I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey all,
This past Saturday, I scored a 760 on the official GMAT (Quant 48, Verbal 47, 99%). I am male, 25 years old, and born in the United States. I have 3 years of investment banking work experience. I consider myself pretty normal, but a hard worker and think that has always been my saving grace.

I started studying for the GMAT in January 2013. I signed up for the 10 week in person Manhattan GMAT classes. These classes were great, because they motivated me and forced me to do lots of homework problems/studying. I highly recommend that most people attend the in person classes. Before the classes started, I took one of the GMAT Prep software exams and scored a 580. I was very disappointed and thought it might be impossible to obtain a good score on the GMAT. Nonetheless, I started the Manhattan GMAT course shortly after and hoped I could improve my score.

I started studying about 2 hours a day on weekdays and 3 to 4 hours a day on weekends. Over the course of the 10 week program, I took the 6 Manhattan exams. My scores in order of taking the exams were 640, 590, 670, 670, 650, and 680. After the class finished, I downloaded the free GMAT Prep software and bought the question pack. This was very helpful and improved my confidence. I took the two free GMAT Prep practice exams and scored 710 and 720. This really boosted my confidence, but I still felt unsure of how I would perform due to my Manhattan exam scores. I bought the Powerscore Critical Reasoning book to help my verbal skills and read the 5 main chapters ahead of my scheduled test date.

I scheduled the next exam for May 11, 2013. I told all my friends and family about my planned test date, which was a big mistake. It really stressed me out and made me nervous to impress everybody. I could not believe how nervous I was when I took the exam. I could not solve the very first quant question and sat at my desk for 5 minutes without doing anything. Eventually I realized that I misread the problem and had solved for the wrong variable. This really upset me to see that I wasted so much time on a problem that I knew I could solve. Nonetheless, I picked a random answer since I had already wasted so much time. I quickly rushed through the remaining problems without checking my work like I usually would. I think I must have made lots of careless errors. In the end, I scored a 640 (Quant 35, Verbal 41, 6 on AWA essay, 6 on IR). I was really upset to get a 640, because I had done so much better on the GMAT Prep software.

After the first official exam, I doubled my studying. I did every problem in the official guide, official quant guide and official verbal guide at least twice if not three times (for the medium to hard problems). I literally studied nonstop and was extremely stressed. I was almost unbearable to be around, because I put so much pressure on myself. I took two more Manhattan practice exams and scored 690 and 730. The 730 really boosted my confidence. Also, I took the GMAT Prep exam one more time and scored a 750. I thought the high score was really due to the fact that I had seen many of the problems before.

I took the second official exam on June 15 and felt pretty confident. I promised myself that if the exam did not go well, I would take a break and postpone studying more until next year. Studying for the test had been too stressful and exhausting. I did not tell anybody besides my girlfriend that I was taking the test. I think this really relieved my stress and helped me to relax. On the test day, I thought the essay and IR were both very easy. The quant section went very well from the start with increasingly hard problems (combinatorics, statistics) so I knew that I was doing well. The verbal section had a few extremely strange sentence correction problems that I could not feel 100% confident on. However, I felt very good about the critical reasoning and reading comprehension questions. Once I finished the exam, I was totally shocked and ecstatic to see a 760. I had worked so hard and came so close to giving up after getting a 640. The exam was honestly the hardest thing I've worked towards.

Thank you beatthegmat.com for all the encouraging success stories! I read them almost every day to stay upbeat. I loved the stories where people made huge score improvements.

Congrats man!! Wish you the best in your applications.

I am in the same boat as you (atleast till your first official exam).
Our MGMAT and GMAT Prep scores (before 1st official) are identical.

Although, I was able to score a 710 (Q49,V38) which is inline with the GMAT Prep scores, I was really nervous during the exam. As soon as I would take a guess or make any choice that I knew was not confident, my heart rate would jump up. Had a *mild headache* during the Quant and Verbal sections.

I am getting a tutor now and hopefully can bump my score up.

Good luck again !!

Thanks bvirk1357. 710 is a great score. That's interesting we have the same test scores. I'd really recommend that when you take the official test next time, you don't tell anybody to reduce your anxiety/stress. Good luck!

Congrats on the 760 and thanks for sharing your debrief!

Congrats on the great score. I'm studying for the Gmat now using the MGmat classes. Did you feel that the additional resources ( in particular the verbal books) helped you boost your score?
Congrats again,
BH

Absolutely the powerscore critical reasoning book was extremely helpful and really helped me. I used it in combination with the manhattan critical reasoning book and think they both were great.

Hello,
I'm very happy for you. It is great, that you didn't give up after the first time and continue your preparation.
My name is Tanya and I am the Project manager at GoGMAT company. We are preparing students for the GMAT.
We truly believe that you have tremendous experience in GMAT preparation. That is why we really want to invite you as a consultant in our project.
What do you think about that? Our skype is galibier2012.
Thank you in advance for your reply.

Tanya,
Thank you, but I'm too busy right now with my job and extracurriculars. I would be interested next year, please feel free to reach out to me then.