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GMAT got better of me once again!!!

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GMAT got better of me once again!!!

by dv2020 » Fri Jun 24, 2011 6:57 pm
Hi guys,

I went ahead with 4th attempt of my life(yes 4th!!!) and GMAT beat me once again. I have been a kind of GMAT vetran I had a best score of 700(Q49 V35) but that was way back in Feb 2006. This score is no more valid so I had to take GMAT anyways. My previous three attempts are invalid now as they were taken more than 5 years ago.

Yesterday after long delays (I have been thinking of taking the GMAT every year since 2008, prepared a little every year but gave up). Plus there were better things happening on my job front so I decided to postpone GMAT and concentrate on my job. Finally, yesterday after two months of preparation I took the GMAT. I got a 650 (Q49,V30). I really don't know what more to write but I am kind of devastated. GMAT does that to people. I had to rush with this attempt because of professional commitments. Otherwise I would have continued preparations till mid-july and booked my appointment only if I was sure of breaking the 7000s.

During practice, in my first GMAT prep I got a 650 too (again reiterates the fact that GMAT prep is the best source for score estimation). I took the second attempt of the GMAT prep after about a week and got a 710. I took the 2 GMAT prep attempts within a week because in the last few weeks I wanted to deal only with quality questions from GMAT prep. Then I did the MANGMAT test series and did well (scored 680,720,710,730 &740). I took the essay section in all the attempts and I took these tests in real time. It was only after these scores in MANGMAT that i booked. But cutting the long story short GMAT beat me. I took these tests with a three-four days gap between each attempt.

As for my preparation I dealt only in OG and for SC I used the Manhattan GMAT's SC guide. Apart from that I used these forums actively which has been a greathelp. I had gone through Ron's classes for areas which I thought were my weaknesses(but obviously there are more weaknesses than I think). I hardly did any math prep as it wasn't required. Rest was fine. I was looking all set for 7XX score till GMAT did me.

During the test day I was relaxed. Things were looking fine but I feel in the verbal section after around the 17-18 question I got a little nervous and was probably guessing a little too much.

In the hindsight I really don't know what went wrong. That's exactly the reason I am posting. I need help from this wonderful community. Maybe I need to enroll with some professional company. Maybe I should have taken more practice tests, ensured I am doing well in a range of tests from different companies. Too many may be's...:). I obviously need some advice as I don't want to give up on the hardwork. I believed I had all the areas covered to see the magic number.

Normally, I feel in a situation like mine one should just relax for a few weeks and get back to preparation because you can build on the work of your earlier attempt. But in my case it won't be possible as I can't think of GMAT again till Nov-Dec. But I want to keep in touch. Its obvious I need to improve in verbal with equal emphasis on all areas. The big problem is I will have very limited internet access in the months to come. The nature of my job is such.

I look forward to hearing from you guys especially the experts.

Thanks a lot
dv2020
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by Toddius » Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:41 pm
Consider taking a prep course. That's an excellent quant score (better than mine - 46 Q, 44 V). If you master a couple of the most essential rules, you'll be able to improve your verbal score. You can do very well on SC if you master parallelism (most important SC concept).
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by arun@crackverbal » Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:55 am
Hi,

I hear your pain - my commiserations! :(

However remember 2 things:

1. "Over" preparing for the GMAT is a bad thing too. As the Nike ad says "Just do it". So I reckon you just need to maintain your focus for another month or so and get it down. Just about 2 hours a day to work on the specific areas of concern. With a Q49 you would need a V38. Bumping up your scores that much is not a big deal. Wise man Yoda says "Delay. You do not" :)

2. Don't worry about practice tests scores and try corelating it with the actual score. This happens. Infact the GMAC admits a 29 point standard deviation. This means if you were to take the test on 2 different days of a week (with no prep in between) on a good day you can score a 710 and end up scoring 680 on another! The fact you have already scored a 700 shows you are pretty much in the "range" for striking it.

3. GMAC sends only the valid scores in the last 5 years. So don't worry - most bschools will just see this attempt. Also if you were to choose between a 650 "only" attempt score and 700 "second" attempt score - the latter wins hands-down.

HTH,

Arun
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by lunarpower » Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:26 am
on gmac's web site, they actually say that they can send scores that are over 5 years old to schools (although they may not be willing to do so if you have any more recent scores). see the last paragraph here:

Scores More than Five Years Old

You may request additional score reports for tests taken up to ten (10) years prior to the day you are making the request. (Please note that scores more than five (5) years old are archived and requests for these scores may require additional processing time and a fee that is in addition to the standard ASR fee.)

https://www.mba.com/the-gmat/gmat-scores ... hools.aspx

--

otherwise, there's not a lot of specific advice that i can give in response to this post, because you haven't really identified any areas of weakness (i.e., you said something like "i need help on all areas of verbal" -- it's definitely not possible to give advice for the entire verbal section in a single post.)

