Came back from my exam about 40 minutes ago. Scored a pretty lukewarm 640. The verbal part was 38, which is fine with me. However, the quant returned a pretty heart numbing 39. I think that this is pretty pitiful, especially given the fact that I have been scoring in the 40s for over a month now. I am considering retaking the test because of the quant section. We'll see. I'll sleep on it for a few days.
Overall, I thought that the difficulty of the math and verbal sections was exactly like the OG and the GMATPrep material. There were a few surprises, but I saw surprise problems on GMATPrep also; they're not something you can prepare for.
I cannot blame my quant score on nerves or lack of sleep or anything at all. I ran out of time on the last 2 questions and had to guess, though I would have been able to solve question 36 if I had 2 minutes for it. Still, the last time I took GMATPrep, I got a 45 on quant with only one repeat.
The algorithm on the real test IS different from GMATPrep, so maybe I have been scoring 39 or 41 on GMATPrep also. BUT, I still feel that I could have done better on the quant section. Again, I'll sleep on it.
Here is what I think about each section of the test:
Quant: the same problems as the OG guides and the GMATPrep software. There were three questions that were very poorly worded - two were actually grammatically incorrect - but I think these were experimental questions.
Verbal: Sentence correction was the same difficulty as the OG and GMATPrep. I would say the same for critical reasoning. There were two CR questions that I had to guess on because they just did not make sense to me. Reading comprehension.... I got lucky. Two of the four RC passages were about topics I read A LOT of books and papers about. I finished each in about 4 minutes. There was 1 science passage, 1 business passage, 1 social science passage, and 1 passage that was somewhere between social science and business. For some reason I feel like there was a fifth passage, but for the life of me I cannot remember it.
AWA: The first essay was OK. I covered all of the bases but that did not feel that it was a very strong essay overall. I would give myself a 4.5 for it. The second essay however, I would give myself a solid 6. Though I did not practice AWA much at all, I have written 20-page papers for sociology, philosophy, and English classes for the last 5 years, so believe me that was plenty of practice.
That's all I've got.
Overall, I thought that the difficulty of the math and verbal sections was exactly like the OG and the GMATPrep material. There were a few surprises, but I saw surprise problems on GMATPrep also; they're not something you can prepare for.
I cannot blame my quant score on nerves or lack of sleep or anything at all. I ran out of time on the last 2 questions and had to guess, though I would have been able to solve question 36 if I had 2 minutes for it. Still, the last time I took GMATPrep, I got a 45 on quant with only one repeat.
The algorithm on the real test IS different from GMATPrep, so maybe I have been scoring 39 or 41 on GMATPrep also. BUT, I still feel that I could have done better on the quant section. Again, I'll sleep on it.
Here is what I think about each section of the test:
Quant: the same problems as the OG guides and the GMATPrep software. There were three questions that were very poorly worded - two were actually grammatically incorrect - but I think these were experimental questions.
Verbal: Sentence correction was the same difficulty as the OG and GMATPrep. I would say the same for critical reasoning. There were two CR questions that I had to guess on because they just did not make sense to me. Reading comprehension.... I got lucky. Two of the four RC passages were about topics I read A LOT of books and papers about. I finished each in about 4 minutes. There was 1 science passage, 1 business passage, 1 social science passage, and 1 passage that was somewhere between social science and business. For some reason I feel like there was a fifth passage, but for the life of me I cannot remember it.
AWA: The first essay was OK. I covered all of the bases but that did not feel that it was a very strong essay overall. I would give myself a 4.5 for it. The second essay however, I would give myself a solid 6. Though I did not practice AWA much at all, I have written 20-page papers for sociology, philosophy, and English classes for the last 5 years, so believe me that was plenty of practice.
That's all I've got.
