Just Beat the GMAT: 730/96%

During my preparation for the GMAT I read a few of these stories and I told myself that I was going to write one after Beating the GMAT. It was definitely a tough journey but I can definitely say that it was worth it. So here it is.

Quick overview of my background: I am a white/hispanic male. I've worked in Finance (both in Investment Banking and PE) for the past 3.5 years and I am looking to start my MBA in 2014.

Materials used: MGMAT books for both Quant and Verbal, Official Guide materials (OG13, Quant Review 2nd edition & Verbal Review 2nd edition) and the Powerscore CR Bible.

GMAT#1
After attending the MGMAT classes last summer in NYC and getting decent scores in the CATS I decided to make an appointment for the GMAT. The scores of my last three practices tests were the following:

GMAT Prep 1: 710/92% (Q47/76% and V41/92%)
MGMAT: 690/91% (Q44/73% and V39/89%)
GMAT Prep 2: 710/92% (Q49/85% and V38/83%)

Based on these scores, I was somewhat confident that I was going to get a 700+ score. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The essay and the IR section went well but I completely froze in the first Quant question (probably spent 4+ minutes and got it wrong) and was not able to fully recover from that bad start. I started getting even more nervous when I started getting seemingly easy Quant questions, since in my mind that meant that I was doing very poorly. Instead of focusing on the question in front of me, I spent the time thinking about the previous questions and whether I had answered them incorrectly. I was not able to get over this death spiral and this situation definitely affected my Verbal section. Long story short, I ended up getting a very disappointing 600 (a score that definitely did not reflect my practice exam scores)

As you can imagine, I was devastated and mad at myself for not being able to control my mind and get over the horrible start in Quant. A few days after taking my first exam I started my new job in private equity so I had to forget about the GMAT and focus on the new job for some time.

GMAT#2
Four months into the job and after coming back from a well-deserved vacation I decided to start thinking about the GMAT. Given the fact that my job schedule is very unpredictable, since deals come and go, I decided that I had to come up with a very flexible study/review plan. My goal was to front-load as much as I could of the GMAT studying in case work would suddenly take over my life. So there was a constant pressure to optimize my study time and focus more on reviewing my weak areas instead of starting from zero and re-reading all the materials. There was also a lot of uncertainty since I knew that there was a high possibility that I would be forced to suspend the GMAT studying for 2-5 months if a big deal came up (which would definitely affect my overall goal of applying for the 2014 class). My basic plan was to spend the first few weeks reviewing and re-learning the concepts and then spend the second part on sets of practice questions combined with CATS.

For the CATS, I started by taking 2 of the 800score CATs, since I had taken a few of the MGMAT CATs back in the summer and I wanted to leave the GMATPrep CATs for the end. But after the second 800Score CAT I decided to move back to the MGMAT and GMATPrep CATs. I found that the 800Score questions were not that similar to the real GMAT and the Verbal section was extremely easy and not adaptive (I was getting 99% scores). I definitely do not recommend these exams.

The most important things when taking the CATs for me were to:
1) Work on improving my timing strategies in both sections
2) Spend a lot of time reviewing the entire exams, not only the incorrect questions, and also to use this or other GMAT-related forums to find alternative/faster ways of solving a problem
3) Categorize problems: As several MGMAT instructors told me, you need to work on creating several of the following phrases: "When I see [xxx type of question], I should do [yyy]"

Real-Test:
The essay section went well. The IR section had some tricky questions but my goal was to avoid wasting too much brain power on this section. The Quant section started well and during the middle of the section I felt that I was getting some 'easier' question followed immediately by pretty complex questions, but I decided to avoid paying any attention to this. I include this comment to show that it is a waste of time to try to guess the level of questions in the exam. Instead, just focus on answering the question in front of you in the most efficient way. The last few questions were pretty complex but I had seen a few similar questions during my practice exams that allowed me to get them most of them right. Again, remember that the goal is not to get all of them right but instead to get the majority of them right within the time given (definitely recommend you read Stacy Koprince's articles on Timing). The Verbal section went by very smoothly and I even had some extra time at then end to spare (this had never happened to me in the practice tests, I guess working on my timing strategies paid off!). And then the final score came up.....

730/96% (V42/96% and Q48/78%)

I was extremely happy with the result and could not wait to receive the printout sheet with my score to then be able to call my family and girlfriend and share news.

Now that I've had a few days to get over this adventure, a few questions have come up and I wanted to share it with this forum to hear your opinions. Given that I would ideally like to attend one of the following schools Harvard, Wharton, Stanford or Columbia, could you please comment on the following questions:

1) Taking my background and work experience into account, should I retake the exam to try to bring up my Quant score, with the risk getting a lower score?
2) If I do get a lower score in my third attempt will that affect my application since schools will see the three scores in the GMAT score report?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts/answers to the above questions
Best of luck to all those who are studying for the GMAT!!

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