I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey guys I took the GMAT on saturday and scored a pretty decent 780 (49q 50v). I wanted to get the GMAT out of the way early since I have had a decent amount of free time lately as I only work 9-5 mon-fri.

I ended up working through the following materials
- MGMAT SC guide
- MGMAT 5 quant books
- Veritas quant workbooks
- OG 12th edition, Quant 2nd Edition
- About 10 GMATclub tests

Practice tests used:
- 6 MGMAT tests
- 2 GMATprep tests - completed twice each
- 2 Veritas Gmat Life tests
- Free 800 score test
- Free Princeton review test

I arrived at the testing center early again, this time they didn't allow me to start early. I sat down right at noon but I felt good, I was relaxed. I knew I was capable of the 99th percentile but I no longer felt the pressure I did the first time.

The biggest mistake of my entire test came during the first essay. I had written the entire thing and was going back through doing some minor edits, but I wasn't paying enough attention to the clock. I started to add in one last sentence on the end of my third paragraph, got about 3 or 4 words down and noticed time was down to 2 seconds. I quickly tried to delete it, but was unable to. I have no idea what this will do to my essay score. Hopefully it won't affect it much. The second essay went fine, I'll update when I know my AWA score.

Before the math section started I wrote down the timing - 10 minutes off the clock for every 5 questions. As the math started, the initial questions were quite easy and I was able to get about 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Question 12 was my first somewhat difficult/strange question. It was a DS question with a graph that described a certain period of time. It then gave me a function for another period of time, and asked for a relationship. It ended up being quite simple once I figured out what was going on, but it was something I had never seen before. I got 1 combinatorics, a few geometry, some rate and work problems, and a surprising number of venn diagram type questions. Overall the majority of the questions weren't too bad, there were two that I really felt challenged on and had to guess. The last question ended up being one that was calculation intensive, but I was down to 1:30 on the clock and was able to whittle it down to two choices but ended up having to guess between the two before time ran out. Overall I felt satisfied with how it had gone.

Verbal started with some obvious SC questions. For RC I ended up getting 4 passages. Three were short - about 2 paragraphs, and one was medium length - I think 4 paragraphs. I didn't get any that compared to the length of that one from my first test. From the entire verbal section, I only remember one question in particular that I wasn't quite sure about. It was a CR question, I was able to narrow it down to two answer choices, spent a bit of extra time on it, and finally just picked the answer that I felt made more sense. By question 20 I still had 50 minutes left so I really tried to slow down for the second half of the verbal, I still ended up finishing 18 minutes early, but I was quite confident in my answers.

As I clicked through the final screens I was confident that I had performed at a 760 level. When the score popped up with 780 - 49q 50v I was astounded because the best score I had attained in practice was 770. Anyway it is a great feeling, and even now I still look back at my print out here and there to make sure I'm seeing it right.

Super score bud... i will be happy with a 730 aswell...
just one question, did u encounter bold face CR questions? If yes how many and when during the paper?

Great, and I mean....GREAT!!Congrats, this is awesome. You pierced it to the heart mate.

I will also use MGMAT.

Thanks a lot guys!

Deja - Yes I do remember one bold face CR that came about two thirds of the way through the verbal section. I can't remember if I saw any on my first test.

Dunn - i got a boldface as my 14 question and i got so excited i actually started more time on the remaining questions, hence lost out on time with under 10 mins for the last eight questions....got a score of 34 on verbal.

This thread is a perfect answer to people who advise not to retake after hitting 700.
There is only so much you can polish your resume and essays.

dejavu- yeah definitely try again! I feel that the boldface questions are some of the most difficult verbal questions, so if you saw one, you were probably doing very well at that point!

A big thing for me was getting the timing down, in my case I always moved too slowly in math, and too quickly in verbal. Before I started the Quant section I wrote down:

5 - 65
10 - 55
15 - 45
20 - 35
25 - 25
30 - 15
35 - 5

The first column is the question number, and the second column is how many minutes you should have left. That is for math, for Verbal you have to be a little faster than that since there are more questions. But try to pace yourself throughout the whole section and you should be good. In my experience, getting behind and having to rush through questions always made me perform poorly and affected my score a lot!

Awesome score! Your score motivates me

Wow the fact you went from 630 to 730 to 780 shows that the will to act and desire overcome any background or perceived intelligence. Basically anyone can get that. I myself got a 630 and 600 last year before I got above a 700 this year. It took patience, discipline, and most of all desire.

Congratulations and hope you can get into Booth/Kellogg if not Wharton/Harvard/Stanford with that!

Your story is motivational to the core.

AbhiJ wrote:This thread is a perfect answer to people who advise not to retake after hitting 700.
There is only so much you can polish your resume and essays.

Yes I totally agree. Many people advised me not to retake when I got a 730, but for me it wasn't even a question.

Going into the real test is a different experience than sitting at home and taking a practice test that doesn't count for anything. That was why I feel I under performed, and I am sure it is the case for many other people as well.

