780 (51 M, 47 V)--Silly to have nagging feeling about AWA?

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Just took the exam officially for the first time. The multiple choice sections went well, but I've got a little bit of a nagging bad feeling about the AWA. (My Analysis of and Argument essay was probably fine, but I was light on ideas in my Issue essay.) In any case, I'm thinking that the absolute, worst-case disaster scenario is that I pulled somewhere between a 3 and a 4 on the AWA, but I'm telling myself that realistically it's more likely to be in the 4.5 to 5.0 neighborhood.

Assuming worst case on the AWA, how detrimental is that going to be for my chances to get into a top-level school? (I'm shooting for Sloan, ideally, but I've already got a couple of things [age, limited out-of-work activities over the last several years] working against me.)

Any thoughts would be awesome. Thanks.

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by tlt2372 » Sat Oct 23, 2010 4:22 pm
With a 780 score...I think you are probably ok! Dont worry about the AWA!

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by cagedwisdom » Sat Oct 23, 2010 5:17 pm
tlt2372 wrote:With a 780 score...I think you are probably ok! Dont worry about the AWA!
Hey, thanks! This helps. (I was having some immediate post-test come-down stress when I made my original post.)

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by Victory_GMAT » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:06 pm
This is super score......Congratulations!!!!!! 780 is one of the top scores!!! How you prepared for verbal to get 47 man?

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by niksworth » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:44 pm
Thats the highest score that I have heard on BTG! Super awesome. Congratulations.

And you cannot get away without a detailed debrief!
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by wharton750 » Sun Oct 24, 2010 6:20 pm
Wow! This puts me to shame.

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by cagedwisdom » Mon Oct 25, 2010 6:23 am
Thanks for all the comments, guys. Here's the debrief...

About 3 months ago, I started out by taking a free online exam from MGMAT. My quantitative score wasn't great (41), but my verbal was good (45). I was expecting I'd do well on both--the quantitative because I have a solid math background from HS and college, and the verbal because I currently work as a writer (which means that my writing mechanics are pretty sharp, and I spend all day analyzing/picking apart written arguments). So while I was happy with my verbal score, my math score was disappointing.

So given what had happened, I decided that I could wing it on the verbal and focus on the quantitative section. The issue, then, was to identify exactly what had gone wrong on the Q section and address it. In looking over my test results, it became pretty clear that a couple of different issues were hurting me:

1. While I'm extremely comfortable playing around with algebraic formulas, I had forgotten about half of what I learned in school about geometry and number properties, so I was struggling on certain questions that dealt with those topics.

2. I couldn't keep up with the pace of the test-I was taking an eternity to finish each problem, and as a result, I was left guessing on a huge chunk of questions at the end

So to address problem #1, I ordered the Geometry and Number Properties guides from MGMAT and just took about a week-and-a-half to carefully go through them, internalize all of the material, and complete all of the exercises that they contained.

Once I had done that, I felt like I had a good grasp on all of the material I'd be seeing on the test, so it was time to address problem #2. The solution, I figured, would just be to take practice tests. I knew I could do the problems, and it was just a matter of getting my repetitions in and getting faster at doing the problems I could do. So I shot for taking 1 practice test each weekend-the MGMAT guides I bought gave me access to 5 practice tests, so I figured that when I had made it through all of those, I'd be ready to take the test for real. The realities of life ended up keeping me from adhering faithfully to the one-test-per-weekend schedule, but I managed to take practice tests frequently enough to keep myself from getting rusty, and, after a hiccup on the first practice test in the series of 5, my speed (and, accordingly, my scores) progressively improved, as I had hoped. The breakdown is shown below:

Test 1: 640 (Q 35, V 45)
Test 2: 740 (Q 47, V 45)
Test 3: 760 (Q 49, V 45)
Test 4: 750 (Q 48, V 45)
Test 5: 780 (Q 51, V 45)

So with all that having been done, I felt like I was as ready as I'd ever be for the test. The night before, I worked through a handful of practice problems from the MGMAT online question banks, just to maintain a little sharpness, and then I settled into bed and eased my way through two glasses of wine to help myself unwind and sleep a little more soundly.

