderator recommended)
Princeton 2008 GMAT
Kaplan prep books, material, online prep (the ones you get for taking their $1400 course)

- I studied almost every weeknight and all weekends for four months while working full time. I usually started at 9pm and went to 1am, with some quick breaks in the middle (I get into work at 10:30am and left around 7pm)
- I took brief notes everyday on what I studied, how long I studied, how I felt after each session, and what I needed to improve on.
- I took a practice test every 1-2 weeks
- I had to give up my social life for 3 months <-- worth it, to be honest, but grab a drink w/your best friends every so often.

I decided to take the Kaplan GMAT class after studying for half a month. I did it because I didn’t feel I was getting the kind of hard-core prep I wanted. This had a lot to do with my test taking nerves. I get more nervous than others at the thought of tests, so a test prep like Kaplan was good for me. I’ve never taken a CAT and felt that I needed a boost in preparation material and a way of approaching the exam. If I had to do it all over again, would I take Kaplan class? Short answer: Yes.

Long answer, for those of you considering going it alone or taking a Kaplan (or other test prep) class:

Pros to Kaplan
- Online preparation: this really is the capstone of Kaplan: THEY GIVE YOU SO MUCH PREP. Don’t feel the urge to finish everything, but identify areas that you need to improve on and keep chipping away at the challenges.
- Timed questions: for people like me who freak out about the clock, Kaplan shows you how long you took on each problem. Best thing I learned: don’t watch the clock when taking the test! If you can solve a problem or get a correct answer, you can do it in about 2 minutes or less.
- Good strategies: e.g. for questions that ask “which of the following”, start with the latter choices. For verbal, great passage mapping strategy for Reading Comprehension. I think this was my saving grace on the actual GMAT. Basically, read for the author’s voice and basic structure, not for the details. Also, read because you’re interested (Eric’s advice, which is great for the whole test).
- If you get a good teacher, s/he will really motivate you to do well and teach you great strategies.
- Ultimate Practice Test: take a Kaplan CAT in the actual testing center. This was great and I found it calmed my nerves.

Cons to Kaplan
- My best CAT was a 630 and I fluctuated a lot on the verbal and quant. So they don’t necessarily reflect your true GMAT skills. While some say Kaplan makes it harder so that you study harder, for someone like me who has die-hard determination but really needed a boost of confidence in the form of improving test scores, Kaplan didn’t help. Also, b/c I didn’t do as well on the Quant as I did on the actual GMAT, I never really got to the “hard” problems like geometry and coordinates. Instead I kept getting rates and word problems: ANNOYING!
- Classroom prep: it really depends on how good your teacher is. I realized this early on and started to go to the class with the best teacher, who was super helpful on teaching me the mentality to take to approach the exam.

How I studied and best takeaways:
First off, the GMAT is not as hard as it’s hyped to be. I looked at the math problem my 7th-grade brother was doing one evening and saw it was pretty much the same one I was doing in the OG! (It was a medium-hard problem, too). If you took the SATs and got into college, you can do the GMAT. Nevertheless, it’s still a big deal and I made sure to not underestimate its difficulty.

