Some of you might recognize this quote Andy Dufresne from Shawshank redemtion. For those of you who do not, I thoroughly recommend you to watch it.
I took my GMAT exam today for the first time and I am really ecstatic. I scored a 760 (Q 49 / V 46) and not in my sweetest dreams had I hoped for such a score. I am the natural optimist and always believed and hoped, a mix of both, that I would over perform in the actual exam, but considering I scored in the 660-720 range in my last 4 GMAT Prep exams, expectations were by far not that high.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone who makes this website and its forums possible. You do a great job, guys, in giving us GMAT takers the chance to get in-depth knowledge of tricky GMAT questions, in providing strategies for the test and in helping out whenever someone has a doubt. Really, without this forum I would not have been able to beat the GMAT, so thank you very much.
Before taking the exam myself, whenever I saw a post of a member with a high score in this forum, I noticed how the person used to rate high on the prep tests as well. Recently someone posted how he had increased his score in the test vs. the prep test considerably, coming through in clutch, as we say in sports. It gave me some hope and this is what my personal GMAT story (or some of it, at least) is all about: HOPE.
And at this point, I come back to the topic of my post. Even if the simulated test scores are not as high as you expected, do not let yourself down.
In my four exams before the GMAT I scored as following:
MGMAT6 - 700 (Q 43 / V 42)
GMAT PREP 2 - 660 (Q 44 / V 38) Huge bummer as I had scored a Verbal of 41-42 in my previous tests. It affected my morale until I started considering the VErbal part score a fluke.
GMAT PREP 1 (retake) - 700 (Q 47 / V 40) All new questions except for one in Verbal.
GMAT PREP 2 (retake) - 720 (Q 45 / V 44) 4-5 repeated questions in Math and 4-5 in Verbal.
Considering my scores and the programs I wanted to apply to I was aiming at a 710 or so. I was a bit disappointed with my lack of improvement after coming all the way from 580 in 7 weeks. I could not get past the bloody 720 (twice, once in an MGMAT test). Nevertheless, deciding to stay optimistic I looked at my individual Q and V scores and told my self that in a best case scenario I could get a 730-740, if I matched my best Q and V scores. On the other hand, I was worried of pressure and was worried that my score would eventually drop to 650 levels...
Finally, on test day, I was lucky and got a higher than expected score. And if I could do it, any of you can!! I am not a maths genius, I am not a native English speaker, I did not work on the GMAT for 7 hours a day during 6 months, none of this. I worked on the GMAT for about 4 months (2 in a more relaxed way in order to get to know the exam and 2 in a more committed way) bought some basic literature, did 10 tests at home and browsed through the Internet and mainly this forum for help.
Here are a couple of tips. I am speaking as someone who had not touched algebra and similar stuff since more than 10 years and who took the last English exam in 1998. Go figure...
Learning Material:
- Sentence Correction Guide from Manhattan. A MUST!
- Word Translations and Geometry Guides from Manhattan if you feel rusty in general in the Quantitative part. I wish I had bought the Number Properties Guide as well, but hey...
- The Official Guide (GMAC) aka "The GMAT Bible". I bought the two last editions because even though some problems are repeated, by the time I started the latter of the two, I barely remembered the problems of the first guide.
Apart from these basic materials (in my case) I bought the Kaplan 800 book (of not much use if you ask me, as the questions are very often different to GMAT ones) and the Quantitative Review (GMAC, too), which is useful if you want to go through more maths problems.
I bought the MGMAT online tests at manhattan.com but you can avoid this, as the Manhattan guides give you codes to access these. The tests, although the quantitative questions are different from GMAT ones in that they are somewhat tougher, give you a good feel of your score.
I have still not understood what algorithm Manhattan GMAT uses and I never will. You get many more questions wrong than in the GMAT Prep exams and still the scores resemble. I feel you should take these exams, as they are good training and will help you test by test in optimizing your time management.
From my experience I would recommend to do as many GMAT Prep tests as you can. They give you a wide range of GMAT questions and I found question types I had not found before even as I was redoing GMAT prep Test 2. It does not matter if the questions repeat after having taken each test 2 or even 3 times. Solving the whole range of real GMAT questions under test conditions well compensates for some repeated questions.
The test itself:
Do not eat too much before it, you do not want to get sleepy.
Myself I arrived at the test centre a bit early for the exam and as one computer was free I was allowed to start ahead of schedule (like 15 min.): Good thing about this is that I was alone during both of my breaks. Negative effect was that as I was starting my Quantitative part, I could hear some of the typing of others finishing their essays, which was a bit annoying I must confess. Some people just type SUPER loudly. Shocking!
Not much to comment on AWA, as I had memorised a template. One advise though: Do not waste any minute. You do not have that much time. Use the 3 or 4 mins before the official start of the exam (there are ten informative screens you can click through) to make some notes on how you will organize your essays in case you feel you might forget something...
The Quantitative questions are very, very similar to the GMAT practice tests. I came across plenty of "sets" questions, quite a few geometry ones (more than in GMAT Prep in any case), a couple of probability questions and as usual the data Sufficiency part drove me nuts.
The Verbal part was also very similar to GMAT Prep. Practically identical I thought... until the second text came across!! A 5 or 6 paragraph text about some geological stuff that was just soooo long and not just easy to decipher. I think I took 8 minutes on the first question and still had to take an educated guess. A nightmare. I have always struggled in terms of concentration with very long texts and this one was by far the longest I have seen so far, taking into account guides, MGMAT, GMAT Prep... Anyway, I panicked a bit because even though Verbal was normally my strength I was running late now (just 33 minutes left for 23 questions). The next text was again 5 paragraph long but it seemed easier. I still could not believe that I had gotten two long texts in a row and my state of mind was between fuming and discouraged. (It is very important to NOOOOT get stuck on a certain questions for more than 4 minutes if you start feeling you will not be able to solve it anyway. Make an educated guess and move on. Do not worry about the lost time too much, you will come across an easier quantitative problem or a sentence correction question and make up some time soon. But BE READY TO TAKE EDUCATED GUESSES, please! I cannot stress this enough!).
I somewhat ran against the clock in the second part of Verbal but questions still seemed difficult, which compensated my discouragement for bad time management and having been obliged to take educated guesses two or three times.
All in all, the verbal part was exactly like the GMAT Prep verbal part so no surprises here, except for the length of two of the Reading Comprehension texts.
At the very end of the exam, when I clicked on the report score button I got more stressed than ever before. Actually, as I was finishing the verbal part and just 2 questions remained my heartbeat accelerated considerably. Thanks God everything went well. It was well worth the effort.
As I said before, if I could, you can, too!
If you do not seem to progress quickly enough at first, in the words of Axl Rose: "Give it time, to read between the lines"
Good luck... and do not forget Dufresne