nevertheless, here are a couple of other posts that you might want to read:

things you should be able to do on every problem that you review:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/550-to-720-i ... tml#330724


avoiding over-studying + prioritizing sc topics:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/confused-how ... tml#366523
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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Pueden hacerle preguntas a Ron en castellano
Potete chiedere domande a Ron in italiano
On peut poser des questions à Ron en français
Voit esittää kysymyksiä Ron:lle myös suomeksi

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by dv2020 » Wed Jun 29, 2011 4:10 am
I am considering taking up prep course. Any suggestions?? I think you made a very valid point. During preparation I learnt that parallelism was the single most important SC area. But probably I had not practiced this enough. On the test day I hardly considered parallelism in one or two questions...eventually I think SC sunk my score...
Toddius wrote:Consider taking a prep course. That's an excellent quant score (better than mine - 46 Q, 44 V). If you master a couple of the most essential rules, you'll be able to improve your verbal score. You can do very well on SC if you master parallelism (most important SC concept).
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by dv2020 » Wed Jun 29, 2011 4:27 am
Thanks for your reply....it is encouraging and full of energy....:) that's what I need right now...
arun@crackverbal wrote:Hi,

I hear your pain - my commiserations! :(

However remember 2 things:

1. "Over" preparing for the GMAT is a bad thing too. As the Nike ad says "Just do it". So I reckon you just need to maintain your focus for another month or so and get it down. Just about 2 hours a day to work on the specific areas of concern. With a Q49 you would need a V38. Bumping up your scores that much is not a big deal. Wise man Yoda says "Delay. You do not" :)

2. Don't worry about practice tests scores and try corelating it with the actual score. This happens. Infact the GMAC admits a 29 point standard deviation. This means if you were to take the test on 2 different days of a week (with no prep in between) on a good day you can score a 710 and end up scoring 680 on another! The fact you have already scored a 700 shows you are pretty much in the "range" for striking it.

3. GMAC sends only the valid scores in the last 5 years. So don't worry - most bschools will just see this attempt. Also if you were to choose between a 650 "only" attempt score and 700 "second" attempt score - the latter wins hands-down.

HTH,

Arun
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by dv2020 » Wed Jun 29, 2011 5:32 am
Hi Ron,

Thanks for the reply. During preparation I followed your classes and some relevant posts. I learnt lots of important things from those. (You are a rockstar and you know that.)

During my practice tests ( I was practising only for the verbal section), I used to write all the essays and tried to be least affected by the quant section so that I am fresh for the verbal section. And I did it each and everytime, because thats how the test is designed to drain you completely before the verbal section starts. I tried practising not to get the answer right but to ensure that what I was learning is applicable. I think the GMAT is designed to make the test taker look for the correct answer and stop thinking. In that sense I thought I learnt some good stuff this time. In the hindsight, preparation wise I made two major mistakes:

1. Did not take enough breaks during my prep.( I was studying 2-4 hrs almost every day for about a month before the exam)

2. Did more problems given the time I had and probably less time on analysing the mistakes and even lesser on correct answers. I really don't know how to do this. May be I was just getting lucky.

Specifically, I think sentence correction proved to be my nemesis. But what do I do verbal section is like a landmine and you don't even hear the explosion or how many explosions have taken place till the very end. I was getting most(90-95%) OG+verbal review+GMAT Prep SC Qs correct in less than 2 mins/q. I started giving more time to CR and RC. During the test I think I did well in RC and CR but ended up guessing too much in SC.

My timing in RC and CR was bad. I used to take 2.5- 3 mins for a CR question. Some argument I just wont understand so I will randomly guess and move on. Nothing like that happened on the test day. All arguments made sense to me.

In RC my plan was to random guess the last passage and do my best in the first three(I did that on the test day as well). During practice on the last passage if I had time I would read only the first paragraph and topic sentences of the remaining paragraphs and then guess the answers. Surprisingly, I used to get better results using this strategy than on some of the passages which I really did nt understand.


During the days I did not take a practice test I would be on the GMAT PREP forums and do OG problems. I always timed any problem and tried to do under 2 mins. I would make flashcards of important takeaways from these forums and your classes and revised those regularly, especially before the practice test.

Looking ahead, is it OK for me to keep the focus on these official questions because now I will be answering many of them from memory. If not from where do I get "good quality" virgin questions.

One specific thing about SC that I would like to mention is that I realised ( thanks to you...) parallelism is the most tested concept on the SC. I knew it and practised this (at least I thought so), but on the test day I don't remember seeing parallelism tested on too many questions. I think this aspect itself cost me some points. I hope you understand how stupid I was on the test, even after practising and knowing prallelism I didn't exercise it enough on the test. This basically points that I need to practice effectively and things will fall in place.
Thanks a lot Ron and keep me motivated...:)
lunarpower wrote:
otherwise, there's not a lot of specific advice that i can give in response to this post, because you haven't really identified any areas of weakness (i.e., you said something like "i need help on all areas of verbal" -- it's definitely not possible to give advice for the entire verbal section in a single post.)

nevertheless, here are a couple of other posts that you might want to read:

things you should be able to do on every problem that you review:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/550-to-720-i ... tml#330724


avoiding over-studying + prioritizing sc topics:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/confused-how ... tml#366523
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