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660 on third try!!! Should I retake?

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660 on third try!!! Should I retake?

by LAOF » Sun Aug 09, 2009 7:58 pm
Hi! I would appreciate any advice on this issue.
I had two succesive 660 scores
my problem has been the quant section, I've been scoring around 38-41
The thing is Ive scored 700+ in my practice tests! :shock:
Is it true that taking the test more than 3 times is frowend upon?
Thanks!
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by zuleron » Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:15 am
I imagine that some places will frown on taking the test more than 3 times but it all depends on what you score, I would think. If the 4th time u score a 760 maybe they look at it differently.

But you should probably explain how you prepped the first time, what you did differently the 2nd time and what you did differently the third time. Did you have 1 month self prep the first time, take an online course the 2nd time, take an in class course the third?

Coz 660 means you are good and with 38 -41 in Q you must be around 41-44 in V which means you are strong. But there is something holding you back.

I scored a 660 the first time with a 41 in quant. What I was told by experts is that 41 in quant means that my fundamentals are Ok but there are probably holes in my fundamental knowledge. And so my focus should be to make my fundamentals flawless and then try improve from there. So I did not take a single practice GMAT for a couple of months and only focused on learning fundamentals using MGMAT quant stuff. They were right: I had some serious holes in number properties (divisibility, primes, roots and exponents and consecutive integers) and in inequalities. I also had serious problems in Sentence Correction. I am now scoring consistently 45+ in quant. Now I can begin to worry about tough probability and combinatronics etc.

I think what 700 means is that your fundamentals are flawless. Anything above 700 is extra.

Another explanation is nerves. if you were consistently scoring 700+ in practice... then 660 might mean you get nervous and make careless mistakes.... but you need to tell us more about your prior preps...
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by VP_Jim » Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:28 pm
Typically, people don't take the GMAT more than three times. It would start to look funny if you took it more times - of course, as pointed out above, a huge score increase would probably be worth it.

That said, if you've scored 660 twice in a row, I'd probably recommend you just hold steady. Sure, you might get a 680 next time, but there's really no difference between a 660 and 680. Your score is good enough to be considered at any school - I've had students with sub-660 scores get into Michigan, Dartmouth, Berkeley, etc. At this point, the rest of your application is more important than the GMAT.
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by LAOF » Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:38 pm
Thanks a lot for your answers and advice.
In a nutshell, my prep was the following:
1) I took a course with Princeton Review. 1st GMAT Try: 570 Q: 41 V: 27
2) PR Cracking the GMAT: 2nd GMAT Try: 660 Q: 41 V: 40
3) Manhattan GMAT Self guided study course 3rd GMAT Try: 660 Q: 38 V: 42
The last practice test I took I got a 720 (Q 48 V 40) I used the GMAT PREP tests.

I believe I can do better. Im not sure about the real ROI of retaking or even if it would hurt my applications.
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by doclkk » Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:46 pm
VP_Jim wrote:Typically, people don't take the GMAT more than three times. It would start to look funny if you took it more times - of course, as pointed out above, a huge score increase would probably be worth it.

That said, if you've scored 660 twice in a row, I'd probably recommend you just hold steady. Sure, you might get a 680 next time, but there's really no difference between a 660 and 680. Your score is good enough to be considered at any school - I've had students with sub-660 scores get into Michigan, Dartmouth, Berkeley, etc. At this point, the rest of your application is more important than the GMAT.
Hey Jim:

I saw this post and I was just wondering - in general, what would you say is the "lowest common denominator" - I always thought 680 was it but it seems that even 660 is not it? I know there's outliers in both directions but is it just in general, if within the 80% - its not too big a deal?
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by VP_Jim » Tue Aug 11, 2009 6:36 pm
Are you asking what is the lowest score you can get and still get into a top program?

My student who was accepted to Harvard got a 640 (I think... it was a couple years ago). That's the lowest score I've heard of personally getting accepted to a top school. But, he had lots of other stuff going for him. Certainly, his case was unusual, but it goes to show that people DO get into top programs without acing the GMAT. The rest of your application matters more than you might think!

