750 - 50Q, 41 V (09/05/2007) AWA 5.0 WTF???

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Yeah. Done with it and glad it is over. Although I scored pretty much where I figured I would, a part of me wants a higher score :)

I started thinking about taking the test a couple of months back. I went on a book shopping spree and ordered everything (they are all on sale starting now!). I have OG11, OG Verbal Review, OG Quant Review, Kaplan, Kaplan 800, Princeton Review AND Manhattan GMAT SC GUide. The only books I ended up using were OG11 and Manhattan SC Guide. The others are in pristine condition! (As a side note, send me a private message if you want to buy any of these. I am in New York City.)

However, all my studying was done on Beat The GMAT and Test Magic forums. I figured that since only the questions that get posted on the forums are the ones someone is unable to do, or has a doubt in, these questions would provide good practice. One good thing I did was read forums consistently everyday for like an hour in the evening after I get home from work and study maybe 2-3 hours on the weekends.

Verbal was my Achilles heel and I knew that if I get past the '40' barrier, I would be in good shape.

During the test, AWA started off ok. I didn't practice any essay writing before hand and so getting even a 5.0 on AWA would be acceptable to me. Quant started off pretty well and I really got concerned towards the middle since the section didn't seem to get any tougher as some other debriefs had mentioned. A score of 50 does suggest that I made probably careless mistake since there wasn't a single problem I faced that I thought I couldn't do. As a matter of fact, I guessed on only 1 question during the middle when I was pretty even as far as time was concerned and I didn't want to lose time on a single question. Towards the end, I was double checking my answers.

Then came the dreaded Verbal part. The first was a SC and I had NO CLUE. Lights out amigo. Made an educated guess and moved on. The second was another SC. NO BLEEPING CLUE. Game, set, match, no championship, ousted in the first round. I was getting concerned. So, took a deep breath and continued. A messed up CR on 3rd or 4th question. I started to get into a panic mode. A few questions later came RC which was 'ok'. I checked the time and I figured I wasn't doing too well. I was at question 13 around 48 minutes remaining. Few more CRs and SCs later came an RC passage that seemed like it was made for kindergarten. I kid you not. It was so simple that I contemplated at that point I should just sit and memorize it rather than continuing since I have probably messed up the Verbal section by now. Also, around question 20 or so, I noticed that I did not get a single @#$@#$% boldface which usually shows up, according to some posters, when you are doing well. Let the good times roll. Few more messed up SCs (I can tell you with all honesty that I had no confidence in majority of the SCs on the test) and CRs later shows up this nasty a$$ RC. I was around question 28 or so with 24 minutes left and I was in complete panic. I couldn't make head or tail out of it, it spanned page and a half (you had to scroll to read it) and there were FOUR questions based on it. I am fairly certain I got all of those wrong and at that point I was hoping that it was an experimental one. Well, I thought that if I got another RC, I will definitely not finish the section on time. And then I got two really nasty CRs that I boiled down to THREE choices by POE and guessed. Around question 35, I was so convinced that I have to retake (I had decided that anything less than 720 and I will retake) that I actually paused for a moment, looked around, took a deep breath and started contemplating whether I like Godfather-I more than Godfather-II or vice-versa. I then started thinking of Pulp Fiction that I saw umpteenth time a few days ago and cursed Tarantino for not letting us know what was in the suitcase. Somehow, cursing him made me focus again and I finished the section finally with couple of more educated guesses.

Then came the screens that ask you to fill out some personal info. After those came the moment of truth where GMAC asks you to 'report' or 'cancel'. It's like GMAC is being Mommy and asking you after school 'have you been good?' I paused. At that point, I could hear my own heartbeat. Then I said to myself, BLEEP it and clicked next. And then the digits showed up. 7 5 0 in that order. I shook my head in disbelief, goofy ass smile on my face and walked out of the test center. What a day!


Tad bit disappointed that I did not get a 51 in Q. It has got to be careless mistakes. Also, just in case anybody wants to know, here are my practice scores:

GMATPrep 1(baseline): 700
Kaplan 1: 660 (Q48, V36)
Princeton Review 1: 730 (Q50, V30)
Princeton Review 2: 710 (Q50, V41)
Princeton Review 3: 730 (Q51, V37)
MGMAT CAT 1: 710 (Q48, V39)
MGMAT CAT 2: 750 (Q48, V44)
MGMAT CAT 3: 720 (Q50, V38)
GMATPrep 2: 770 (Q51, V45)
GMATPrep 3 (re-install): 780 (Q51, V45)


Moral of the story: Cursing Tarantino calms you down.
Last edited by givemeanid on Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:54 am, edited 3 times in total.
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by beatthegmat » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:03 pm
I'm happy to be the first to say...CONGRATULATIONS! You should definitely be proud of your achievement!

Thanks for the wonderful debrief as well as all your fantastic contributions to this community to date!
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by Sadowski » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:13 pm
Nice work, man! I knew you'd do well. Feels good to be done, ay?

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by Neo2000 » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:16 pm
Congratulations dude!!

I've seen you around so good to know you've done so well

Happy Apping :)

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by Prasanna » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:23 pm
Congrats!

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by jayhawk2001 » Wed Sep 05, 2007 8:47 pm
Congratulations man ! Awesome score and great debrief.