1. REMEMBER CORE CONCEPTS: I learned the GMAT is all about testing a finite set of concepts. Write out every strategy you come across (if you don’t and forget that concept, you won’t like yourself three weeks later when you run into it again). Studying for the GMAT is about reducing the space of unknown concepts. For example, to solve for 3 unknown variables, you need three distinct equations. This can be expressed in data sufficiency, in coordinate questions, etc. Every question has a goal and can be generalized to a certain extent. After a certain amount of prep, problems will start to “repeat” – this is when you know you’ve reached a level of comfort. Also, remember that test takers can pull tricks, BUT they are usually the same set of tricks and if you do enough problems or read enough critical reasoning paragraphs, they start to repeat. Half the effort is identifying them when you see them.
2. GO DEEP: I realized halfway into the prep that math was my weakness. I was not a fan of word problems, so I honed in on them and identified areas I was tripping up. Data sufficiency was no fun, either. It’s about logic and branching out cases. As Eric the moderator said, “make data sufficiency your bitch” for a week! Also, I found the Kaplan method very helpful: 1 2 T E N (you should find it in a test prep book).
3. STUDY HARD and SMART: 9pm - 1am is not the ideal time study, but that was what I had. So I did what I can. Be alert and focused when you study, and use your weekends. I got a lot done on the weekends (I also made sure to go to the gym and treated myself right every so often).
4. DIVERSIFY YOUR TEST PREP: This is something I should’ve done earlier. I did a lot of Kaplan and even though they’re good, you should always get a second opinion. Kaplan is known to have wordier problems and harder CATs. Get other test prep material to balance out some of a specific prep's weaknesses.
5. IT’S ABOUT “MANAGING” THE TEST: The master teacher at my Kaplan branch told me this: you can get 10 questions wrong overall and still score an 800. Three months into my prep, I realized that I was slowing down in the middle of the math section and had to race through the last 10. Realize problem areas like this and figure out why. For me, it was because I really wanted to solve every problem. If I can’t solve it, MOVE ON. Why? Because even if I spent 5 more minutes on a problem I can’t solve in 2 minutes, chances are I can’t solve it anyway. Try to remember the ones you got stuck on and practice them afterwards. In the words of that master teacher, “don’t let a problem ‘haunt’ you.” I was getting strings of questions wrong because I lost confidence after getting a question wrong. Take a practice test every 1-2 weeks after 1-2 months of prep. I found half the battle was just getting used to the test itself.
6. IF YOU’RE WORRYING, FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU’RE WORRYING ABOUT: for me, it’s mostly nerves. Why nerves? Because I’ve already accomplished a lot and don’t want to disappoint myself or others. After walking out of the 5th practice test, I jotted down all the feelings I had and what was important. Biggest takeaway: this test is about me. Not about anyone else, or any b-school, but ME.
7. FLASH CARDS: I can’t emphasize enough the importance of review. I went back to the same problems 3, 4, 5 times. I still missed some so I knew that it was a matter of core concepts. Write down problems and categorize them. Hardest for me were rates (I was a pro in them in high school.. ha! Not anymore!). For verbal, which was harder to capture in flash cards, I wrote down “model” critical reasoning questions; same with sentence correction. Reading comp: practice well and take quick notes of main idea of the passage, topic and scope, and main ideas of each paragraph. Author’s voice is key. Don’t get caught in details and refrain from re-reading a passage during your first pass b/c it’s easier to lose the whole picture.
8. DON’T RELY TOO MUCH ON WHAT OTHERS TELL YOU: As helpful as this forum was, as helpful as X or Y was, to a certain extent, I had to really listen to myself and examine what were my strengths and challenges. Small wins was my daily goal. I stopped reading these forums third month in and only came back when I needed inspiration or commiseration.

Practice Scores:
- My Kaplan CAT scores (the ones I took from their online prep material) ranged from 580 – 630. My verbal ranged from (33-49) and quant ranged from (33-44). What was frustrating was that I never got a good verbal and good quant in one sitting. But a note of confidence was that if I combined my highest verbal with my highest quant, I had a solid score!
- Princeton online CAT: 580... was I devastated, because I thought Kap deflated my scores. Actually, Princeton just had a really shitty algorithm; I didn’t get a lot of problems wrong. So take practice tests with a grain of salt minus GMATPrep and the real test.
- 5 days before the real test, I took the GMATPrep and got a 660. I almost cried b/c I never scored so high! Reviewing the problems, I noticed that, yes, again, I was running out of time on the last few problems. Must move on in the middle of the section. Also, realized the SC was my weakness, in the Verbal. Was relieved b/c I had done well on RC and CR; they were the hard ones the first couple months of prep. Progress. Identifying testing strategies was key to my scoring 40 more points five days later.

