Improved from a 520 to a 630 with only 4 hours of studying

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GMAT Score:630
I am trying to get into the masters of accounting program at my school, and the average GMAT score is around a 520. I took a practice exam from mba.com a few months ago and scored a 520 without any studying whatsoever, so I was fairly confident that I could achieve the same score on the real thing. I don't really have much time to study at the moment because of my internship, and when I do have time, I feel like relaxing or hanging out with friends. Anyways, I only studied sentence correction for about four hours the day before my exam. I used Manhattan GMAT's sentence correction book, the OG 12th edition, and Manhattan's OG tracker to time myself, and review any missed questions. I didn't do so hot on the quantitative (37), but I managed to get a 39 on the verbal. Halfway through the verbal, the questions were getting insanely difficult, and I noticed that I had more questions left than minutes left, so I rushed quite a bit on the last half. I felt like I was going to score in the low 400's, and was feeling very defeated. When I saw my score of 630 on the computer, I was completely surprised. I know that a 630 is nothing to brag about, but I feel very lucky to have received that score based on the minimal amount of studying I did. It actually motivates me to study and take it again sometime in the future. Anyways, my main takeaway is that studying sentence correction might be one of the easiest ways for people to improve their score who haven't already studied for the GMAT.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:11 am
Kid A wrote:Anyways, my main takeaway is that studying sentence correction might be one of the easiest ways for people to improve their score who haven't already studied for the GMAT.
Nice work, Kid A!

I agree with your comment about Sentence Correction; a little bit of studying has a big ROI.

Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
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