I just Beat The GMAT!

I'll set my emotions aside, because I know this is a decent score for a lot of people. Only thing I'll say is that this is below my goal, and that I will give GMAT a third and final shot at end of September.

My background relating to GMAT only:

10+ years since last math class, I was a liberal art major. Never actually learned grammar, was taught mainly on how to write stylistically, but never on the rules of writing (and sadly, no one has ever suggested me to read a grammar book).

I wasn't sure if I am ready to share my story yet, so I'll just share a little bit and maybe answer some questions.

I only took 1 GMAT prep between my first and second take, and it was taken roughly a week before the test with the exact split, except that GMAT prep gave me 700. So yes, GMAT prep is pretty darn accurate, or at least for me.

I was able to successfully raise my score in quant from 44 to 48, but unfortunately I only raised one point in verbal from 34 to 35.

What I did for quant was investing a lot of time in Word Problems and data sufficiency questions, and these two areas and number properties are what I believe to be the bulk of what GMAT quant is all about. I was actually quite surprised to see two problem solving combinatorics questions on my way to a 48, but both of them were rather straight forward if you know the concepts.

Verbal is something I continue to struggle, and although I think I have pretty much peaked in CR and maybe even RC, I really don't think SC is something that someone can simply "get" within short amount of time. Prior to my GMAT, I didn't really know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and I certainly didn't know what a fragment was =). So to all of sudden be bombarded with all these new concepts, and at the same time, to be able to spot these errors, is a pretty darn difficult situation.

That's all folks. I might have a better debrief after my third attempt.

680 is a great score!! Congrats! Glad to see you in good spirits, ready for the next attempt!

Glad to hear that someone from a non-Engg major can also get a score as good as yours.

To be fair, I was actually really good at math, but I just didn't pursue it like a lot of other people. I had more interest in social science, which I thought was much much more fun back in college.

ps. by good, I meant that I had great teachers who taught me strong foundations that allowed me to excel.

I am myself from a non-it/engg background, and am currently in the 44-45 range in Quant (at least based on MGMAT tests).
I see you pulled yourself from 44 to 48 in Quant, how did you manage that? I have been in this range for a month now, and my GMAT is only a mth away Can you share tips?

uwhusky wrote:I'll set my emotions aside, because I know this is a decent score for a lot of people. Only thing I'll say is that this is below my goal, and that I will give GMAT a third and final shot at end of September.

My background relating to GMAT only:

10+ years since last math class, I was a liberal art major. Never actually learned grammar, was taught mainly on how to write stylistically, but never on the rules of writing (and sadly, no one has ever suggested me to read a grammar book).

I wasn't sure if I am ready to share my story yet, so I'll just share a little bit and maybe answer some questions.

I only took 1 GMAT prep between my first and second take, and it was taken roughly a week before the test with the exact split, except that GMAT prep gave me 700. So yes, GMAT prep is pretty darn accurate, or at least for me.

I was able to successfully raise my score in quant from 44 to 48, but unfortunately I only raised one point in verbal from 34 to 35.

What I did for quant was investing a lot of time in Word Problems and data sufficiency questions, and these two areas and number properties are what I believe to be the bulk of what GMAT quant is all about. I was actually quite surprised to see two problem solving combinatorics questions on my way to a 48, but both of them were rather straight forward if you know the concepts.

Verbal is something I continue to struggle, and although I think I have pretty much peaked in CR and maybe even RC, I really don't think SC is something that someone can simply "get" within short amount of time. Prior to my GMAT, I didn't really know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and I certainly didn't know what a fragment was =). So to all of sudden be bombarded with all these new concepts, and at the same time, to be able to spot these errors, is a pretty darn difficult situation.

That's all folks. I might have a better debrief after my third attempt.

This is genuinely a good score though I expect a higher score from you. Your writing style says that your score should not be less than 700.

I have some specific questions.

1. What is the pattern of RC questions? Do they resemble those of GMATPREP?
2. What about CR? Are the cr passages long enough?
3. What about SC? Are they very difficult to answer?

Thanks.

beatthegmatinsept wrote:I am myself from a non-it/engg background, and am currently in the 44-45 range in Quant (at least based on MGMAT tests).
I see you pulled yourself from 44 to 48 in Quant, how did you manage that? I have been in this range for a month now, and my GMAT is only a mth away Can you share tips?