Day of the exam comes, and I wake up, hang out on the couch for a while with my cat and watch ESPN's weekly soccer telecast from England (while simultaneously doing a little deep breathing to calm my nerves). Once that's over, I hop on the subway and head to the testing center in Boston's Back Bay. Go through the normal processing for test takers, and then I get sent to my computer terminal to get started. Argument essay comes up, and I'm nervous to start, but as I get into it, I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of deconstructing it, and so my nerves fade a bit. Issue essay comes up, and I find myself short on ideas to write about. I throw together a fairly unimpressive essay, so I'm not feeling great about that, but I'm hoping I've done enough to get by. Next is the math section. I take way too long to do the first two problems, and so my stress level is rising, but I manage to make up ground over the next 10 questions or so, and I feel confident in my answers. By the time I get halfway through, I'm feeling pretty good, and things continue to go well more or less the rest of the way (although I do end up having to make educated guesses on my last two questions). On to the verbal section, then, and I feel like I have things pretty well under control throughout. Get my scores, very happy about them, a little nervous about the AWA, but what can you do? Overall, I did what I needed to do.

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by Arcane66 » Mon Oct 25, 2010 7:17 am
Hey, congrats and good debrief. If you're a writer and have been analyzing passages for some time now, you shouldn't be worried about the AWA. I got a 6.0 and I never studied a second for that section. Honestly, it's a bit annoying to hear you whine about the AWA when you got a 780. I understand the need for conservatism (hope for the best; prepare for the worst), but try not to take it too far. Nevertheless, I am envious of your score and congratulate you. Hope you are able to get into the school you want.

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by cagedwisdom » Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:37 pm
Arcane66 wrote:Honestly, it's a bit annoying to hear you whine about the AWA when you got a 780.
I realized this about 5 minutes after I made my original post, and I felt bad about it. I'm really happy with my results, and I'm sorry that I implied otherwise. There's just 0.1% of me that's hung up on the AWA, and I was listening to that 0.1% a little too much after I came out of the test.

In any case, good luck to you and to everyone else.

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by bacchewar_prashant » Tue Oct 26, 2010 7:47 am
I have couple of questions
1. How was the Quants section of actual GMAT compared to MGMAT tests that you wrote
2. What material did you use for preparing for quants?
3. What were your GMAT Prep scores

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by aspire_mba2013 » Fri Oct 29, 2010 8:09 am
Hey Cagedwisdom ,

Congrats Man !!! ... Mind Blowing score ;)
You can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink !!!

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by pag@lguy » Fri Oct 29, 2010 8:15 am
Wow !!! That was my dream score. Congrats!!!

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by pag@lguy » Fri Oct 29, 2010 9:08 am
have you got your AWA score?

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by cagedwisdom » Sat Oct 30, 2010 4:28 pm
bacchewar_prashant wrote:I have couple of questions
1. How was the Quants section of actual GMAT compared to MGMAT tests that you wrote
2. What material did you use for preparing for quants?
3. What were your GMAT Prep scores
1. I'd say that on average, the MGMAT quant sections were harder than the actual GMAT quant section. I definitely found myself having to bear down and fight harder to solve MGMAT quant problems. As a rough estimate, I'd say that the average quant question on the MGMAT tests would be in about the 75th percentile in terms of difficulty on the actual GMAT.

Just to elaborate a little, I'd say that the MGMAT problems are harder for two reasons: 1) they tend to be longer and more complex, and 2) they sometimes have some kind of unconventional trick that you need to figure out in order to solve them. I think that dealing with 1) in your preparation is actually helpful and makes the real GMAT questions easier to do, but dealing with 2) isn't as helpful, just because there aren't many trick questions where they're trying to "get" you on the real GMAT.

2. I used the MGMAT practice tests and the MGMAT strategy guides for Geometry and Number Properties.

3. I took the GMATPrep tests a long time ago--well before I started back in on preparing for the GMAT in earnest. It's actually been so long that I don't have the records of my scores anymore. I vaguely remember getting something in the high 600s on my first one and something in the low-to-mid-700s on the second.
pag@lguy wrote:have you got your AWA score?
Yeah, OK, now I feel like a total jackass for being all emo about this. I got a 6.0 on the AWA. I guess the grading criteria were different from what I thought they would be. In any case, I'm really happy with how I did.

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by aspire_mba2013 » Sat Oct 30, 2010 4:58 pm
Kool haan...so now you have 6 on AWA :)

Thanks for taking out the time, to still write more for all of us.
You can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink !!!