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HELP HELP---Please respond

by bigboymaximus » Mon May 03, 2010 6:55 pm
Hi everyone,

First off, I have been studying for about 2 solid weeks on this GMAT. I just finished school, so now I am studying and am not working. Due to deadlines I am very pressed for studying, I write the test next Thursday, about 10 days. But I will have one last chance June 10 to write. Technically, 40 days more but hoping to score high enough the first time.

My gpa is 3.87/4.30 scale.. I'm really not dumb. I'm score about 450 on the GMAT tests, several of them. I have the official guide 12 edition, do I just focus completely on this? My goal is 600. I would be very happy with this even in 40 days if I don't score high enough. My goal is to get 570-580 the first time as with the higher gpa, it might help.

Please tell me recommendations, I plan to focus 60 hours this week with the Official Guide. IS it possible to shoot 450-570 in a week????

Thanks!
Im just frustrated and feeling like giving up.
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue May 04, 2010 10:32 am
Good question, bigboymaximus - keep in mind that, because the GMAT is a test of "how you think" and not "what you know", it's different from a college exam. A simple mistake can mean that you do 90% of the work correctly and still end up with an incorrect answer, so it may not be that you're a "450 student" (I'd actually argue heavily otherwise given your record of academic success), but rather that you're 90% of the way to being a 600+ student, and just need to focus on that last 10%.

I'd recommend this for your next 10 days:

1) Return to your practice test and determine two categories - mistakes that you made on questions that you should have gotten right; and concepts that you need to learn/relearn that you just didn't know.

2) Progress through the Official Guide keeping an eye out for those mistakes and the ways that the questions are written to twist your thinking, and get a good feel for the style of questioning on the test so that you can recognize it on test day.

3) Find resources (probably online if your test is in 10 days) that will help you learn the concept areas that you didn't quite know or with which you didn't quite feel comfortable so that you can better attack those on test day. Use the Official Guide as a (sorry that this is redundant) guide to which concepts are worth your investment of time. Concepts that appear frequently are worth some of your limited time; you may want to be judicious with that time on concepts that aren't.

It's certainly not impossible to improve from 450 to 600 in 10 days - I've seen it done a number of times - so I'd definitely encourage you to give it a shot. The GMAT is a tough test, though, so don't be discouraged if you don't pull it off...just learn from the experience so that you can build on it when you do have enough time.

Finally, I have to ask about that June 10 "last chance". If you're taking the exam on May 13, you should technically have to wait 30 days to take it again, so you may have to wait until later that week to take it.
Brian Galvin
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Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

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