I have been visiting this forum daily for the past 2 months, but this will be my first time contributing; and I am happy to say that it will be a positive contribution. After 10 weeks of essentially cutting off everyone and everything I loved and focusing solely on working and studying I took the GMAT yesterday. Before getting into the exam itself let me lay out my study plan in case anyone is interested. This debrief got extremely long, so if you just want to read about the exam itself skip down to the last paragraph. I also apologize for any typos, but I do not have the energy to proofread.
I began studying in late December right after I finished my final semester of undergrad,and I was able to dedicate a lot of time to studying for the first 10 days because I was on vacation from work until the new year. I used the first two weeks to go over the Barron's GMAT book; and on the diagnostic exam I got a 580, no split because it was a paper test. This book is a good refresher if you need some help with math. I never had problems with Math, but I haven't taken math since high school when I completed an AP Calculus course, so the actual "high school" math that is on the GMAT is something I hadn't encountered since my Freshman year of high school. Due to my long hiatus from the math world I needed a refresher. The rest of the book is not the great, the verbal review is weak and the questions are nothing like actual GMAT questions.
After studying the entire book I took another Barron's paper test and I got another 580, I figured that the paper tests were not as accurate so I went online the next day and took the free PR test. Well guess what I got? Another 580 (Q25, V35), I was extremely discouraged at this point, but I switched gears and started using the OG12. I took the diagnostic test, studied for 2 weeks and then took a Platnium GMAT test, I ended up getting a 560 (I can't remember the split), but that test was very low quality the test actually froze with 30 minutes left in quant and when I clicked next it began showing me the questions I had already answered with marks for whether they were right or wrong. I had to exit and go back into the test twice and when it finally began to work I had 23 minutes on the clock. The questions themselves were also a little off for me, but the quality of the exam was my biggest issue.
Even though the Platinum GMAT exam was terrible the score still shattered what little confidence I had left and I took a few days to ponder my future. I decided to keep pushing and turn to more resources. This is about the time that I discovered BTG, I downloaded the flashcard app, signed up for the daily questions, and began reading the forums for inspiration. Another motivator was a countdown clock that I downloaded on my computer so that everyday I knew what I was working so hard for. I created my own error logs and time logs and I began pounding away. For 3 weeks I would study for an hour during my lunch break, either reviewing my mistakes from practice the night before or studying new concepts. On my train rides home everyday I studied the BTG flashcards, and in the evening I did practice questions in 75 minute intervals. The 75 minute intervals really helped with my timing, I took 40 minutes to do 20 quant questions (2 minutes each) and 35 minutes to do 20 verbal questions (1.75 minutes each). I put in between 3 to 4 hours a day 6 days a week and after 3 weeks I was almost done with the OG and ready for my first GMAT Prep test. I got a 650 (Q40, V38), finally an improvement, I was very excited since that was my goal score and the improvement in quant was pretty dramatic.
I finished the OG in the next week and began reviewing all of the questions that I was unsure about but got right and all of the questions that I got wrong the following week. At the end of week 7 I took the GMAT Prep 2 and scored a 670(Q42, V40), so my studying led to yet another improvement. I finished going through the OG and worked on the GMAT Prep software for the next week and then I briefly reviewed the Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant book. For the final week before the test work got really busy so I only reviewed the BTG flash cards.
On test day I arrived about an hour earlier and I was allowed to start, the essays went well in my opinion and the topics were easy to write on. I was nervous about the quant and those nerves really got to me when I was running behind on time around question 13. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and after every impossible question came an insanely easy one, I just knew I blew it but I finished with 1 minute to spare. I then took a break to compose myself for verbal, the section started with a routine SC question then a CR then another rather difficult CR. After that I felt like the SC questions were too easy while the CR questions were very confusing. I also got 4 RC passages two of which were long. I ran out of time and had to guess on the last SC. I was very tempted to cancel my score, but I said what the hell, I might as well see how bad I bombed so I can have a starting point for my preparation for attempt two. Well, there will be no second attempt,I was overjoyed to see a 690 (Q44, V41) the highest score I ever attained. It wasn't a 700, but it was as close as you can get without actually reaching 700. Even though I can't help but wonder if I had one more minute on verbal whether or not I would have been able to reach 700 because I think a Q44 and a V42 would have landed me the 10 extra points.
