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GMAT was a disaster. Please help me decide my next step

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GMAT was a disaster. Please help me decide my next step

by rsumankumar1 » Thu Nov 04, 2010 9:40 am
Dear all,

I've been a silent participant of this forum and have been referring to this forum during my prep time for any clarifications/references. Firstly, thanks to all you fine people contributing such valuable stuff here. Really awesome.

My name is Suman and i aspire to do my mba (in operations / general mgmt / strategy / consulting) and want to be in IT industry.

That said, i started my preparation early 2010 and had first attempt to gmat and got only 580 (M46 V25). Obviously disheartned with such low score i retook the test in 2 months and got exactly the same score 580 (M39 V30). During 2nd time of the test i had a bad health and i knew i wasn't giving my 100% esp during maths because during my prep my scores were never so low (below are my scores during my prep).
mgmat 6 CATs - 666, 690, 680, 730, 750, 750) and gmat preps - 710, 740.

So as you can see my scores during prep time seem much better over the actual test ones (I;ve always taken my practice tests full-fleged in a simulated env completely ) . So, since i still had confidence that i can definetly do much better i today gave a third shot but this time i got way worse (530, M43, v20). I am broke now. I dont see any other way out so im writing this to you all asking for a suggestion.

I totally fail to understand what possibly could go have gone wrong. I never scored such low in any of my tests (full-fleged ones or section wise ones). I dutifully followed OG, kaplan, Manhattan and BTG for verbal especially. I've totally no idea what is going so wrong in actual test but in anycase im tending to loose my patience and hope now. I feel im jst knocking the wrong door.

Having said all that, i basically have 2 questions for you. Kindly help me figure out these.

1. Since 580 was my highest score, do i stand any chance to apply for one-year programs ? If yes, based on my RnD, ive filtered out some schools - NUS, isb, Queens, Richard Ivey, Lancastor. My criteria was one year and moderate fee (within 20,00,000 Lakh INR). So could you kindly suggest if there any schools that i stand a chance to apply ?
(I know it depends on various factors but practicallly with such a low score, i want to list out the schools tht i can realistically look for ).

2. If I dont stand a chance with such low score, would it make any sense if i try for 4th time ? I mean how bad would be the impact of taking the test for 4th time ? (as i write this am thinking i dont have the stamina to write it again but jst in case ..would it make any sense). Please suggest.

A brief on my profile -
- did my engineering in computer science from a well-reputed college in my state (in india)
- after studies, i've been working with google and now im a senior developer in Google . I have no concrete leadership/management experience.
- I parallely work for an NGO contributing to some projects they do (for poor children)
- I dont have many awards or extra curriculars ..may be little ones during schools days but nothing major. I play chess as a hobby and have won state-championship couple of years back.

kindly suggest what would be right for me to do at this moment. Sorry for such low and dull words but it's all because im feeling that way now :(

Please help.
-Suman
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by rsumankumar1 » Thu Nov 04, 2010 8:45 pm
Hi,

Any suggestion on my situation please ? .. im really looking forward to receive some help from BTG.

Thanks !
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by rsumankumar1 » Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:54 am
request the experts and moderators to kindly provide me some suggestions. Would be of great help.
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by sjairajan » Sun Nov 07, 2010 5:36 am
Hi

I have experience in hiring candidates from B-schools for my organization, in that capacity Iam suggesting you the following.

1. Look at ISB, Hyd ; SP Jain ; Great Lakes, chennai.
2. See if Google has a tie-up with any of the IIMs, that will give you a good brand value and will also be within your budget.
3. Worst case apply for the 1yr executive MBA program given by IIM, there are certain experience criteria that are there, check out this option.

All the best !
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by rishi raj » Wed Nov 10, 2010 9:00 pm
Hi Suman,
Sorry to hear about your low GMAT score.

1. With a score of 580, it'd be immensely difficult to get through ISB and NUS. There's no dearth of folks applying here who are working for the Who's who of the corporate world. You may stand a fair chance at Lancaster and Queen's . Rotman again looks quite difficult. Am attaching a fantastic document. It'd give you all the information about the various schools so that you can see the stats yourself
So if you looking at the top schools, 580 aint a good score. I'm not saying that you won't get into a top school with a 580.Some people do get into good schools with that score however they have exceptional profiles, solid career progressions, impressive leadership roles etc

2. Before I answer whether you should take the GMAT again , tell me If I were to ask you the reasons why you have got low scores on Verbal ,what would they be ? What are those crucial things as a result of which you're not getting the desired results ? Write down the reasons here and then probably we can analyze the situation.
Attachments
Internation MBA rankings and stats.pdf
International MBA Rankings and stats
(403.75 KiB) Downloaded 140 times
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by rsumankumar1 » Fri Nov 12, 2010 11:44 pm
Hi,

Thanks a lot for your replies.

