kiloran47 wrote:Hi!

I just want to write this in order to encourage people to have confidence in themselves.
I took the GMAT three days after figuring out I actually wanted to do it and my only preparation was taking the GMATPrep (that comes free with signing up for the GMAT) Practice Test 4 times.

I am currently an undergraduate student of business in Germany and almost exactly a year ago lots of my friends started taking the GMAT as perparation for entering Master programs. I had never even heard of it and had no clue what it was all about so when a friend offered to let me take her two free Practice tests, I was very curious. I took it right away and scored a 620 on my first try. I then did the second one a day later and got a 680. Since I didn't want to enter a Master program right after College, I didn't waste a thought on the matter after this.
Now I'm nearing the end of my undergraduate program and since the job market is still quite competitive, I considered at least applying for a MSc Management program at my university. As I only considered that as an option a week ago today and the application deadline was yesterday, I had to take the next free appointment which was on Friday last week. I therefore only had time to do the two free GMATPrep Practice Tests that I received when setting up my GMAT appointment. I did the first one on Tuesday night and scored 720 and the did the second one on Thursday and got a 760. This gave me enough confidence to remain completely calm throughout the test even though I realized I had made a mistake in one of the first questions of the quantitative part and pretty much assumed I had tanked it.

The morale of my story is to believe in your natural ability and first assess if you need to practice much at all. As much as studying and preparations might help you, the most important thing is to keep a clear head and not get too stressed out beforehand. So before you order all those books, see if you can beat the GMAT without them! Just taking practice tests a few times will help you get a feel for how the questions work and how you have to manage your time. I literally did no studying whatsoever and improved tremendously from the first time I took the practice test to the last time and my actual GMAT. I'm not saying this is the way to go for everyone but you can surely save yourself a lot of time and nerves by seeing whether you need to prep much at all.

Good luck everyone!!

hman768 wrote:I completely disagree with this entire post. I don't believe you. For those of us that take this forum seriously we don't appreciate someone making up stories. The poor grammar and setence structure of your post gives away that you couldn't have done that well.

**That being said I know people who can score like this on tests. But people who are this gifted do not go on forums like this and discourage others from studying. Keep studying!

kiloran47 wrote:Believe what you will, but check your own spelling before you judge people.

In light of the overall negative response I will remove my post since it has clearly not inspired anything but envy.

Good luck still!

hui25 wrote:Seriously people, that's all you've got? I thought this is a "community"?

That's an awesome score and I think it's good to know that there are people who can do it without a lot of studying.
I'm new to the concept of the GMAT. But at least I'm well aware what my strong points are and what not. And simply acing a test of this kind is not it. So I intend to give myself time to study.

At the same time, it doesn't surprise me that there are others who have the capability to do just that and believe that we should acknowledge this! Besides there might be undergrad courses that prepare you better than others to pass the test.

But at least this thread is a lesson for life: Things that come easy to you are not a success to be made public. Interesting...

Congrats again!