Done with the GMAT forever! 690 to 760 with Knewton debrief

Yes, BTG friends, I am done with the GMAT forever, and it feels SO good -- 760 (Q49, V44) 99%

A note before I begin my debrief: I've been so inspired by the earlier "I Beat the GMAT" postings that I started drafting mine during the final two weeks of my preparation process. I can't describe how motivating it has been to write about my GMAT experience in past tense! So I've got lots to share.

I made my second official attempt at the GMAT today and got a 760, Q49 (86 percentile) V44 (97 percentile). It's been a long slog. As background, I'm a born and bred American with humanities background (highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa from a Top-30 US school) working in technology sales and marketing in Singapore for the past 1.5 years, and I'm planning to apply to two-year MBA programs in fall 2011 for matriculation in fall 2012. One of my 2010 New Year's resolutions was to take the GMAT, and it has been a struggle. In the first half of the year, I attempted and failed to study for the GMAT twice - both times, I got 2 or 3 weeks into studying and got thrown off schedule by a sudden, high-pressure, week-long inter-continental work trip with company executives, and I would come back to Singapore, sleep the whole weekend, and spend the next week furiously catching up on the work I wasn't doing while with my execs. By the following weekend, I was too burned out to pick up the GMAT prep torch and push on.

Using BTG's 60-day self-study program, I started my third study attempt at the end of summer and took the GMAT on October 3, getting a 690, Q43 (65th percentile) V42 (95th percentile). My debrief for that test is here: https://www.beatthegmat.com/underwhelmin ... tml#304895 Later in October I visited UVA Darden to attend two classes and meet with an admissions counselor...She said that, for a native English speaker, verbal scores don't matter much - the admissions committee would instead focus on my quant score, and a 65th percentile would raise serious doubts in my readiness for an MBA. Seriously though, I was a legit mathlete back in my day! I was vice president of the math honor society and, of the six IB exams (scored up to 7), the only 7 I got was in calculus! I had mad skillz, but they had become rusty with time.

And so, in November I very, very reluctantly started preparing for my second attempt. I knew I needed to join a structured program to keep me motivated, and after reading BTG reviews and comparing prices I signed up for Knewton's online course - their 50-point score improvement guarantee was the best offer out there, and for me that meant a promise of 740 or my money back. I originally didn't have any trips planned in November and December, but work and friend randomness occurred and I found myself desperately squeezing in online study time at airport lounges in Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, Denver, DC, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, all over New Zealand, and Siem Reap. Mercifully, the last two weeks before my test were during the winter holidays, one week of which my company headquarters in the US was closed so my workload in Singapore was very light.

MATERIALS:
The Knewton program kept me busy so I didn't end up revisiting my first attempt materials, which included official materials (OG, QR, VR), my MGMAT books, PowerScore Logical Reasoning, and my favorite grammar book, The Elements of Style (Illustrated).

KNEWTON DEBRIEF:
It's a solid program. I didn't feel especially challenged except for the midterm and final Verbal and Quantitative Challenge quizzes, but then again GMAT concepts aren't supposed to be challenging. I appreciated the interactive aspect of the online classes (my TA Brigidette was very helpful and encouraging) and having two three-hour sessions a week with required homework and prep work kept me busy and I found myself toiling away for 1-2 hours a night even if I hadn't planned on it. This made my preparation efforts more consistent and I was studying in the mornings and evenings at least five days a week. Based on my official performance, I would say the Knewton CATs are pretty accurate and that the Knewton materials are reflective of the true difficulty of both portions of the GMAT.

One of the nicest surprises of the course was the founder Jose's video called "The Value of the MBA", located in the Extra Focus Lessons of Session 2. He's much more candid about the MBA experience and school reputations than MBAPodcaster is, and that candor was refreshing and motivating. Another happy surprise was the prompt and thorough responses I received from the support@knewton staff to the questions I emailed in.

My critiques of Knewton would be that the Concept Queue should be linked to practice problems, and I found MGMAT's Tuesdays with Ron (free for everyone) to be a much better resource for advanced testing strategies and shortcuts (Knewton instructor Adam Sticklor gets the closest to advanced strategy in his archived sessions compared to the other instructors, but everyone teaches from the same deck of slides for each lesson so there's not much room for variation between instructors). There are also some obvious typos in Knewton's verbal problem sets and practice tests, but those are cosmetic things that I know they are improving every day.

