I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi All: Last night I received a 710 on my second GMAT round (received 690 in May):

- Quant: 42 (57%ile) vs. 46 (73%ile) in May
- Verbal: 45 (99%ile) vs. 39 (87%ile) in May

So while I'm elated about Verbal, I'm taken aback by my poor Quant performance this time around.

Question: How will schools see this? Will they disregard it and decide that my Q46 is "sufficient"? I know Tuck (and perhaps others) will take the highest pieces and combine them, so I presume the Verbal bump bodes well for me should I apply there. But for all other schools, what does my situation portend?

FYI: Some schools I'm looking at: Cornell, UNC, Duke, USC, Kelley, UT, Michigan, Georgetown... and (dreaming) Tuck, Booth, Kellogg, UCLA, NYU

Thanks in advance!

Tough situation. One thing that would make it easier to use the higher overall score is if the rest of your profile demonstrates strong quantative ability. That could put admissions at ease about the 42Q.

20 points is not alot, other than the psychological satisfaction of crossing the 700 barrier. Your 690 score is a lot closer to the 80%/80% balance, and I would think having a 73% vs. 57% in quant is more favorable than 99%ile over 87% in verbal.

Hi AgadorShummy,
Can you throw some light on how you increased the Verbal score from 39 to 45 in a couple of months.
That would be really helpful.

Hi - honestly, taking the LSAT three times kicked my @$$ and probably prepared me for the GMAT verbal section (excepting SC). In full disclosure, I hardly studied for the GMAT reading comp or critical reasoning, as I felt pretty prepared for it having gone through the LSAT ringer. It seems to me that harder GMAT c.r. problems are equivalent to easier LSAT "logical" reasoning questions. That said, I'd probably warn against diving into LSAT material in full, as the scope of reasoning q's there is wider than for the GMAT.

At any rate, I really think sentence-correction practice helped me improve. Go through as many as you can. My gut says that understanding parallelism, in particular, is helpful.

Not sure if this helps. Feel free to message me if I can give you more info. Clearly I'm more a "poet" than a quant If only b-schools valued those people more than it appears they do...!

Also, can I ask where you stood on your last GMAT exam (or practice exam)?

AgadorShummy wrote:Hi - honestly, taking the LSAT three times kicked my @$$ and probably prepared me for the GMAT verbal section (excepting SC). In full disclosure, I hardly studied for the GMAT reading comp or critical reasoning, as I felt pretty prepared for it having gone through the LSAT ringer. It seems to me that harder GMAT c.r. problems are equivalent to easier LSAT "logical" reasoning questions. That said, I'd probably warn against diving into LSAT material in full, as the scope of reasoning q's there is wider than for the GMAT.

At any rate, I really think sentence-correction practice helped me improve. Go through as many as you can. My gut says that understanding parallelism, in particular, is helpful.

Not sure if this helps. Feel free to message me if I can give you more info. Clearly I'm more a "poet" than a quant If only b-schools valued those people more than it appears they do...!

How would you advice using LSAT material for GMAT Prep ? Will practicing LSAT RC passages help ? Should we only practice LSAT CR Questions that are common to GMAT -strengthen, weaken assumption ?

That's a great question. I honestly am not the best person to ask about reading comp, as I really didn't follow any framework, despite my great course (Manhattan GMAT) teaching me to do so: I just couldn't grasp it. I think the RC stuff just takes practice. What's nice about LSAT RC passages is they're generally tough, dense, complex (unless you care about, like, abnormal reproductive habits of some test-tube strain of fruit flies). And don't get caught up in all the technical jargon when you read those RC passages!! Just try to get the drift of what they're saying. By conveying the boring, jargon-y details, GMAT folks are, I'm guessing, trying to throw you off. Better, probably, to understand the tone with which they convey those details. Is it part of a hypothesis they attempt to justify? Does it serve as an example, or counter-example, to the theory presented earlier in the passage? Clearly some questions will ask you to reference a particular detail, but I generally tried not to get wrapped up in the jargon until that time.

Phew. Long answer for RC. Regarding reasoning, yeah, I honestly could not tell you what type of reasoning questions were on the GMAT: I just sorta preserved my LSAT preparation and ran with it. If you can identify particular types of GMAT reasoning q's, then yes, by all means check out specific LSAT material. Probably best, too, not to get caught up with all the crazy additional LSAT question types, especially if you have a certain question type upon which you seek to improve.

Message me w/ any other q's -- this site (and others) helped prepare me and I'd love to return the favor.