I just Beat The GMAT!

This post is more about venting than anything else.

I just took the GMAT this morning, and I'm "that person" that's not happy with a 740. Why? Because my 46Q is very disappointing (received a 46 on the verbal as well). My goal was a 50Q, and I received between 48-50 on the last few MGMAT CATs and the GMATPrep CATs. I've spent a lot of time in the Math forums here over the past week and felt that explaining answers helped me out a lot. So I'm not completely sure what happened on the actual test.

I struggled on a few questions about 1/4 of the way through and noticed I was already way behind on time, so I then sped through the next handful of questions to catch up on time. I tend to make careless mistakes when I don't take the time to read properly, so I probably got hammered in this stretch. About 1/2 the way through, I could tell things weren't going well because the questions were pretty easy. Still, I felt like I closed well and I was hoping to have eked out a 47 or a 48. When the 46 popped up at the end, my heart sank, even though 740 is still a good score.

I'm probably crazy to consider retaking it, but I am indeed thinking about it. My background is finance, so I'm sure adcoms will feel that my Q score should be higher. The ego probably plays a factor here too - it really stings knowing I was scoring 49-50 on practices when I wasn't even taking breaks.

Anyway, here's a debrief:

I took about 6 weeks to study. I started off with the general Princeton Review guide and went through it in two days. While I thought it gave a decent overview of the exam, it was pretty poor with respect to its treatment of the material. Too much of the math was "plug in numbers". I then decided to go ahead the 8 MGMAT books. Much better and a huge help. Number properties was great, because I don't remember ever delving so deeply into them at any point in school. Word translations was a big help as well. The fractions/ratios and geometry books were sufficient, but I probably would have been OK without them.

I already felt comfortable on the verbal side. I've always been a strong reader, and I didn't have many problems with the practice critical reasoning questions I had taken early on. I was decent on SC questions because I had a good ear for it, but I ran into problems when all the answer options "sounded funny." The MGMAT SC guide was a huge help in this respect. This book was definitely the difference between getting a low 40s and the 46 that I ended up receiving. I found the RC and CR guides almost useless.

I spent 2-3 hours a day studying when I didn't take a practice test, focusing on the quant and SC. I went through the last 50 problems in the OG for both PS and DS and didn't have too many problems. I went through every PS and DS problem in the OG quant review, which I found to be slightly more difficult. I went through the last SC 100 problems in the OG and the last 50 or so in the OG verbal supplement. For RC, I went through maybe 10 passages in the OG over the six weeks. For the CR, I went through the last 40 problems in the OG.

I took one or two practice tests a week except for the last week, when I didn't take any. I didn't want to burn myself out, but perhaps this was a mistake. I sometimes did the essays before and sometimes didn't, but I found that stamina wasn't really an issue. I didn't take any breaks. After the test, I took a good 2+ hours to go over the answers.

Practice cat results:

MGMAT 1 Q45 V45 740 - I wasn't too worried about the quant score here. I was pretty rusty with a lot of my math, not having practiced many of these types of problems in over 10 years. I took way too long on most of the problems and ended up guessing on a fair number at the back end. After this test, I set my Q goal of 50.

MGMAT 2 Q45 V45 740 - I took this a few days later. Although the Q didn't increase, I felt a lot better about it. On this test, I finished in time, although I made a lot of careless mistakes.

MGMAT 3 Q48 V45 750 - Progress on Q. I felt pretty good and I was getting quicker.

MGMAT 4 Q48 V42 730 - Verbal took a dip for the first time. I exhausted the 700+ level verbal questions, made a couple careless mistakes on 600 level SC questions, and this is the result.

GMATPrep 1 Q49 V42 - Still felt like I was on track to meet my goal. The verbal stayed at the 42 level from the previous MGMAT CAT, but I still was not worried about it.

MGMAT 5 Q51 V45 780 - I was initially very happy with this, but I then noticed that only about half of the last 10 Q questions are 700+, so I tempered my expectations and decided not to take the 6th MGMAT CAT.

GMATPrep 2 Q49 V45 - I made a couple bonehead errors in the quant section, so I made it a point in my last week of preparation to focus on reading questions carefully.

I didn't really do much to prep for the AWA. I wrote a few prior to the practice CATs. I quickly looked at the Chinese Burned guide on gmatclub and realized that it was pretty close to how I would structure my essays anyway so I felt pretty good. I do recommend that guide for anyone who isn't used to writing.

So that's that. I plan on sleeping on it a few nights before deciding whether to retake the test. Maybe I'll feel better about it tomorrow.