Off to the second part of the journey :-)

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by givemeanid » Thu Sep 06, 2007 4:37 am
Thanks a lot guys. It does feel good to get the first step done with. Apps, here I come :)

Eric, this community has been of immense help to me too. It is a symbiotic relationship! Thanks for putting this all together.
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by beatthegmat » Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:23 am
givemeanid wrote:Thanks a lot guys. It does feel good to get the first step done with. Apps, here I come :)

Eric, this community has been of immense help to me too. It is a symbiotic relationship! Thanks for putting this all together.
We hope you'll stick around for a while. ;)

Good luck on the apps!
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by gabriel » Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:47 am
..Congrats on the great score ..

.. and like eric said ..hope u stick around and help the new members :) ..

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Damn Dawggg.. Good show..

by wizardofwashington » Thu Sep 06, 2007 11:29 am
Definitely an inspiring performance..and loved reading your curses-laden post..It felt like I'm reading my own post since I tend to use a lot of Fs & Bs & Ss during such trying times (like your testing experience)..

BTW, this may sound inapporpriate on this forum.. but how did y ou manage to get the RSS feed for the GMAT forums on Test Magic..? Could you please share that RSS Feed URLs for TestMagic's GMAT Forums so that I can add it to my Feed Reader..I gotta tell you this much.. I cursed the hell out TestMagic for the way they have laid out the subscription process (only an e-mail) and the link to RSS Feed on the FAQ's gives everything on TestMagic Forums, including those forums for GRE, TOEFL, etc.. These seems to be no way of filtering the threads that you want to get the feeds and the only way you can do this is by subscribing to their e-mail Option for that particular forum (in this case, GMAT), which I did after lot of cursing..

Compared to that technical mess, I feel BeatTheGMAT is much better organized in terms of content and ease of access to information.. Especially, the RSS subscription is made real easy..Thanks to ERIC and the others who conceived such an intelligent architecture for access information.. Kudos guys and am definitely proud to be a part of such an intelligent community..
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Re: Damn Dawggg.. Good show..

by givemeanid » Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:39 pm
wizardofwashington wrote:Definitely an inspiring performance..and loved reading your curses-laden post..It felt like I'm reading my own post since I tend to use a lot of Fs & Bs & Ss during such trying times (like your testing experience)..

BTW, this may sound inapporpriate on this forum.. but how did y ou manage to get the RSS feed for the GMAT forums on Test Magic..? Could you please share that RSS Feed URLs for TestMagic's GMAT Forums so that I can add it to my Feed Reader..I gotta tell you this much.. I cursed the hell out TestMagic for the way they have laid out the subscription process (only an e-mail) and the link to RSS Feed on the FAQ's gives everything on TestMagic Forums, including those forums for GRE, TOEFL, etc.. These seems to be no way of filtering the threads that you want to get the feeds and the only way you can do this is by subscribing to their e-mail Option for that particular forum (in this case, GMAT), which I did after lot of cursing..

Compared to that technical mess, I feel BeatTheGMAT is much better organized in terms of content and ease of access to information.. Especially, the RSS subscription is made real easy..Thanks to ERIC and the others who conceived such an intelligent architecture for access information.. Kudos guys and am definitely proud to be a part of such an intelligent community..
I am not sure what you are asking for.

I could access BTG from work and so BTG was my staple during the day whenever I could find time. TestMagic is blocked from inside my company and so I used to access TestMagic when I got back home, just scrolling through the posts randomly and answering them.
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Re: Damn Dawggg.. Good show..

by wizardofwashington » Thu Sep 06, 2007 4:21 pm
givemeanid wrote:
I am not sure what you are asking for.

I could access BTG from work and so BTG was my staple during the day whenever I could find time. TestMagic is blocked from inside my company and so I used to access TestMagic when I got back home, just scrolling through the posts randomly and answering them.
No worries, mate! I was simply asking for an RSS Feed URL for TestMagic.. But It looks like you didn't subscribe to their feeds and instead visited the discussion threads everyday..I shouldn't have assumed that you read the posts on TestMagic via an RSS feed reader.. My bad!

Anyway, good luck with your Application process..
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by givemeanid » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:41 am
Just got my AWA score. 5.0. That is terrible. Well, the only essay I wrote was on the actual test. So, I can't complain but I did think that I would get a 5.5. Oh well. I am very disappointed.

Does a 5.0 make your overall app look bad? Should I retake??
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by jayhawk2001 » Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:30 am
givemeanid wrote:Just got my AWA score. 5.0. That is terrible. Well, the only essay I wrote was on the actual test. So, I can't complain but I did think that I would get a 5.5. Oh well. I am very disappointed.

Does a 5.0 make your overall app look bad? Should I retake??
Nope. 5 is ok. 4 or below can cause concerns.

In anycase, your writing skills can be shown in your essays. The Adcom
will prefer to gauge your writing skills through an essay than through a
6.0 in AWA :-)

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by givemeanid » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:07 am
jayhawk2001 wrote: Nope. 5 is ok. 4 or below can cause concerns.

In anycase, your writing skills can be shown in your essays. The Adcom
will prefer to gauge your writing skills through an essay than through a
6.0 in AWA :-)
Thanks jay. That makes sense.
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