Yeah I do understand my score is very low for schools such as NUS or ISB and so is my overall profile (as of now). Actually thats exactly where my confusion starts- Should I go ahead and apply with my current score to whichever schools i stand a chance or should I try n retake another time (4th time..if at all :-( ) .

Rishi Raj, my issues at the gmat, in my 3rd attempt, especially in English, i am really really not sure. I was dumbstruck looking at such low section score .. i kind of felt there is something wrong with the system on my day :( . The reason is i was damn sure i was doing pretty well. To give you an idea, i got an RC at 8th question and immediately after my RC I got Boldfaced CR quesetions and fully underlined SC questions and in total i might have gotton around 5 bold faced qsns roughly. Not to say that it surely implies i did well, but historically, we get such questions only when previous ones are corect and graph goes high right ? ..atleast not so bad as to get 20 percentile.

Even towards later part of the section, i never felt that i am getting stumped on any question (not to my knowledge). That leaves me to think that i might have done silly/careless mistakes such as choosing a wrong option between two very close ones in CR questions etc. Im really failing to think what else possibly could've gone wrong :(

Whereas in maths, i can surely tell you i was very disturbed at the very start of the section. The guy besides me was doing his awa and was typing very hard which created helluva noise in the room. Seemingly little awful reason but it was quite disturbing to rest of the test-takers and few folks raised the concern.. somehow im sure i messed up starting 6-7 questions. Thereafter, it went very well, im sure givng me 43.

Not sure how my reasons sound but more or less this is what i think have gone wrong on that day. But frankly, even after such repeated disasters i still have a hunch that i can do much better and deserve little more score ..cuz i never did so bad in any of my practice tests be it kaplan or mgmat or princeton etc ..not 530 atleast ..never ever :(

but then .. i dont know such bad scores for 3 times and then 4th attempt, not sure how schools will look at it. Thts what im confused at. Please advice.

And thanks for the pdf it is really informative.. i was thinking worst case i may stand a chance to aply to Lancaster but after looking at the stats i tend to get doubtful even about that ...loll
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by gmatdummy101 » Fri Nov 26, 2010 12:12 pm
Hi, I just took the Gmat for 3 times and am stuck, the same as you! So I've been looking around the internet for advices. My scores for the 3 times are 580, 610, 630. Slightly higher than what you got but to be honest, I would not waste money on submitting any application with the 630 score. However, my reply here is mainly to share how I improved my score.

Despite that my total score only increased by 50 points compared to the first time, my VERBAL score increased from 42 percentile in the 1st time to 80 percentile in the 3rd time! I was in a total shock when I saw the score! The only change to my study method is I have read through the Manhattan Gmat strategy guides on sentence correction and critical reasoning https://www.manhattangmat.com/Store.cfm. These preparation guides tell you how to approach a question, how to analyse the situation and some sentence correction shortcuts.

Since you mentioned you have done a lot of questions, so I think maybe you need to start over and build up the fundamentals! Knowing how to solve 1000 questions doesn't mean you will know how to crack the 1001 question if you did not grasp the key ideas! So I suggest you take the gmat for one more time, while you are going to work hard on verbal, I am going to work hard on the quants! good luck
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by rsumankumar1 » Mon Nov 29, 2010 5:06 am
Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

- My biggest concern is even if i somehow try n give another shot (4th attempt), how bad would be the impact on my candidacy to any good school as such (especially ISB and NUS). To add to the misery, in my case not only is bad score repeated multiple times but also it also decreased from 580 to 530 :(

- I also wonder sometimes since my 1st attempt was 580 and 2nd one was again 580, does the software keep track of my scores when i write for the 3rd time and accordingly throw the questions ? .. may be quite stupid to think this way but given such a dip in the verbal im thinking does it keep track of my previous scores by any chance ? . If yes then how good would it be to attempt for the 4th time ? :(

Once these two hurdles are clear, i want to again dare to rethink on my blunders and see if i can aim for a little better score.

Thanks once again for sharing your strategy in Verbal. That will help.

Please advice.
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