TEST DAY:
I didn’t sleep well the night before, and got a stomachache before going in. Whatever. I can do this. It’s about me, right? One thing I noted was that if I got the AWA down, it really helped w/confidence on the math and verbal. I also learned from previous CATs that I had momentum and shouldn’t break them by taking long breaks. So I never took a break longer than 5 minutes, and didn’t during the actual test.

There was a whole bunch of construction going on at my test center, and they were banging (and singing) below me! Under normal situations, this would’ve really bothered me, but I was focused, and more importantly, mentally and substantively prepared: This test is about ME and I am going to focus on the CORE CONCEPTS.

AWA: Good. I felt confident about them after finishing. Argument portion: I repeated a lot of the methods I used in previous essays: 5 minutes to form thoughts. Write: attack the assumptions in the argument and made a case on how the author should improve his argument. 5 paragraphs. Check for errors in last 5 minutes. On to Issue: got a difficult prompt. Formed thoughts but couldn’t think of many examples. 10 minutes later: must write, so I wrote and did the best with examples. 3 minutes to proofread <-- this is important because I found easily correctable errors.

3 minute break

Math: I prepared intensively during the last 2 weeks. First problem was a rate one. UGH. I don’t think I got it right. But MOVE ON. Just because you got the first one wrong doesn’t mean you can’t get others right (or score in the 81st percentile!). Later on, I saw symbol ones (e.g. A *X* B = blah; what does 3 *X* 4 =?), as well as coordinates and a few geometry ones. Hooray, at least they’re getting “harder”. More importantly, I was making sure I was focusing on each problem, moving on, and mentally on time.

5 minute break to run to the restroom

Verbal: Okay, no matter how I did on the Math, I can’t let that affect the Verbal. Remember, read for interest and identify assumptions in the critical reading. Must admit, I was getting tired halfway through and was counting down. Write down A B C D E and do process by elimination. Focus.

DONE.

Upon seeing score: 700! I almost cried! Wow, that can happen! Funny, upon getting my final thumbprint, I handed the lady the earplugs which I didn’t use. She was like, “keep it as a souvenir.” I called my mom and was jumping up and down in the parking lot. I was ecstatic. I didn’t expect this.

FINAL NOTE:
One thing I did for myself, to calm myself even though others discouraged it. I had already scheduled a second test when going into the first one. I personally didn’t find it discouraging for two reasons: 1) I felt it would calm me down and 2) summer time is when people take the test, so I didn’t want to wait 2 months before taking it again, as that would bite into the time I would spend on the essays.

Also, for those of you considering a 700 for the top schools:
I wasn’t sure whether I should re-take it, esp. since I had already scheduled a second test. From calling the admission offices of two top programs:
- “700 is good. You should re-take it only if you think you can score 50-100 points more.”
- Me: “I got a 700, but –“ Harvard admission office lady: “That’s a great score! You should start working on your essays now! Congratulations!”

From students who got into top programs:
- Your score is only a part of your application. Your essays and recommendations are the capstones and they look for the entire package.
- You should view your score as a Pass/Fail. If you got a 700+ and your math is above the 80th percentile, you’re done.
- I was “borderline” too. But previous candidates told me: move on!

In conclusion: I wanted to prepare and take this test in good form. I wanted my application process, including the GMATs, to be an experience and not a result. Initially, I had set a timeline of 2 months to prepare for this test, but I underestimated. My mom told me, “you can’t rush a solid score.” This is true. The GMAT, at the end, is really not much more than re-learning basic high school (and middle school) math, brushing up on verbal skills, and taking the test under timed and computerized conditions. As humbling as it is, it’s about learning the basics again, which is fine because I haven’t seen the basics in 6 years! At the same time, the approach to the exam should be committed and genuine.

I believe I can do better by 20-30 but I've already proven my strength and I think others will recognize that. I'm not going to take it again. More importantly, I can't wait to start my essays.

Good luck. It can be done!