I'd advise anyone who scored significantly below their practice tests (especially GMATprep) to retake, whether your score is 600 or 750. If you know you can score 30-50 points higher, why settle?

That certainly is a great score, congrats! I'm not sure how many people are able to pull off a 780 after scoring a 730, but you did it and kudos!

siddaggarwal wrote:Wow the fact you went from 630 to 730 to 780 shows that the will to act and desire overcome any background or perceived intelligence. Basically anyone can get that. I myself got a 630 and 600 last year before I got above a 700 this year. It took patience, discipline, and most of all desire.

Congratulations and hope you can get into Booth/Kellogg if not Wharton/Harvard/Stanford with that!

Your story is motivational to the core.

Thank you for your message!! I think you are right, I believe that the concepts tested on the GMAT can be learned by anyone with the determination and dedication. Its also as much about learning to manage the time and format of the test as it is learning the actual math and verbal concepts.

And you are exactly right, reviewing my initial practice test (the 630) on the Manhattan website reminds me just how much I've learned over the past few months. I pretty much had to learn the math from scratch.

Congrats on the amazing score! I'm really glad that you posted this--I've been struggling with whether or not to retake, and I've finally decided that I will. I took the GMAT two weeks ago and got 720(47Q, 42V) and was crushed. I scored 750-760 on the last three practice tests I took leading up to the real thing, and I could hardly believe the differential was so great. I'm planning to retake mid-December. I was wondering if you took any additional practice tests between your first attempt and the retake?

cbaum wrote:Congrats on the amazing score! I'm really glad that you posted this--I've been struggling with whether or not to retake, and I've finally decided that I will. I took the GMAT two weeks ago and got 720(47Q, 42V) and was crushed. I scored 750-760 on the last three practice tests I took leading up to the real thing, and I could hardly believe the differential was so great. I'm planning to retake mid-December. I was wondering if you took any additional practice tests between your first attempt and the retake?

Thanks!!

Yes go for it!! When I saw the 730 show up on my screen I was very disappointed because all of my recent practice tests had been between 750-770. Its not a good feeling knowing that you didn't do as well as you could have, even though 720 is a great score.

To answer your question, yes I did. I had 5 weeks between my tests (34 days) and I took 3 practice tests, one each of the last two Sundays, and then a last one the Wednesday before my test. For me that was important because I wanted to make sure I had my timing and test management well tuned.

By the way, since you mention the differential between your practice tests and the GMAT, I'm going to give my thoughts on the various practice tests I took for anyone interested.

- GMATprep tests - By far the best practice tests available, makes sense since they come from the GMAC. The scoring is spot on and questions are very representative of what you see in real test. The main difference I noticed was in verbal, due to the recent changes to the GMAT, GMATprep has a number of idiom based questions whereas I didn't see any in the real thing.
- MGMAT tests - The questions aren't always precisely representative of true GMAT questions, but overall pretty close. Math is a bit harder, mostly due to the tedious calculations some questions require. Verbal to me always seemed about on par, though others seem to think it might be easier. One small gripe, I don't think that the MGMAT algorithm gives scores above 45 for verbal. Not 100% positive on that, but I never got above a 45 in V and I missed as few as 2 questions. Best tests behind GMATprep.
- Veritas Gmat Life tests - I only took two of these. I found that the math questions seemed easier than real GMAT questions, but the verbal was surprisingly good. The algorithm is junky though. On the start screen of the test, it states that it gives the first 10 questions more weight than the rest of the test. Also the scoring is off, for example it gave me a 51q, 46v and yet my overall score was 740.
- Free 800 score test - I didn't enjoy this test, the math was tedious and time consuming, and the verbal was VERY easy, a total joke. The RC passages looked like they were written by junior high students. Also the scoring was weird, I got a 53 in verbal.
- Free Princeton review test - I don't remember much about this test, as I took it early in my preparation, but thinking back, I don't think the questions were very representative.
- PowerPrep - This is the old GMATprep software. I took one of these tests. The questions are also real retired gmat questions, and supposedly the algorithm is a bit different. I'd still recommend them, but take it before doing much in the OG 12, because there is significant overlap.

My practice scores in order taken (I didn't include the breakdowns on ones I don't remember or have saved):
630 (36q, 40v) - MGMAT 1
700 (44q, 41v) - MGMAT 2
690 - Princeton
730 - GMATprep 1
740 (47q, 45v) - MGMAT 3
760 (46q, 53v) - 800 score
750 (50q, 42v) - MGMAT 4
740 (47q, 45v) - MGMAT 5
760 (50q, 44v) - GMATprep 2
770 - Powerprep
760 (49q, 45v) - MGMAT 6
770 (50q, 47v) - GMATprep 1 (retake)
770 (50q, 47v) - GMATprep 2 (retake)
730 (45q, 45v) - Real GMAT
760 (49q, 45v) - MGMAT reset
740 (51q, 46v) - Veritas
740 (50q, 47v) - Veritas - see what I mean about the scoring on these
780 (49q, 50v) - Real GMAT