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To re-take or not?

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To re-take or not?

by gmat7m » Sun Apr 05, 2015 9:27 pm
Hi all,

I attempted the GMAT for the first time in November 2014. I scored 700 with Q46 V40 AWA5 & IR6.

This was at least 30-40 points below my expectation. I know exactly where I went wrong. My preparation was intensive but haphazard and on the exam day the occasion got to me. As a result I spent too much time on a couple of geometry questions and couldn't answer the last 4 quant questions as I ran out of time.

I got rejects from ISB and Nanyang in the last intake.

I want to know if re taking the GMAT will improve my chances. I know GMAT is only one factor but then 700 is a very fringe score.

If there is point in re taking how should the prep go. Should I do it with the btg 60 day guide or economist type 50 point guarantee increase courses.

Any help would me much appreciated :)
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by Rich@EconomistGMAT » Mon Apr 06, 2015 7:25 am
Hi gmat7m,

First of all, sorry to hear about your recent denials. However, 700 is still a very high score. I'm curious about a couple things:

1) Where do you think/know you went wrong on your first attempt?
2) How much time can you dedicate to studying for a second attempt?

These are really important questions to consider before diving in again, especially with a 700 in tow. What other responsibilities do you have on your plate right now? If you can dedicate the amount of time required to correct the areas you need to, then I think it's worth taking a second time. If, however, you can't devote enough study time to your plan, that becomes a different scenario.

Please see here for a link to sign up for a free 7-day trial of The Economist's GMAT Tutor: https://bit.ly/1bPAHuW. If you have any other questions, please just let me know.

Best,
Rich
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by gmat7m » Mon Apr 06, 2015 7:50 am
Thanks for your reply Rich.

1) I was scoring consistently (quant) in the range of 48-50 in my mocks. The drop to 46 most probably caused the drop in score. I spent too much time (5 minutes) on a geometry question and ended up guessing 2 and missing 4 questions due to lack of time.

2) I can devote about 2 hours a day apart from 4-6 hour weekends over a 2 month period apart from a 4 day leave just before the GMAT. I work full time for a consulting firm but have enough time on the commute to take out for this.

Although I understand that 700 is decent, but for good schools (Colombia / NUS etc.), this is a fringe score. Everything else being equal they'd pick a 730 or 740 over me.

Hope this will help you assess the situation better.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Mon Apr 06, 2015 7:53 am
One other consideration is that some schools offer feedback to rejected candidates. It might be worthwhile to see if this is an option. If an admissions officer tells you that one of the contributing factors for the rejection was a problem with your essays or recommendations, it wouldn't be a great use of time or resources to re-prep for the GMAT. If, however, they mention that this application pool was unusually competitive, and they were hoping to see 730+ on the the test, well, that's helpful info as well.

Here's a decent article, in which ISB is specifically mentioned as providing helpful feedback: https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2012 ... -bschools/
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by Rich@EconomistGMAT » Mon Apr 06, 2015 8:32 am
Hi gmat7m,

I'd start with what David suggested. Ask the schools you applied to if they can give you some additional feedback on your application. If your GMAT score really was the determining factor, that's going to make your decision whether or not to re-take a lot easier.

If you decide to re-take, it sounds like you're going to give yourself a lot of time to study, which is great. It's also great to know you've identified the areas you need to work on. Considering you got a 700 on your first attempt, it sounds like you have all the pieces in place to make a re-take extremely worthwhile.

Best of luck!
Rich
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by [email protected] » Mon Apr 06, 2015 9:28 am
Hi gmat7m,

A 700/Q46 is an outstanding score (it's right around the 90th percentile), so calling it a "fringe" score is silly. With that score, you can comfortably apply to any Business School, so retaking the GMAT is probably not necessary. Before you continue studying (and retake the GMAT), you should consider the other possible issues.

The real issue is WHY you were rejected from the those 2 Schools and there could be a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's just a 'numbers game' - Schools can only accept a certain number of students and most applicants will get rejected because of it. It might be that you ARE a great applicant, but you did not present yourself correctly. If you did an interview, it might not have gone as well as you think it did. Maybe your work experience (or how you presented it) isn't that much of a "plus" to your application. You may have made a critical error on one of the essays.

