I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey guys,

I took the gmat today and ended up with the score above. I know I should be happy about it, but actually I am pretty down. I know for certain that I missed the first 2 questions on the quant section (yes, you read correctly, I feel like such an idiot) and one additional rather easy geometry question in the middle of the section as well. All three of them questions that I would have had no problem with sitting at home at my desk.

I never felt comfortable during the quant section. The questions were either really easy or so incredibly hard that I just had to guess randomly. My time management was virtually not-existing. I spent 4 minutes and up on at least three questions that I couldnt solve in the end. I hurried through most of the rest and finished the section with 4 minutes to spare.

I was so pissed off after the quant section that I really had to pull myself together to not go into the verbal section with my head down. Verbal was pretty easy until I encountered my third RC passage on which I spent way too much time. like way .... way... too much time. I hit the middle of the test with 34 minutes left on the clock. I sprinted through the last questions, which I didnt find that hard (except one ridiculous CR question).

I know 750 is a good score- especially since I am not an english native speaker. However I am just so disappointed with myself that I let the test-circumstances drive me nuts like that. I mean - come on - how can you miss the first two questions? Wtf? Worst case scenario!

As it would be foolish to retake and I also dont have the time to do so, I'll have to live with this score. It sucks though, that the end of my gmat journey is tinctured with the feeling that I could have done much better. My prep tests were 770 and thats what I was aiming for. Oh well, whatever.

As an advise for all of you who are still going to take the test - if there is one thing i learned today is that having faith in his own abilities is the most important thing on the gmat. If you know you prepped well, and you know youre capable of solving 550 level questions, but youre still stumped by a question, then close your eyes for five seconds, take a deep breath and start over. try to come from a different angle, try to apply everything that you can come up with. dont be like me. dont waste two minutes just looking at it, worrying about how much missing the first question will hurt your score and take a completely random guess. the questions i missed werent hard. I just made em hard by panicking.

DONT PANIC.


other than that I just want to thank everyone on this board for being so awesome and helpful. I checked this site regularly and got some cool tips and resources from you guys. Thanks!!!

I would be glad to help you as well so if you have any questions please feel free to ask them.


Cheers!

Your value or return on additional points on your score above 750 are marginal at best, so move on and begin to focus on your applications. Believe it or not, some schools put more scrutiny on people with super high GMATS anyway, being more critical of their experience and community impact since they sometimes asssume a stratospheric score might mean you lack in other areas (in other words, you have to innoculate the "egghead" label). Nail the application and don't let your dissapointing test performance get in the way.

congrats on a fantastic score! Don't be so hard on yourself for making a mistake. At least you managed to overcome any test time anxiety you might've experienced to slam dunk the verbal portion.

great job!

I'd say there is no value in retaking and getting a 51 in quant after scoring a 49 except to make youself feel better. If it were a 47... maybe. But dissatisfaction with a 49 to the point of a retake will look like you don't know how to effectively use your considerable resources. Or that you are too obbsessed with perfection. You could use the time to join a cimmunity service org, start a business, teach math to kids... sth that is more useful.

An analogy might be a CEO who just got 950 million in profits from a product line but knows he can squeeze another 50 million out of the product line, and insists on squeezing out that extra 50 mil to get to 1 billion even though he also knows that the capital needed to get that extra 50 mil could be used to start a whole new product line with possibly billions in profits, perhaps not directly but in goodwill and improved brand reputation.

Enjoy your success and focus on apps. Besides, those easy questions were probably experimental questions without any score impact. It is quite common to see a super-easy questions inbetween hard ones and get stumped by them. With a 49, it doesn't matter.

Oh, congratulations on your score.

Svedankae:

Woven thread by thread into my GMAT experience is the same feeling... I know how you feel and it is indeed irritating. I also scored phenomenally on my GMATs but can't get over a sour taste in my mouth due to something I know I could've done better on... I worked hard on the GMAT for months and was seeking perfection. I came so close and was a hair away from doing the very best I could. It is regretful knowing that you could have jumped higher, ran faster and been better...

I scored 760 with a 50/44. Most people who got a 50/44 got a 770 and most people have been getting a 760 with a less impressive breakdown. I should have gotten 50/45 for a 770 but messed up on the final question of the verbal. Had the right answer for the final question. Was about the submit the test to finalization when I realized that I had 30 extra seconds I might as well "squeeze the most value out of" so I looked at the question some more. I mistakenly changed my answer before realizing that my original answer was right. Literally right when I went to change my answer to the correct one, the time went off and I got burned... A 770 does look better than a 760 so I have been playing with a chip on my shoulders the past two weeks...

But the key is to look on the brightside. For you, those first two questions you got wrong may have been a silver lining. Getting those two questions wrong aligned the rest of the questions later on for you to score 98/99 percentile on so you should be grateful. Maybe if you got those first two quant questions right, the rest of the math could have been framed harder with tough geometry / combination questions and you might've gotten 46 or 47 instead of 49!

Maybe getting those first two questions wrong gave you a different outlook to which you approached the verbal with. If you got those first two math questions right, you might have gotten 42 or 43 instead of the 44?

What I am trying to say, those first two questions and the rest of your performance aren't mutually-exclusive. They are intertwined. Maybe your getting a 750 was a result of the constellation of questions aligning to allow for a 750 performance. If you got those first two right, you could've ended with a 730 or a 740. Be happy with what you have. At least your first two questions played an integral role in your getting a 98/99 percentile... I screwed up on the last question so at least you should regret the whole thing less than I do