I just Beat The GMAT!

Should i retake.

i am so dejected. my life is over. my dream to go to harvard is over.

i might as well move to eureka, montana.. no wait.. maybe swaziland or togo.. in africa.

anyway..

i got 620 38 M and 34 V

i need input from you folks...

i just want to get above 660 now.. like 40 or 50 points

what should i do?

i have 4 weeks to my retake

input will be much appreciated.

i am at the lowest point in my life.

Hello, I'm really sorry to hear you so dejected.
I'm just starting out my prep, but I will say this: the GMAT is beatable. It really is.

You need to be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself if there is anything else you can do. Have you done enough OG questions? Have you practiced strategically? It might help to do lots of each question type in one go to increase confidence.

Without knowing more about how you prepped it is hard to tell you why you haven't got your desired score, but I promise you that with more work the GMAT will not keep you from Harvard.

I know a girl who wasn't good at math and learnt it all by practising for a very long time. She went to Harvard and graduated as a Baker scholar (top5%).

Good luck!

Hi there buddy,
Do read my post at :

https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-720-95- ... t7227.html

I was at exactly the same point as you at many points during my study, but if you have a clear study path defined, and put in enough practice you should be able to nail it....

Dont give up on your dreams - just put in 300% effort in the next few weeks, am very sure you will better your scores!

Take care,
-ngufo

thanks..

read the post..

How not to do well on the gmat ... in the I just beat the gmat forum

Anyway.. where are the gmat gods.. eric, prasanna, mayonaise5...

you guys motivated me inspired me.. now i need some strategic advice..

im at 620.. i need to push up my score at least 50-60 points..

i have 4 weeks.. the earliest to take it.. which i will. have to.

so.. if any of the gmat gods read this.. im waiting to here from you guys...

eric, i appreciate your advice..

but after working 18 hours a day.. for the last three years as a goldman sachs "slave " across africa, latin america and places u have never heard of..

i am hell bent on not .. going to a 2-tier school.. which is what 620 gmat ppl end up at.

i mean honestly stanford gsb with 620? who am i kidding,

my last name isnt rockfeller.. the average is a 720.. +.. so thats out.

the least i can do is get in the upper 600's and hope for a legit shot at a top 20 school..

i love ur forum.. but i think with enough hard work i can/will improve the score..

... man i did go for a long walk after 620.. i was so depressed, then i read.. success stories on here, of people going up by 50 to 100 points.

so i thought their is hope for mortals like me...

i call gmat 700 + scorers.. super human..

what kind of advice are you looking for exactly? what kind of prep did you do? what books did you use? what cats did you take? we need to know more information about your situation before we can give you advice tailored to your situation.

Hey.. thanks...

well..

i did every problem in manhattan series, princeton review books, kaplan premier, math, verbal, 800 books, and all three official guides.

i think.. i made subtle mistakes in the sentence correction..

and i rushed through quant

and flustered on co-ordinate geometry, inequalities, equation-parabola question, exponent manipulation question, prime number question,
alegbraic equation question in a work problem, descrptive statistic question, question regarding calculating leap year and accurate day question, sets, etc etc.

i only did 3 0r 4 practice test.
1 gmat prep. 1 kaplan paper based. 2 gmat prep towards the end.

i need a resource to strenghthen my decent sc..skills.

but alot of info on how to strenghten my quant skills,. particularly those harder complex multi step quant problems in quick format.

also.. i probably need to take full length practice tests.. all pr, mgmat, kaplan, and gmat prep, to really get used to the format, stamina, subtle uncomfort etc..

so these three area.. and other additional info is great

i got a 620 38 q and 34 v

i need to increase my score by a minimum 50 points to apply to the schools i need too.

thanks alot for ur time

Practice tests. I'm hopeless at Math and I only studied for a little more than a week and got a 680. Do the full practice test all the way through, including the AWA and 10 minute breaks so you get used to the timing. Mark down all the questions you're not confident about while you're taking the test, and go back and figure out how to beat those types of questions. If this allows you to get 4 or 5 more questions right on the Q section, you'll be well within range of your target. You can easily get a 700+ if you get your V up a little too. Good luck.

yeah, thanks, sounds like a good idea....

i think i might read through some grammer rules again, sc stuff..

and then do the tests i have, but didnt do the first time.

like 4 princeton review tests
4 kaplan
6 mgmat
and 2 gmat prep.