PR - 580 (Q25, V35)
Platinum GMAT - 560
GMAT Prep - 650 (Q40, V38)
GMAT Prep - 670 (Q42, V40)
Official GMAT - 690 (Q44, V41)
I began studying in late December right after I finished my final semester of undergrad,and I was able to dedicate a lot of time to studying for the first 10 days because I was on vacation from work until the new year. I used the first two weeks to go over the Barron's GMAT book; and on the diagnostic exam I got a 580, no split because it was a paper test. This book is a good refresher if you need some help with math. I never had problems with Math, but I haven't taken math since high school when I completed an AP Calculus course, so the actual "high school" math that is on the GMAT is something I hadn't encountered since my Freshman year of high school. Due to my long hiatus from the math world I needed a refresher. The rest of the book is not the great, the verbal review is weak and the questions are nothing like actual GMAT questions.
After studying the entire book I took another Barron's paper test and I got another 580, I figured that the paper tests were not as accurate so I went online the next day and took the free PR test. Well guess what I got? Another 580 (Q25, V35), I was extremely discouraged at this point, but I switched gears and started using the OG12. I took the diagnostic test, studied for 2 weeks and then took a Platnium GMAT test, I ended up getting a 560 (I can't remember the split), but that test was very low quality the test actually froze with 30 minutes left in quant and when I clicked next it began showing me the questions I had already answered with marks for whether they were right or wrong. I had to exit and go back into the test twice and when it finally began to work I had 23 minutes on the clock. The questions themselves were also a little off for me, but the quality of the exam was my biggest issue.
Even though the Platinum GMAT exam was terrible the score still shattered what little confidence I had left and I took a few days to ponder my future. I decided to keep pushing and turn to more resources. This is about the time that I discovered BTG, I downloaded the flashcard app, signed up for the daily questions, and began reading the forums for inspiration. Another motivator was a countdown clock that I downloaded on my computer so that everyday I knew what I was working so hard for. I created my own error logs and time logs and I began pounding away. For 3 weeks I would study for an hour during my lunch break, either reviewing my mistakes from practice the night before or studying new concepts. On my train rides home everyday I studied the BTG flashcards, and in the evening I did practice questions in 75 minute intervals. The 75 minute intervals really helped with my timing, I took 40 minutes to do 20 quant questions (2 minutes each) and 35 minutes to do 20 verbal questions (1.75 minutes each). I put in between 3 to 4 hours a day 6 days a week and after 3 weeks I was almost done with the OG and ready for my first GMAT Prep test. I got a 650 (Q40, V38), finally an improvement, I was very excited since that was my goal score and the improvement in quant was pretty dramatic.
I finished the OG in the next week and began reviewing all of the questions that I was unsure about but got right and all of the questions that I got wrong the following week. At the end of week 7 I took the GMAT Prep 2 and scored a 670(Q42, V40), so my studying led to yet another improvement. I finished going through the OG and worked on the GMAT Prep software for the next week and then I briefly reviewed the Manhattan GMAT Advanced Quant book. For the final week before the test work got really busy so I only reviewed the BTG flash cards.
On test day I arrived about an hour earlier and I was allowed to start, the essays went well in my opinion and the topics were easy to write on. I was nervous about the quant and those nerves really got to me when I was running behind on time around question 13. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing and after every impossible question came an insanely easy one, I just knew I blew it but I finished with 1 minute to spare. I then took a break to compose myself for verbal, the section started with a routine SC question then a CR then another rather difficult CR. After that I felt like the SC questions were too easy while the CR questions were very confusing. I also got 4 RC passages two of which were long. I ran out of time and had to guess on the last SC. I was very tempted to cancel my score, but I said what the hell, I might as well see how bad I bombed so I can have a starting point for my preparation for attempt two. Well, there will be no second attempt,I was overjoyed to see a 690 (Q44, V41) the highest score I ever attained. It wasn't a 700, but it was as close as you can get without actually reaching 700. Even though I can't help but wonder if I had one more minute on verbal whether or not I would have been able to reach 700 because I think a Q44 and a V42 would have landed me the 10 extra points.
PR - 580 (Q25, V35)
Platinum GMAT - 560
GMAT Prep - 650 (Q40, V38)
GMAT Prep - 670 (Q42, V40)
Official GMAT - 690 (Q44, V41)
