I just Beat The GMAT!

just got back from the gmat and very unhappy with 550 after my gmat prep was 660. i was shooting for a 50%tile quant and had been in the 95%tile on verbal with the prep. ended up 35Q/31 V. my prep V's were 44-48!

i am a surgeon planning on going to bschool at the age of 45. dont have a lot of time to spend on gmat prep with work, office, wife and three kids. question is do i retake the test in a month(is it true you need to wait 30 days), or just put the score out there and hope that my work experience, demonstrated leadership skills, letters and essays get me into a top 20 school.

also, how to account for the slide from 660 prep to 550? i finished both sections. didnt think i did too well on quant but was SURE i killed verbal.

thanks for your help;

Hi,

I really think you should do it again. It is my firm view that the GMAT is a flawed test and its scoring algorithm results in a high standard error. Maybe you made three or four careless mistakes in verbal - I believe this has the potential to reduce your score by quite a huge amount.

I myself improved my score by 100 points, with little study, and I attribute this to the imperfect scoring system. The scoring system is not linear - if you make 10 mistakes in quant, you will probably get a score of 50. Make 14 mistakes, and you might go down to 49 or 48. But make 18 mistakes, and you're down to 44. The scale is exponential.

Perhaps you simply made three or four more careless errors than you used to (perhaps because of stress, exam conditions, etc) and this really drove your score down.

you may consider retaking the test