16 tests.. all in all..

but i need to clarify and strengthen.. some doubts i have in..

sets, co-ordinate geometry, algebriac variable questions, inequalities and absolutes, parabola and equation question, prime number stuff..

any resources u recommend for the above mentioned.. would be much appreciated.

thanks folks

i got one month to go for repeat..

my life is on the line.. without the support of you guys, i would have moved to swaziland or the eastern border of chad by now.

thanks all input is helpful, dont be scared to give me suggestions.;

Swaziland's actually nice, and it's a quick flight to Cape Town. Chad, not so much. The first piece of advice I would give you is: relax. Your life is not made or broken by your GMAT score or what b-school you go to (or even whether you go to B-School). I've been out of college five years, and the last two years I pulled in well over 100k, and hope to make about 500k this year on a real estate transaction. I had a 2.7 undergrad GPA. So calm down. You're never going to beat the GMAT carrying that kind of pressure into the test. My advice:

Q: I only read the first 120 odd pages of the OG book. Every equation, geometric principle, or set rule is in there. Learn all that by heart. Get comfortable figuring out which equations to use for particular word problems. This is where I shaved a bunch of time off my answers. Instead of trying to do weird scratch math, you can simply restate the problem in an equation, and even if you don't solve it exactly, or do some bad arithmetic, you'll be able to knock out a couple of wrong choices immediately. The benefit of taking the practice tests using the same timetable of the real tests is that you'll figure out how to allocate time, and not ending up guessing on the last 6 questions.

V: On the CR stuff, read the questions first. You'll subconsciously know what to look for when you read the passage and be able to compare answers. As the questions get harder, the choices seem to get more and more similar, so you have to really dig into what they're asking. also in SC, same thing. The high level answers look so similar to each other, you have to dig like mad to find out what the difference is. Pay attention to matching tenses, verb agreement, etc, and say the sentence in your head. If it sounds wrong, it probably is wrong.

Also, read a book, preferably something non-fiction/technical, in a different field. They're professionally edited, and you'll get a feel for discerning arguments, grammar, and sentence structure. I read a book called Refabricating Architecture. I don't know squat about architecture, and I have no objective data to prove that reading helped me, but it can't hurt to expose yourself to 160 pages of arguments and counterarguments about a subject you're not familiar with. Because I read it with no preconceived notions of what is right or wrong, I had to decide for myself if the arguments were convincing, what kind of data would have made the arguments more or less convincing, etc. The exact same things you'll be doing on the V section of the GMAT. Also, it looks good on your application that you read for pleasure and have an interest in different fields. good luck.

thanks man.. needed that .. damn 500 k huh.. that does sound good.

my luck was bad this week.. bombed the gmat and failed negotiations with union workers having a strike.. but oh well.

like u said .. hope exists.

is the info in the first few pages in the og which covers the math stuff, like a review enough to answer complex gmat questions..

cuz some of the sets questions are tricky..

i found the individual math coverage in the manhattan gmat series useful, but not sure how representative.. these questions are to the gmat.

but i'm.. gonna do alot of practice tests now.. master my timing, get test smart, work on certain weaknesses and then crack this beast/life killer

a.k.a the gmat.

"is the info in the first few pages in the og which covers the math stuff, like a review enough to answer complex gmat questions.. "

I'll put it like this: I wasn't confronted with anything on the real test that I hadn't seen in the OG book. I might have forgotten the equation or gotten the math wrong, but there were no "where the f%^& did this come from?" moments. Granted I didn't do fantastic on the Q so maybe the test realized I was a math moron and kept throwing me softball questions. I'd ask someone with a better Q score.

i got my awa score today.

5.0/6.0..