Epic failure :-( 510 Q 32 V 28

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Epic failure :-( 510 Q 32 V 28

by melguy » Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:13 am
Hello All

Here is the story of my GMAT attempt.

Arrived at the centre good 1 hour before the exam. Good night sleep, really calm and confident about the exam. Travelled early to beat the traffic. Was asked to wait for an hour. Took 2 disperin in the mean time. Finally called in at 10:30 AM

Argument : No issues.

I.R I try not to pay a lot of lenghty IR questions and try and save energy for the Verbal section. So guessed most of it.

Quant : Although I am not allowed to discuss particular sections but the questions were very similar to what I have done before and I was confident that I will get atleast 40+ in Quant. Any more would be my lucky day. I did not see anything out of my league except may be 3-4 tough questions.

About question 31 I asked the centre manager to changed the note pad. The centre manager was so lousy that it took him good 3-4 mins to give me a new pad. Then a min after giving me he said "can i check the pad to make sure nothing is written on it". I could not believe it that he wasted my precious 5 mins. I lost 2 questions in a row there. But still was confident will get over 40.

Verbal : 4 RC passages. 3rd and 4th was very challenging. No idea why but something inside me told me that I will not get a good score in Verbal. That might have ruined my Verbal may be.

* Had a good night sleep, did nothing out of the ordinary in the last 48 hours.
* I was really calm and confident during the exam that I will cross at least 600 mark.
* Was focused 100 % during the exam
* Used ear plug in the exam although never used it before during sample exams or otherwise.

My questions

1) I am unsure why I got the score even after getting a score of 610 in Veritas Prep two times.
2) Does bad performance in I.R. has any penalty in Quant section? I did not pay any attention to I.R. and just guessed most of it. Was I penalized for bad I.R. score in Overall score ?
3) Is it just my bad luck that may be all the questions I got wrong were real and not experimental questions?
4) Even if I accept the bad Verbal score I am soooooo confident with the quant score (i.e. I will get 40+) that even now I will happily put money on it. Still I am clueless what went wrong.
5) I had bad internet in CAT 2 and couldn't do last 12-13 questions (total) + lost others due to internet issues. Then too I got more than my formal score!
6) AM i not GMAT / MBA material? i should look into some other course / program?
7) I recently scored 580 in MGMAT ( Q 41 V 30)

If anything I have stopped living for this exam, no going out, no friends, no social life and what not for the past 1 year. Yet all i get is a big zero!

Please help me. I am clueless!
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by faraz_jeddah » Tue Sep 10, 2013 11:51 am
:(

This is a shocker and a lot could be attributed to the test center manager for his incompetency. 5 mins are CRITICAL on any section of the GMAT.

I was expecting you to cross the 650 mark with the activity you've had on the forums. All I can say is hang in there. You definitely have the potential to achieve more.
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by [email protected] » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:20 pm
Hi melguy,

I agree with faraz_jeddah that you have the capacity to score much higher than this. I'm going to put together some notes and suggestions, which I'll email to you later. I am curious though about one thing:

What is "Disperin" and why did you take 2 before your test?

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by melguy » Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:43 pm
Thanks Faraz and Rich,

I am clueless as to what went wrong. Even missing 2 questions at such a later stage cant bring down the score to 32?

Rich - Disprin (or Aspirin) - I could feel a headache coming. So I took 2 before the exam.
Also, thanks for your email. I have replied to it.

Cheers

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by fcabanski » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:10 pm
The only epic failure comes when you give up. Not scoring well is not an epic failure. It isn't even a failure.

Demand a refund for that exam, since the test moderator delayed you during the test. That should not have happened.
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by David@VeritasPrep » Wed Sep 11, 2013 4:22 am
Melguy -

There are a few things that can be said here.

1) Your performance on the IR has NO IMPACT on your Quant or Verbal scores. So that is not a possibility.

2) You may have had bad luck with the experimental questions all being ones that you got right. However GMAC indicates that this should only account for about 30 points of variation and not 100 points.

3) Do not let this stop you. The only thing that you can look at here is that you have been given an opportunity to decide if you really want to go to business school. Seriously. If you really want to go to business school then you will not let this stop you. But if you only kind of want to go this will give you a way out.

Please read this article first. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2013/01/ ... n-the-gmat

4) Something did go wrong for you during the test. It has happened to others as well. I have a clue as to what it was with this statement of yours, " I was really calm and confident during the exam that I will cross at least 600 mark." It is not that you cannot score higher it is likely that you got lulled a little bit - sort of taken in by the questions. Read this article on others who thought that the verbal was going well and why it did not. I think this applies to your Quant score as well. I have always scored higher when the test felt a little but more like a fight and scored lower when everything was calm. On my lowest Quant section score that I have ever earned I thought that I had not missed a question! This is because this is an adaptive test and it should feel rough (unless you are so good that you are on your way to a 51!).
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2013/03/ ... ore-so-low

Does this sound about right?

One more thing, what where your GMATPrep scores? Are they recent enough to be relevant?

David
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by ani781 » Wed Sep 11, 2013 4:48 am
Melguy,
Keep on fighting. I am sure you are way much better than this score. Just give another shot and I am sure you will come out with flying colors. Just remember .. Your perseverance and staying agog in this forum have helped many like me going. All the best and you rock.

