I just Beat The GMAT!

Actually the GMAT kicked my ass in the Q.

Just took it and got 41 Q and 41V.

Sort of disappointed although I'm glad I didn't bomb it.

The last time I took it I got 570 and this time, I actually finished all 1458 questions on OG 10, the 9 Paper Tests that you buy from GMAT.com (actually bought two sets and downloaded a third for free- you can actually download all three for free if you look on the Internet hard enough), GMAT 800 from Kaplan, and did four tests from GMATPrep.

I did all the above in 1.5 months and really crammed for the test.

Here is my postmortem :

1) The Q on the real thing is harder than anything I prepped with. Even GMAT 800 and even GMATPrep.

The question that comes to mind is what is the ratio of all palindrome numbers (numbers that read the same back and forth like 121, or 1111)
from 101 to 1001.

There were harder questions as well but I felt on the whole, that the Pearson or ETS or whoever is making these GMAT tests purposefully make the real GMAT harder than the books, software, and paper tests they sell to you so they can make money.

Bottom line : GMAT is a business and the system is rigged to sell as much stuff to you as possible while you take the test, get frustrated that the questions were unlike what you studied for, and then make you buy more stuff.

2) GMATPrep was the closest thing to the real test than anything else. The Q on the Paper Tests from GMAT.COM are a joke. Those are old test questions and in the old test, you're supposed to answer 108 questions in 150 minutes for the entire exam.

As a result, the old Paper Tests have very easy questions.

The real GMAT has questions that I thought some of them really blew my mind.

3) GMAT 800 is overrated. For the V, especially SC, I thought it helped.
However, the difficulty level that book covers in the Q doesn't even amount to the difficulty level of the middle section questions on the real test.

5) I saw one question that was on GMATPrep : it was the CR question about wildflowers and their publication in gardening magazines. How the publishers of the magazine don't want to publish wildflowers in their magazine anymore because plant sellers will begin to harvest wildflowers in their natural habitat.

4) I think I saw some racist commentary or undertone on the actual GMAT by whoever is writing these questions.

One question was a CR question dealing with eugenics versus genetics. The question pertained to the fact that eugenics was created by scientist who believed that there is a superior race and that eugenics later was adopted as the motivator behind the Nazi movement.

One of the answer choices alluded to to the fact that just because Eugenics adopts the theory that there is a superior race doesn't mean it's racist.

I can understand that the creators of the test probably hoped people wouldn't choose that as the answer, but even the fact that such a question existed on the actual test with such answers made me say "hmmmm".



Final conclusion: the GMAT is designed to make people, at least like me, buy more prep material because the Q was decisively hairier than the stuff GMAC sells to have you prep.

That is why they created now OG 12, which I hear is the same thing as 11 and 10. 11 I know doesn't have hardly anything that 10 does not and on top of that 10 has way questions more than 11.

Anyways, since my Q was so terrible, I'm positive that if I prepped for it properly this time I can score well into 700's no problem.

CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE RECOMMEND A REALLY EXCELLENT SOURCE FOR 700+ TYPE SCORE QUESTIONS ON THE QUANTITATIVE SECTION? EVERYTHING I USED SO FAR DIDN'T PREPARE ME FOR THE LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY ON THE REAL TEST ON THE QUANTITATIVE.