In summary, Knewton guaranteed that my score would improve 50 points and it improved 70 points. I had built a strong foundation of the mechanics of the GMAT from my first, self-studying attempt and Knewton gave me the discipline and consistency to take my performance to a level that puts me in the top 1% of test takers. Not too shabby.

TESTING SUMMARY:
I took all of my practice CATs in the morning starting between 7 and 9 AM, and scheduled my GMAT for 9 AM on January 7
Score summary followed by my impressions of the official test and of each CAT:
5 December: 710 (Q43/V45) Knewton diagnostic
25 December: 760 (Q47/V49) Knewton test 1
31 December: 720 (Q46/V43) Knewton test 2
1 January: 690 (Q42/V44) Knewton test 3
2 January: 680 (Q44/V39) Knewton test 4
3 January: 770 (Q49/V47) Knewton test 5
4 January: 760 (Q49/V46) PowerPrep test 1
5 January: 770 (Q49/V47) PowerPrep test 2
7 January: 760 (Q49/V44) OFFICIAL SCORE

TEST DAY IMPRESSIONS:
I had a hard time sleeping and kept waking up every hour of the night. I got up at 5:30 AM for a 6 AM conference call that was cancelled, had my breakfast of champions (banana and leftover pizza), retook a 10-question Knewton quantitative review quiz to get my brain jogging, showered and joined a 7 AM conference call that finished at 7:45. Some of you might think I'm crazy for taking work calls within two hours of my test, but it definitely helped me calm my nerves and make me feel like this was just another CAT. I left my apartment and walked to the main road to catch a cab, but then the perfect bus showed up and 20 minutes and 70 cents later I was at the testing center. I was the only one at the door when the testing center opened and snagged the number 8 locker immediately. (Singapore's Chinese superstitions have rubbed off on me, and evidently on the test center too - the number 4 and 14 lockers have been replaced with number 3A and 13A, respectively.)

I used the full time on each AWA and wrote as much as I could. I took the full 8 minutes for a bathroom and snack break (banana). Quant was challenging but I stuck to my pace. Half way through quant I encountered some ridiculously easy number properties DS that alternated with very tough geometry questions. I had back-to-back work rate PS questions, which I thought was very silly. I had six minutes left for my last two quant problems, and that felt like a strong finish. As I raised my hand to leave the room and looked around , I realized I had completed the whole section without headphones or earplugs and was surprised I hadn't gotten distracted by the four other test takers in the room. I took the full 8 minutes for another bathroom and snack break (Snickers and a Pepsi). Verbal was surprisingly straightforward with the exception of one tough SC. During the last five questions I had to calm myself down because I was so excited the test was almost (finally!) over. I finished verbal with seven minutes to spare. I waited for the final score to show up. I knew I had done well and was glad that I had made a second attempt at the GMAT. 760 appeared on the screen and I was overwhelmed with relief: Yes, I was done with the GMAT forever.

CAT IMPRESSIONS:

5 December: 710 (Q43/V45) Knewton diagnostic
Impressions: It was nice to see my score in the 700s, but also that I was half-way through the Knewton course and my quant score didn't improve over my official GMAT (which again was 690, Q43/V42)
Location: Burger King on my laptop

25 December: 760 (Q47/V49) Knewton test 1
Impressions: OMG THIS WAS SO EXCITING. Only one RC error on verbal
Location: parent's house in US on desktop computer on Christmas morning before everyone else woke up

31 December: 720 (Q46/V43) Knewton test 2 - end of my Knewton course, and one week til G-DAY!
Impressions: Frustrating to see my verbal score so low, mostly due to some oddly phrased RC questions. Pacing problems persist, but still exciting to see my quant score that high
Location: my apartment on my laptop
Rest of the day: my last 3-hour Knewton class, post-class homework

1 January: 690 (Q42/V44) Knewton test 3
Impressions: Back to reality...Very depressing quant performance
Location: McDonald's across the street from the testing center, on my laptop
Rest of the day: analyzed test errors, viewed an archived Knewton Office Hours session on quant pacing