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by ani781 » Wed Sep 11, 2013 4:49 am
Melguy,
Keep on fighting. I am sure you are way much better than this score. Just give another shot and I am sure you will come out with flying colors. Just remember .. Your perseverance and staying agog in this forum have helped many like me going. All the best and you rock.

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by melguy » Wed Sep 11, 2013 5:05 am
Thanks for your input David.

By calm I do not at all mean that I was over confident or took anything as easy. I was just confident of crossing the 40 mark in Quant. I never let my guard down and always focused 110% on each Quant question. Also, the questions I saw in the Veritas CAT were very - very similar to the real exam.

The exam itself started off as easy and the questions were easier than Veritas Q's. As experts suggested, I wrote down every small detail on scratch paper. I applied this to Vertias CATs and applied the exact same strategy in the real exam.

I just cannot express myself in words but believe it or not but for me (if you keep everything the same from my side - dedication, focus etc) it was just like just giving another Veritas CAT but at a different location.

For once I will accept that I got defeated in Verbal (as Verbal was lot tougher than any of the CATs. Longer sentences - even in SC. RC - Psg 3 & 4 were really tough) but after 24+ hours I still do not believe even 1% that I received accurate results in Quant.

I have not given any GMAT Prep recently. Only MGMAT and Veritas.

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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:10 am
Hey Melguy,

I'm sorry (and very surprised) to hear you didn't reach your target score. From your many thoughtful/clever posts on this forum, I know that 510 is definitely not a reflection of your abilities.

I'd chalk this score up to some bad luck and an incompetent test center manager. As others have mentioned, 5 minutes is a LOT of time to waste on the GMAT, not to mention the negative effects this annoyance can have on one's mindset.

Hang in there!

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by melguy » Wed Sep 11, 2013 9:22 pm
Hello Brent

Thanks for your input. I am completely lost and demotivated with the result. Earlier with minimum self preparation, no guidance and treating GMAT as a high school maths exam I have scored a 550 (Q 39 V 29) on the official GMAT (Melbourne Business School Test Center).

With 1 year of preparation, countless hours of studying + going through so many GMAT specific tips and tricks of so many problems, taking some great video classes and the end result comes out to be 510 (Q 32 V 28).

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by faraz_jeddah » Wed Sep 11, 2013 10:20 pm
melguy wrote:Hello Brent

Thanks for your input. I am completely lost and demotivated with the result. Earlier with minimum self preparation, no guidance and treating GMAT as a high school maths exam I have scored a 550 (Q 39 V 29) on the official GMAT (Melbourne Business School Test Center).

With 1 year of preparation, countless hours of studying + going through so many GMAT specific tips and tricks of so many problems, taking some great video classes and the end result comes out to be 510 (Q 32 V 28).
It was an off day and a lot of interference with external factors which were out of your control. There is no other logical explanation. You need to regroup and forget about this distasteful experience and move forward. I know its easier said than done but now is not the time to quit!
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by rakeshd347 » Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:27 am
melguy wrote:Hello Brent

Thanks for your input. I am completely lost and demotivated with the result. Earlier with minimum self preparation, no guidance and treating GMAT as a high school maths exam I have scored a 550 (Q 39 V 29) on the official GMAT (Melbourne Business School Test Center).

With 1 year of preparation, countless hours of studying + going through so many GMAT specific tips and tricks of so many problems, taking some great video classes and the end result comes out to be 510 (Q 32 V 28).
Hi Mate,

I Don't know what to say but sorry to hear that your target score is not achieved. Are you in melbourne. I am in melbourne too if you need any help from my side please let me know. I am not a teacher but I have little bit of knowledge with Gmat. I still have to give my test. I have already given gmat in MBS. But you should have given the gmatprep test mate. Because that is the true indicator of your test score. Having said that veritas is also very close to the real test score. Now I think you should consider some good course mate honestly 1 year is just too long for the gmat preparation. As you said countless hours didn't do any good. I believe there is basic fundamentals issue here. For quant I would say look at the gmatprepnow videos and veritas prep books are really good if you have enough time to go through them. However, there are quite a few course,which you can consider. I am really sorry to see that such an active person on the forum always ready to participate and couldn't do good. I have taken mock test in different environment and with different food types. Once I took the mock test with Disprine itself and Trust me it doesn't do any good to you but slow down your brain. I was stuck at points where I just couldn't think further. Too much coffee for me is not good it takes my heart beat so high to think properly so you should not do any experiment on the test day if you don't know the consequences such as disprine.

@rich to your question above...disprine is a painkiller for headache basically.

Thanks,
Rakesh

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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:58 am
melguy wrote:Hello Brent

Thanks for your input. I am completely lost and demotivated with the result. Earlier with minimum self preparation, no guidance and treating GMAT as a high school maths exam I have scored a 550 (Q 39 V 29) on the official GMAT (Melbourne Business School Test Center).

With 1 year of preparation, countless hours of studying + going through so many GMAT specific tips and tricks of so many problems, taking some great video classes and the end result comes out to be 510 (Q 32 V 28).
I totally understand how you must be feeling right now. I suggest that you just step away from anything GMAT-related for a week or so. Go have some fun, and take your mind off of your bad test-day experience. I think it will help immensely.

Cheers,
Brent
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