I just Beat The GMAT!

Q50 94th %ile
V45 98th %ile

770 overall, which is what I was aiming for

More details to follow.

Ian Stewart wrote:Maybe in the end it was good to postpone a week.

Yeah, I don't think I would have coped as well, tired and ill.

I think my Analysis of an Argument was pretty good, but my Analysis of an Issue may have been a bit weak. There didn't seem to be much to say, since the statement was clearly false.

The Quant was pretty much what I expected. My worst fears were questions concerning both inequality and absolute value , and getting stuck on one question. The only absolute value question that came up was pretty simple. I did have to guess on one inequality question. The worst part was a question on sequences, which I took ages over. I guess it was about five or six minutes in total. The reason I wasn't getting anywhere for most of that time was a basic arithmetic error Timing was alright otherwise.

The Verbal section was new territory for me. I kept finishing with 20 minutes to spare in GMATPrep, so I consciously decided to go a bit slower. I still ended up guessing between two answers for a lot questions. I actually got a bit rushed in the last 15 minutes, but got to the last question with about two minutes left.

Q50 was about what I was scoring in previous GMATPreps, but V45 was one point higher than I'd managed before.

If I'd had a bumper book of 750+ quant questions, I think I might have done a little better on the quant, but only the real OG/GMATPrep questions seemed to be of the right type. I'm still not super-happy with 94th %ile in the Q, but I promised myself that I wouldn't whine if I got 770, so that's the last I'm saying about it.

The one thing that worked for me during the test was not worrying about the level of the questions. There were a few that clearly much easier than others, and a few that I had to guess at. I figure that if a CAT is giving you tough questions, then it has found your level - nothing more, ntohing less.

I don't really think there's a lesson here for anyone else, except perhaps that you should give yourself plenty of time to tudy for the GMAT.

Congratulations!!!

If you don't mind, could you please debrief your preparation for Verbal? How would you compare GMATPrep's verbal to the real thing? Thanks.

-BM-

Asked to comment on a couple of other things:

Two of the RC topics that came up were science-based. I have a science background, so I actually prefer these. Only one of the passages was so long that screen scrolling was required. None of the geometry or perms+coms questions seemed very tough, but then, I might have got them wrong.


As for which schools I'll apply to, I hadn't decided much beyond LBS and Judge (Cambridge). I had my score sent to those two, and also to Cranfield, Stanford, and MIT. I've missed the window for MIT this year, but if I can't get something I'm happy with this year, I'll definitely apply there for next year.

The fall in the value of the pound means that everywhere outside of Britain is suddenly much more expensive (my savings are all in sterling, unfortunately). I need to look into bursaries and scholarships, to see if some things are more affordable than they look.

bluementor wrote:Congratulations!!!

Thankyou

bluementor wrote:If you don't mind, could you please debrief your preparation for Verbal? How would you compare GMATPrep's verbal to the real thing?

My prep for Verbal was not that great. My first GMATPrep gave me about 85th %ile for quant, and 94th %ile for verbal, so most of my attention was focussed on quant. The other contributing factor is that the total time spent was very low - I studied for less than a month.

SC was my weakest area in my first GMATPrep, and also in my last. I got the MGMAT SC book, which is as good as people say. I didn't get through all of it, but I did realise that I wasn't as sensitive as I needed to be to issues of parallelism or verb tense.

dude, not to rain on your parade but you sound pretty arrogant.

"I only studied for a month....got a 770, so I won't whine?"

Congrats on the score;now maybe you can focus on helping others with questions you saw instead of boasting.

kapitalist wrote:Congrats on the score;now maybe you can focus on helping others with questions you saw instead of boasting.

kapitalist, those two sentences weren't even in the same post. The standards I set for myself, and what I'm disappointed by, are entirely up to me.

The GMAC specifically prohibits test-takers from disclosing the questions on the test. I'm happy to answer more general questions, if you have them.