I just Beat The GMAT!

Hello all...

I have been a silent lurker of this site, mostly reading forum posts for inspiration... Sadly, this is not a post of success but rather failure... Today I took the GMAT after 8 months of studying. I just graduated from college and am hoping to attend b-school in a couple years (I am going to take advantage of the 5 year holding period while I get some work experience) I started studying mid-May of 2010. I decided to study for the entire summer in hopes of taking the exam early in the fall (with no real date set yet).

I studied everyday for 3 to 4 hours except on Sunday's. I took one week off for a vacation. At the very end of August I took my first practice test (a disappointing 510). I must note here that although I consider what I did self study, I also saw a tutor about once a week who walked me through the key elements of the test such as deconstructing the CR questions and math strategies. At the end of August I began my last semester of School.
After scoring a 510 I decided that I should wait to take the exam. Getting busy with school I decided to cut my study time back to about an hour or so a day. I scheduled my exam for Nov. 15th. However, as the exam day came closer I still had not been able to take sufficient practice exams and decided to postpone the test until graduation. I kept studying an hour or so a day.

Upon graduation on December 15th, I landed a job at a big Financial Institution as an associate but will not be starting until the end of February. I decided I would spend all of January studying. I then stepped my studying back up to what I had been doing in the summer, being approximately 3 hours a day plus taking at least one practice exam a week. My scores for all my tests are as follows:

GMAT PRACTICE:

800score.com 1: 9.6.2010: 510 Q: 28 ; V: 33%
MGMAT CAT 1: 10.13.2010: 500 Q: 26 - 19%; V -: 33 - 69% 38 percentile overall
MGMAT CAT 2: 12.23.2010: 620 Q: 42 - 70% ; V: 32 = 67 % 76 percentile overall
MGMAT CAT 3: 1.4.2010: 560 Q: 35- 44% ; V: 32- 67 % 57 percentile overall
MGMAT CAT 4: 1.8.2011: 600 Q: 39 - 57% ; V: 34 - 72 % 70 percentile overall
800score.com 2: 1.10.2011: 580 Q: 34 V: 36
800score.com 3: 1.13.2011: 630 Q: 36 ; V: 42
800score.com 4: 8.17.2011: 710: Q:43 ; V: 42
800score.com 5: 8.21.2011: 660 Q:42 ; V: 39
MGMAT CAT 5: 1.25.2011 640 Q: 36 48% , V: 41 93 % 80 percentile overall
MGMAT CAT 6: 1.27.2011: 700 Q: Q: 42 66% ; V: 42% 96% 93 percentile overall
GMATprep test 1 1.29.2011: 680 (not sure of breakdown)
GMAT prep test 2: 1.31.2011: 660 (not sure of breakdown)

With all those practice test behind me and my course starting to hit the upper 600's I felt confident going into the exam today. I was expecting mid to upper 6's.

My weaknesses I have noticed from studying are sentence correction and data sufficiency.
While doing practice tests I always did essays too.

TEST DAY:
My exam was at 8 and I arrived at 7:30. Waking up this morning I felt well rested but a little nervous. I did not eat hardly anything at breakfast due to my nerves but was still confident going to the exam.

Thought I did well on the essays.
Took my break and snacked on some raisins (stomach was still a little uneasy).

I walked back in to take the Q section and felt confident and not too nervous. Through the Q section I could not really gauge how I was doing because there seemed to be a mix of difficult and easy questions.

After the Q section, I still felt good going into the Verbal. Thought I did well on verbal section. Had a few challenging SC questions and three long RC (4 overall, 1 short) but all in all I thought it went well.

Quickly sped through my survey at the end (I actually ran out of time on the survey because I was thinking so much about my score - this doesn't affect your score does it? Haha). Clicked my results and was bewildered by a 580 (34 Q 38th percentile; 35 V 73rd percentile).

What should I do? What happened? I am definitely going to re take the exam. Maybe it is a blessing in the sky and I need to prepare more to get the score I really want (above 700)... I am just frustrated because I did study a lot and am not looking forward to more studying. However, if I have learned anything from the GMAT, you cannot let it beat you! I am not going to give up, I will beat this exam!

My goal is a top ten business school. Please guys, help me? What advice do you have? What do you think went wrong?
I am going to take one week off and then start studying again! I start work at the end of February, so I still have some free time aside from my business. I am thinking about scheduling in about a month.. What do you all think?

Credentials:
Major: Busines
s/Economics Minor: Finance
Graduated Cum. GPA 3.74
Varsity Athlete
President of Honor Society
Won schools business plan competition
Started my own business in the last year
Finance Associate at big FI

MGMAT CAT 5 and 6 are relatively easier then the first four and byt the time you come to C5 and C6, you'd have seen most of the questions anyway. For these 2 reasons, I believe your 640 and 700 on MGMAT may have been heavily inflated. I haven't tried 800Score so can not comment intelligently on your in those tests.

However, given your scores of 680 and 660 on GMATPrep and the sound study plan (though there always is room for improvement), I'd expect you to score atleast 640-650. A 580 is really shocking.

I (and others) can give you some tips and suggests materials to improve your score a bit but, unfortunately, no one can tell you what may have gone wrong during the test; It is something you'd have to do for yourself. Do you think you may have lost focus?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I figured the the scores were slightly inflated. I don't think I lost focus, I was thinking more nerves... It is possible though!

As for study material and any other advice, I would really appreciate it!

I will give you where I am right now as of studying...

SC: I usually do 20 problems a day out of OG, I have read powerscore bible, memorized BTG notecards, and spidy's nc

CR: I usually do 10 problems a day out of OG, I also did lsat practice as well, I feel this is my strongest section by far

RC: I do 1 read comp a day, also feel confident in this

Prob Solv: I do 20 problems a day out of OG, I have memorized BTG notecards, and also all needed math properties for the GMAT (NOVA's GMAT math prep course book gives a good sum up of properties and equations needed)..

Data Suf: I do 10 practice problems a day out of OG and know the rules for doing the problems...


So, with that do you have any suggetions on study methods? I think Quant is my weakness and I would really like to concentrate on that next go around? Any new material I should try? Also, sentence correction..

Ok, lets first understand that OG is supposed to be a "Practice Guide", not a "Preparation Guide". Moreover, I personally did NOT touch OG to score 760. Hope that sets things in perspective.

Going only by your post, I don't see you have used any preparation material except PowerScore Bible (since you mentioned it in SC, I am taking it must have been for SC) and BTG notecards (I am not aware of these notecards but they sound more like "Refresher" materials).

While your practice plan (20 SCs, 10 CRs, 1 RC, 20 PSs and 10 DSs) sounds good, what you need before that is to clear your basics. If you don't have any books, I suggest you get yourself following books:

SC: Manhattan GMAT SC guide. A must have, no exception.
CR: PowerScore CR Bible. I am not sure how good PowerScore SC Bible is, but CR Bible is a gem.
RC: No extra material is needed. Just do some LSAT RCs to get familiar with tough (and boring ) stuff.
Quant (PS and DS): Manhattan GMAT Quant Guides (5 books). These books cover every question type asked in GMAT in great detail. After almost every section these books also suggest strategies for DS questions related to that topic.

Once you have your basics brushed up, you may resume you practice plan as it is or up it a bit. Any particular topic in quant that you face preblems in?

Good news for you is that you have plenty of time in hand.

Thanks! I am going to get the MGMAT set for Quant and also the SC.. I have the CR powerscore bible already.. Great advice on the OG as just refresher material..

No particular problem area sticks out to me.. I will let you know if I run into something though.

Thanks again.