Business School Admissions Officers will sometimes offer the reason(s) why an applicant got rejected, if asked. Remember to be professional when asking about all of this - you're asking for very specific information and you might be applying to those Schools again.

You might also want to talk to an Admissions Consultant - those Experts can offer some pointed perspective on how you should present yourself and what you can improve on.

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by gmat7m » Sat May 23, 2015 2:31 am
Hi Everyone,

I had temporarily lost access to this account hence the bump. I appreciate each one of you taking time out and providing invaluable guidance.

I have researched a lot, talked to a lot of people and concluded that a higher GMAT score won't hurt. This stems from a positive motivation that I can score at least 30-50 points more without monomental effort which will make a difference to my application in the highly competitive Indian Male application pool.

I have given myself exactly 60 days to cover everything (planning the GMAT around 31st July). Any words of advise on strategy for these 60 days would be much appreciated :)
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by [email protected] » Sat May 23, 2015 9:13 am
Hi gmat7m,

At your current scoring level, the GMAT becomes really 'sensitive' to little mistakes, so to raise your scores you have to focus on the 'precision' in your work.

From your prior message, you mentioned that you ran out of time on the Quant section and did NOT answer the last 4 questions. THAT most certainly cost you some points; it would have been better for you to blindly guess on those questions and get them wrong than not answer them at all.

You also mentioned how your preparation was 'intensive but haphazard....' What does that mean exactly? It's important to completely define the problem(s) before you can go about truly fixing them.

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by gmat7m » Sat May 23, 2015 12:40 pm
Hi Rich,

Time-Out
I spent a lot of time on a geometry question (#32 or #33 on the day) and by the time I wrong-guessed it, I realized I had only 30-40 odd seconds for everything. Panic ensured I could not even answer the next question.

Haphazard Prep
  • I stretched my preparation way too long (4 months) - as a result I was not so comfortable with the topics I had learnt in the initial weeks of the prep
  • Instead of taking mock tests on a regular basis, I crammed them all in the last fortnight
  • Sort of ran away from my weak areas including timing the quant
So that's how I have analysed. I could really use any help on planning my preparation.

I can ideally take out upwards of 2 hours a day on weekdays and 5-6 hours each on the weekends.
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by MartyMurray » Sat May 23, 2015 2:43 pm
So your task now is to figure out how to put points on the board.

Myself, I see no reason to adhere to any study plan that's geared to general preparation. What you really need to do is figure out what you need to be better at to rock the test.

You say you lost track of certain topics because you worked on them at the beginning of your four months of preparation. So there are some topic for you to work on.

In addition to doing that, to find more things to work on look over your mock tests and see what questions you are not really comfortable with. Maybe you got some wrong. Maybe you took a lot of time to answer some. So you can speed up and get more right answers by being comfortable with the topics that gave you trouble.

Those topics are not always obviously causing problems. For instance, in my case, I was having trouble with overlapping sets problems. Overlapping sets questions are not really super sophisticated. So I considered them easy and did not work on them much. Then I noticed that when I took CATs I was often spending maybe seven minutes to do one overlapping sets problem. Wow, that was a lot of time I could have used on other questions. So I worked on overlapping sets, and doing that one thing, working on what I had considered an easy topic, caused a nice increase in my quant score.

So the idea is to see what you can change that will increase your score and improve timing.

You can assess your progress by taking REGULAR practice CATs, maybe one every 7 to 12 days.

Another good thing about taking practice CATs is the practice you get handling the test. As you learned when you sat for the real GMAT, handling the test itself is much of the skill set. So by taking multiple practice CATs you can develop that test handling aspect of the skill set. Hey, one week you could even take three CATs, maybe without the IR and AWA, just to get more accustomed to handling 37 quant question and 41 verbal questions in the allotted 75 minutes per section.

I see taking a GMAT as being a lot like playing a video game. You play the game over and over; you learn to handle the obstacles.
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