I just Beat The GMAT!

Last month I took it and got a score of 390, scoring both a 22 in verbal and math.

I have the princeton review
11th edition of offical guide
purple og and green guide as well

What am I doing wrong? Am I not studying enough. I gave myself several weeks to prepare.

When the lady gave me scores back, she looked at my like I was crazy.

Dayne,

You may be missing some knowledge of key concepts. Consider getting a private tutor to help you assess your weaknesses and then formulating a strategy that will help you bridge any identified gaps.

When that's done then you can ramp up on pacing and a positive mental attitude to whoop the GMAT back.

Good luck

I totally agree with owned. I believe you should take some prep course. Have a look to the special GMAT Prep discounts for Beat the GMAT!
Don't give up!

All the best,

uymba

Hi. My guess as to what you're doing wrong is that you're getting ahead of yourself. Based on your score, you seem to need a refresher on some basic skills. Before you step into the ring with the GMAT, you should make sure that you feel completely confident with those.

My suggestion, look into a gmat prep course. One that either included private tutoring or sometype of tracking and adaptive learning system would probably help you to get the most out of it. Kaplan has a course that includes a few hours of private tutoring but it costs and arm and a leg. Knewton has an online course that gives you about 45 hours of class and has an adaptive learning system (meaning, it adjusts to what you seem to need the most help with). It's about half the price of Kaplan ($690 compared to approx. $1,300). Overall, it seemed like the better choice to me and I got an extra $100 off for being "referred" by another student. Look into those, check for discount codes on this site and let me know if you have any other questions or would like me to "refer" you for a Knewton class(vincerich at yahoo dot com).

guys thanks for the responses, but I can't afford a private tutor

Hi Dayne,

My sincere suggestion is understand the basics again for each section. And take one section at a time. Prepare for verbal, get all the books suggested in this forum and do them again and again. Give your self plenty of time for practising. And then switch over to next section. Over teh period I ma sure you will see your score increasing.

There is abundant online knowledge which you can make full use of.
Don't be disheartened.

All the very best.

akalpita wrote:Hi Dayne,

My sincere suggestion is understand the basics again for each section. And take one section at a time. Prepare for verbal, get all the books suggested in this forum and do them again and again. Give your self plenty of time for practising. And then switch over to next section. Over teh period I ma sure you will see your score increasing.

There is abundant online knowledge which you can make full use of.
Don't be disheartened.

All the very best.

yeah I'm taking that approach
I got some more books to cover the basics and taking a week to two weeks to study each section

Dayne, don't get so discouraged by the score, you CAN beat the GMAT others have. If you can't afford a private tutor or a prep course, I highly suggest buying the Manhattan Series for Quant. Math was a HUGE area of weakness for me. In high school I took calculus twice to finally end up with a 65%. The Manhattan series taught me a LOT about GMAT style math, esp number properties. You can find it on amazon at a great price. The instructional value is unmatched by any other prep company I've seen. For critical reasoning get "Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible." This book really elucidates every single question type you will see and also gives you thick explanations. (Hint: torrents are a great resource do your research!)

Take more practice tests without regard for the score. A big problem for me was endurance. I just wasn't able to complete the exam with consistent mental acuity. So my verbal score was most susceptible to loss and fluctuation. Do what you're doing, but also be flexible with your study schedule. To find your weaknesses, I suggest a Manhattan GMAT practice test. It really breaks down the type of questions tested and the applied concepts. Most GMAT questions will have 2 - 3 processes to them so you really need to know the theory cold.

I heard that psychologists were consulted to make this test to make it appear harder than it actually is! It IS beatable, just keep your head up. If you get knocked down, brush your self off and get back to the good fight again. Hope this helps.

Perminology wrote:Dayne, don't get so discouraged by the score, you CAN beat the GMAT others have. If you can't afford a private tutor or a prep course, I highly suggest buying the Manhattan Series for Quant. Math was a HUGE area of weakness for me. In high school I took calculus twice to finally end up with a 65%. The Manhattan series taught me a LOT about GMAT style math, esp number properties. You can find it on amazon at a great price. The instructional value is unmatched by any other prep company I've seen. For critical reasoning get "Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible." This book really elucidates every single question type you will see and also gives you thick explanations. (Hint: torrents are a great resource do your research!)

Take more practice tests without regard for the score. A big problem for me was endurance. I just wasn't able to complete the exam with consistent mental acuity. So my verbal score was most susceptible to loss and fluctuation. Do what you're doing, but also be flexible with your study schedule. To find your weaknesses, I suggest a Manhattan GMAT practice test. It really breaks down the type of questions tested and the applied concepts. Most GMAT questions will have 2 - 3 processes to them so you really need to know the theory cold.

I heard that psychologists were consulted to make this test to make it appear harder than it actually is! It IS beatable, just keep your head up. If you get knocked down, brush your self off and get back to the good fight again. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply! When I took the test the first 2 times I was unaware of this board and I just went over the OG and the Princeton Review. I didn't go over the many missed problems I had on the OG, and I didn't take many practice tests.
I found this board and I wanted to take the founder of this board strategy. And I realized that by reading some of the other posters that I didn't have a foundation for Sentence Correction or Critical Reasoning. I also took on the strategy from the Princeton Review of not reading the whole story for Reading Comprehension, which wasn't working for me.

I resentaly bought the following books:

The PowerScore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible: A Comprehensive System for Attacking the GMAT Critical Reasoning Questions The PowerScore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible: A Comprehensive System for Attacking the GMAT Critical Reasoning Questions

The PowerScore GMAT Sentence Correction Bible The PowerScore GMAT Sentence Correction Bible
Victoria Wood

EZ Solutions - Test Prep Series - Math Practice - Basic Workbook - GMAT (Ez Solutions: Test Prep Series)

I will look into the Manhattan Series book for Quaint as you suggested.