Data sufficiency questions IMO is the key to decent score. DS doesn't allow backsolving, it's either you know the concept that is being tested or you don't. Knowing how to do problem solving questions isn't going to be enough, in fact, you're probably able to have a ballpark guess down to maybe 50/50 chance without knowing how to approach a problem. But with DS, if you don't know the concept or how to approach the question, unless you get lucky and see 1) and 2) providing the same information, in which case is 50/50 D or E, you're probably as good as 20% chance.

Word Problems to me is also another key, since majority of the questions are in written words, you have to be very comfortable with reading them and turning them into algebra equations.

Last but not least, know your foundation and practice Number Properties. GMAT loves Number Properties, and it will test you in more ways than you can imagine.

With a month left, I would recommend you to hit the books on concept, learn as much as possible, and spend the last 3 weeks working on as many questions as possible. It is also very important to learn from your mistakes, because doing 30 questions and making the same mistakes in 5 of those questions will only waste the questions, nothing more. Keep in mind, there's also a little bit of luck involved because we all have to guess sometime...like Stacey said =).

gmat_perfect wrote: This is genuinely a good score though I expect a higher score from you. Your writing style says that your score should not be less than 700.

I have some specific questions.

1. What is the pattern of RC questions? Do they resemble those of GMATPREP?
2. What about CR? Are the cr passages long enough?
3. What about SC? Are they very difficult to answer?

Thanks.

Thank you gmat_perfect. I will agree that I probably could have scored higher. I did get a resolve the paradox and a bold part questions, so I guess SC is what brought my score down.

I ran into a couple difficult RC passages, and there was a passage which was pretty difficult to read, but the difficulty of the questions certainly did not reflect the difficult of reading the passage. So I guess the trick is not to be too caught up on understanding the passage 100%, and be more question oriented when facing a difficult passage. But overall, I wouldn't say that the passages were beyond anything I came across in my prep.

CR wasn't too long either, but I was unfortunate to be seated in an area where it's right next to a hallway and people were having loud conversations outside. With both ear plugs and headset, I could still hear them talking pretty darn loud. So I was constantly losing focus, but length wasn't an issue.

SC is my weak spot as you probably know by now. However, I didn't feel like there were any questions that I couldn't break down, except one that has to do with of-preposition that I just didn't know how to approach. So there must be holes in my understanding of SC that will need more focus, and hopefully I'll find out what those are in the upcoming weeks.

Since I have been there and I understand the disappointment that you feel, I won't say anything like congratulations. I remember getting annoyed every time someone congratulated me on a 680. I will say, recharge and regroup and get above 700 like you know you're capable of. Don't give up.

Keep pushing..u will achieve the goal u set for urself.

I am gonna do a retake myself..after consistently scoring in 690-710 range in my practice tests i ended up with 660 on the real thing. I have same prob as u with SC....i m just not "getting it right" my accuracy varies from 50-70%. Any suggestions on SC books? I have gone through Manhattan SC and it helped me a lot in identifying the basic errors such as parallelism, subject-verb agreement. But I am at sea when there are multiple errors in the sentence.

I would say to practice off the OG and learn off the error logs. For example, if you're keep on getting questions with certain modifiers wrong, then you should try to figure out why you are choosing the wrong answer but not the correct one. Keep honing and memorizing specific rules, and I think you and I will both improve.

Great score, I think you are 720+ material so don't give up.

Thanks guys!

Just got my AWA score, 6.0, improved from 5.0.

can u share ur preparation for AWA? i got 5.0 in first attempt. Wud like to improve it to 6.0 in the next attempt.

Congrats uwhusky..!

rahulsaxena8 wrote:can u share ur preparation for AWA? i got 5.0 in first attempt. Wud like to improve it to 6.0 in the next attempt.

I would say that 5.0 is more than a good score. So, don't worry too much about AWA. Make sure that you don't fall beyond 4.5 as most schools expect you to have 4.5 or above in AWA.

papgust wrote:Congrats uwhusky..!

rahulsaxena8 wrote:can u share ur preparation for AWA? i got 5.0 in first attempt. Wud like to improve it to 6.0 in the next attempt.

I would say that 5.0 is more than a good score. So, don't worry too much about AWA. Make sure that you don't fall beyond 4.5 as most schools expect you to have 4.5 or above in AWA.

Yea , but ne ways I need to retake GMAT ...so tips from somebody who improved himself would definitely help