Made a 690, need some advice before retake.

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Made a 690, need some advice before retake.

by wbridges » Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:10 pm
Like many people have said, I've spent a lot of time on this website but have never posted. Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

I took the GMAT last Monday, Sept. 22, and made a 690 (Q40, V44). I wasn't terribly disappointed but was shooting for a 720 and have decided to retake in a month. My confusion lies in my quant score. I did better on quant than on verbal on all of my GMAT Preps (and I took the first one three times.) My math ranged from 44-48, but never as low as 40.

One possibility is that I was penalized more on the real exam for guessing on several questions at the end. There's a tutor in my town who made an 800 and convinced me to focus more on the first 15 questions, even if that meant spending more time on them. Once I started doing this, I began to run out of time around question 28-30, forcing me to randomly guess my way out. However, my math scores went up when using this technique on both Kaplan and GMATPrep.

On the real exam, I think I guessed on the last 7 questions. What should I make of this? Should I abandon this technique and focus on pacing, regardless of whether that means not spending more than 2 minutes on questions in the first 15?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again to everyone on this website. Without it I'd have nobody to talk about GMAT with as my girlfriend and coworkers are totally sick of hearing about scoring algorithms and data sufficiency. Thanks!

-Will
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by Prasanna » Sat Sep 27, 2008 5:42 pm
I would strongly suggest that you should change the strategy on timing. Assuming you got all 15 right it does not mean that you score is locked in at that point. If you dont do well on the subsequent questions, your score will reduce. Guessing last 7 questions is definitely not a good sign.
Wish you good luck
Prasanna

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by osamakhan » Sat Sep 27, 2008 11:00 pm
I would suggest stick to the strategy but make slight changes
1) Focus on first 10 questions instead of 15
2) Careful between 11-15 and then onwards dont use more than 2 minutes.
3) Try to guess on DS rather than problem solving.

Thats what i am planning to do.

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Prassanna or anyone

by smalishah84 » Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:04 am
Can please someone tell me if this first 10-15 question theory on both the sections is correct? Some say that the first 10-15 questions on both the sections are crucial to a higher score. i.e a strong start and a weak finish will earn a higher score than a weak start and a strong finish. Is this true?????Anyone???????

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by briendownie » Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:33 pm
from what i've seen/read/experienced your GMAT score will be just about the average of the last 7-8 questions that you last answered. So, to get a really good score, you'd have to get the last 7-8 questions 50/50 right/wrong, and they'd have to be pretty difficult. So, it really doesn't do you any good at all to be in a spot where you have to completely guess at the last minute.

that said, you probably could take a little extra time at the beginning to get yourself started on the more difficult track :D