I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey Everyone,

Just wrote the GMAT for the first time and scored a 710.

My breakdown:

Q45 71st percentile
V42 95th percentile
710 92nd percentile

I realize 710 is not a bad score, but I am writing this to see if anyone else was in a similar situation as I was, and found a way to drastically improve their Quant score. I feel that if I can boost this section up to the 85th percentile or so, I can achieve a 730-740, which is what I am aiming for.

I started studying in Mid November 2011 and finished in mid February 2012. I devoted about 90% of my time to Quant materials, and I used mainly all of the Manhattan guides for this.

My scores for Quant on practice tests were very similar to the score I actually received. My main problem though was that during the actual GMAT I wasted a lot of time early on trying to answer some questions and I had to guess at about 5 questions or I would have run out of time. I feel I am pretty lucky for still having received a score similar to my practice tests.

So anyway, does anyone have any experience from having a very low Quant score initially to having a very high one the second time around?

Thanks a lot

Congrats! You broke the 700 barrier. No school will doubt your abilities now and not accept you based on your gmat score. Also, no school is going to take you because you got a 730 or 740 as opposed to a 710. You are at a great advantage now because you can take it again with out feeling stressed while having the opportunity to raise your score. I think it's important to realize this. As for quant advice, i'm stronger on verbal as well so not my place but good luck!

If you have the patience to do it again, since it is quant that you are trying to raise I would suggest you to do it. I am in the same boat as you(45 in Quant 71% and 39 in verbal 87%; but 88% overall at 690). The monkey of getting very close to 700 is off my back and I will be taking it again to raise the Quant soon.

But as the other poster has suggested 730 is not much different from a 710, unless you want to increase your % in quant since some schools like Wharton do look at both the percentages and may look at 71% and their barrier may be 75%!!

Thank you both for the reply. I will most likely start studying again, but this time only the quant section. If I am able to score much higher on a few practice tests I'll book the GMAT for a second time.

The main thing that worries me is that I've heard many schools are looking for at least an 80th percentile for quant, so yes even though 710 is around the average or even higher at most top schools, the quant is still lower. Also since I am interested in finance, it would definitely help me to have a higher score.

Ya- If your planning on focusing on finance, I would try really hard to get it up to at least a 47.

I highly recommend GMAT Hack's Total GMAT math book. Go through it cover to cover. I went from a 44 to a 49 in quant. The big thing is to not study every obscure topic but to master the basics so you actually get to see the hard questions. Good luck!