I think I remember seeing on Stanford's (or similar top school) website that the lowest GMAT score of its accepted students was 580 or so. But of course, whoever that was had something else amazing in his/her application.
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by zuleron » Wed Aug 12, 2009 6:33 am
LAOF wrote:Thanks a lot for your answers and advice.
In a nutshell, my prep was the following:
1) I took a course with Princeton Review. 1st GMAT Try: 570 Q: 41 V: 27
2) PR Cracking the GMAT: 2nd GMAT Try: 660 Q: 41 V: 40
3) Manhattan GMAT Self guided study course 3rd GMAT Try: 660 Q: 38 V: 42
The last practice test I took I got a 720 (Q 48 V 40) I used the GMAT PREP tests.

I believe I can do better. Im not sure about the real ROI of retaking or even if it would hurt my applications.

Wow! You went from 27 to 42 in Verbal... How did you do that? Most people would kill for such an improvementl. So my guess is you focused more on your verbal and maybe ignored quant. Then if you could raise your quant to 45 you'd be in good shape.

In quant you went from 48 on GMAT Prep to 38 on the real thing. This could mean you either focused on super hard quant questions and not enough on the intermediate level ones or you got nervous during the exam.

I may be wrong but from what you say this is what i think.

1) You are clearly able to make dramtic improvements in your scores (see verbal 27--> 42 :shock: ). If you can go from 570 to 660 (increase of 90 points) you should be able to go from 660 to 750 (increase of 90).

2) You may have paid less attention to quant generally or too much attention to difficult problems at the expense of perfecting your fundamentals (my mistake)

3) You get nervous during exams.

If your quant problem is coz you focused on only hard problems then I would suggest refocusing on fundamentals not on the super hard questions and try bring your quant score to the 46+ range consistently (meaning on 4 or 5 different tests you get 46+ in quant). If you can do this, then a retake might be worth it.

As a general matter, I would suggest retaking only if you are consistently scoring around 750 in your practice tests so that even if you lose 50 points to nerves you are still at 700.

But then you'd have to also consider even if you were to get a 700 how much would that help your case... given it's the fourth take and you got two 660s. To answer this you should ask one of the consultants on this forum. If you got 760, I think most places wouldn't hold the two 660s against you... but 700?... I couldn't say...


But as VP_Jim says, it's probably better to perfect the rest of your app. 660 is good enough for most schools.
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by doclkk » Wed Aug 12, 2009 6:40 am
VP_Jim wrote:Are you asking what is the lowest score you can get and still get into a top program?

My student who was accepted to Harvard got a 640 (I think... it was a couple years ago). That's the lowest score I've heard of personally getting accepted to a top school. But, he had lots of other stuff going for him. Certainly, his case was unusual, but it goes to show that people DO get into top programs without acing the GMAT. The rest of your application matters more than you might think!

I think I remember seeing on Stanford's (or similar top school) website that the lowest GMAT score of its accepted students was 580 or so. But of course, whoever that was had something else amazing in his/her application.
Thanks Jim for this! =)
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by zuleron » Wed Aug 12, 2009 6:46 am
doclkk wrote:
VP_Jim wrote:Are you asking what is the lowest score you can get and still get into a top program?

My student who was accepted to Harvard got a 640 (I think... it was a couple years ago). That's the lowest score I've heard of personally getting accepted to a top school. But, he had lots of other stuff going for him. Certainly, his case was unusual, but it goes to show that people DO get into top programs without acing the GMAT. The rest of your application matters more than you might think!

I think I remember seeing on Stanford's (or similar top school) website that the lowest GMAT score of its accepted students was 580 or so. But of course, whoever that was had something else amazing in his/her application.
Thanks Jim for this! =)
I also saw the 580 on Stanford's website and I thought that this person's quant score must have been crazy high but they bombed verbal but had something else in their app that proved their verbal was strong or they applied a few years after thaking the GMAT and their English had improved... who knows, but it is possible w 580...
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