2 January: 680 (Q44/V39) Knewton test 4
Impressions: I was initially very disappointed seeing 680 on the screen, but after skimming the breakdown and my errors, I decided I was happy to see my quant score back up (although only to 69%ile) and very perplexed by the verbal scoring - I got four errors widely spaced (questions 1, 12, 36, 40) compared the six errors that garnered me V44 on January 1 (questions 5, 19, 21, 22, 36, 39). I emailed Knewton about this and they said this was normal since they incorporate un-scored experimental questions into each CAT
Location: McDonald's across the street from the testing center, on my laptop - I noticed that road crews were jack-hammering the curb apart outside the testing center building. As a result, I began mentally preparing for my G-DAY to be interrupted by horrible, annoying road noises
Rest of the day: viewed two Thursdays with Ron sessions (Nov 4th on quant strategy and Aug 5th on pacing strategy), practiced 25 archived "BTG Daily Math" emails, viewed an archived Knewton Office Hours session on quant shortcuts

3 January: 770 (Q49/V47) Knewton test 5
Impressions: "wtf, this is ridiculous"...a 90-point increase from the previous day, really? On both portions of the test, I found many of the questions to be disturbingly easy, and miraculously solved 6 quant questions in under 30 seconds each (all without error). I finished Quant 11 minutes early (which never happens), and Verbal 9 minutes early. When I clicked to see my score, I was honestly expecting to see 650 or less.
Location: My office on a company holiday on a desktop computer. I attribute some of my score gain to location - the McDonalds I took tests 3 and 4 in was a very distracting place - loud American pop songs that I knew all the words to, shrieking babies, very curious old Chinese men who would stop by my table and stare at my scratch work, etc.
Rest of the day: viewed Thursdays with Ron session on AWA, practiced 15 archived "BTG Daily Math" emails, viewed an archived and not very helpful Knewton Office Hours session on DS

4 January: 760 (Q49/V46) PowerPrep test 1 - 72 hours to the GMAT!
Impressions: Q49, woo hoo! Maybe my Knewton score from the previous day was accurate after all. The verbal performance is on this test is probably inflated, but I felt strong in quant... A few questions I got 1 minute into and realized I was overcomplicating the problem and could use a shortcut instead. Verbal was good but I did not feel the RC passages were realistic - three very short passages (two social science, one hard science) and only one long one (a very accessible hard science passage). I read social science articles every day for work, so this wasn't a challenge. I remember my real GMAT having much longer, denser RC passages dominated by hard science that messed up my pacing and caused me to rush through the last 10 questions. On this PowerPrep test, I finished verbal with 13 minutes to spare.
Location: In my apartment, on my laptop
Rest of the day: Knewton extra practice on Quant and a bit of Verbal, a few more archived "BTG Daily Math" emails

5 January: 770 (Q49/V47) PowerPrep test 2 - 48 hours to the GMAT! Last day of studying!
Impressions: So nice to hit Q49 again!! I had some very tricky number properties problems and time-consuming word translations that threw me off pace. At question 9, I was 1.5 minutes behind, and by question 17, I was 10 minutes behind. Yikes! I *proceeded with great urgency* (which I'd describe as a slightly more thoughtful process than rushing) through to the end and had 2 minutes left to answer the last problem. Verbal had some tricky SC but RC and CR were fine.
Location: In my apartment, on my laptop, and I played a looping audio track of computer keys typing - this was the only distraction present in my original GMAT attempt so I wanted to see if it affected my performance here...It doesn't look like it
Rest of the day: Knewton AWA videos (they recommend 450-500 words per essay), flipped through my MGMAT Number Properties book for a refresher on absolute values

January 6 (the day before my test) was void of studying and instead filled with lots of anticipation and uncertainty but mostly with excitement that my GMAT adventure was finally almost over and I would soon be getting my life back. I looked through my CAT scores and was very happy with my performance and progress, especially over the past two weeks. My friend is starting at INSEAD later this month and told me she had a bottle of fancy champagne left over from New Year's that we could drink after my test to celebrate our two big occasions. Yes, please!

And that's my GMAT story. Done, done, done.

This topic has expert replies