“Just because you lost this time, doesn’t mean you have to get used to it” –Some movie I can’t remember.
About me I’m a 28 year old Peruvian guy that’s been living in the US for 10 years. I graduated in 2005 with a Finance/Econ degree from an US school. Since for everything in finance you use calculators and excel, my quant was rusty, my verbal wasn’t that bad.
I started my preparation in January, I hit all the classics, OG11 some of OG12 too, Kaplan 800 and I also did the Kaplan online course. I took many prep tests (about 10) and I scored about 650 in most of them and then 710 and more on the GMAT prep after a few retakes.
I studied for about 3 months, but towards the end of my studies I felt like I wasn’t learning anything new and I felt a little short in time because I didn’t get to try to solve harder problems like the ones posted here or some of the ones you can get from MGMAT. I really felt going into the test that I was going to score about 640 or so; the score that I was getting consistently during my prep.
The day of the test I was relaxed, I try not to stress for exams. I did the AWA with no problems, followed the templates posted here. I took my break and I went to the bathroom. When I came back, to my surprise, there was a line to get back into the room!! As you know you have to do the fingerprint thing before you get back into the test and the lady registering people back in was taking forever. Once I got to my computer, I was 2 minutes late. That definitely threw me off, on top of that the first 2 questions were harder than what I expected had to guess one and try to solve the other one, after that I was rushing until I felt like I was caught up, after that everything went well.
Verbal wasn’t that bad, I saw a lot of the new type of questions that OG12 touches upon, especially for CR. The passages were interesting subjects and SC wasn’t that bad either.
When I saw my score I wasn’t surprised to be frank.
Some lessons learned:
1) I believe GMAT Prep’s exams are the best ones out there, I took them both and I got a 640 both times, which is what I got on the actual test.
2) Contrary to what some people might think, OG12 and their new questions do come up in the GMAT. I have gone over all of 11 and only the new questions in 12, and I saw a lot of repeats in the type of questions especially for verbal (OG12)
3) All and all the GMAT wasn’t that bad, maybe is just me because I leveled off at a score range where I was comfortable but I enjoyed the experience. I approached the test with the mentality that it was just another test like the many I had taken already and I tried to not stress.
4) Watch out for the time during your break, I didn’t think that I would be late to get back into the test and it happened.
Advice needed:
I’m going to retake the test in a couple of months so I’ll hopefully get a 700 like I originally wanted. I’m a little puzzled about what study method to follow going forward, can someone provide some input? Especially for quant.
I have seen many success stories like Logitech’s, etc, but I was hoping for somebody to point me out to posts from people in similar position as me. By this I mean people whom their main weakness is Quant. For Verbal I know how to go about preparation from other posts.
Thanks a lot to everybody in this community and hopefully I will post some good news soon!!
About me I’m a 28 year old Peruvian guy that’s been living in the US for 10 years. I graduated in 2005 with a Finance/Econ degree from an US school. Since for everything in finance you use calculators and excel, my quant was rusty, my verbal wasn’t that bad.
I started my preparation in January, I hit all the classics, OG11 some of OG12 too, Kaplan 800 and I also did the Kaplan online course. I took many prep tests (about 10) and I scored about 650 in most of them and then 710 and more on the GMAT prep after a few retakes.
I studied for about 3 months, but towards the end of my studies I felt like I wasn’t learning anything new and I felt a little short in time because I didn’t get to try to solve harder problems like the ones posted here or some of the ones you can get from MGMAT. I really felt going into the test that I was going to score about 640 or so; the score that I was getting consistently during my prep.
The day of the test I was relaxed, I try not to stress for exams. I did the AWA with no problems, followed the templates posted here. I took my break and I went to the bathroom. When I came back, to my surprise, there was a line to get back into the room!! As you know you have to do the fingerprint thing before you get back into the test and the lady registering people back in was taking forever. Once I got to my computer, I was 2 minutes late. That definitely threw me off, on top of that the first 2 questions were harder than what I expected had to guess one and try to solve the other one, after that I was rushing until I felt like I was caught up, after that everything went well.
Verbal wasn’t that bad, I saw a lot of the new type of questions that OG12 touches upon, especially for CR. The passages were interesting subjects and SC wasn’t that bad either.
When I saw my score I wasn’t surprised to be frank.
Some lessons learned:
1) I believe GMAT Prep’s exams are the best ones out there, I took them both and I got a 640 both times, which is what I got on the actual test.
2) Contrary to what some people might think, OG12 and their new questions do come up in the GMAT. I have gone over all of 11 and only the new questions in 12, and I saw a lot of repeats in the type of questions especially for verbal (OG12)
3) All and all the GMAT wasn’t that bad, maybe is just me because I leveled off at a score range where I was comfortable but I enjoyed the experience. I approached the test with the mentality that it was just another test like the many I had taken already and I tried to not stress.
4) Watch out for the time during your break, I didn’t think that I would be late to get back into the test and it happened.
Advice needed:
I’m going to retake the test in a couple of months so I’ll hopefully get a 700 like I originally wanted. I’m a little puzzled about what study method to follow going forward, can someone provide some input? Especially for quant.
I have seen many success stories like Logitech’s, etc, but I was hoping for somebody to point me out to posts from people in similar position as me. By this I mean people whom their main weakness is Quant. For Verbal I know how to go about preparation from other posts.
Thanks a lot to everybody in this community and hopefully I will post some good news soon!!
