GMAT Strategy

Seeking advice...

Just took the GMAT (2nd time). Long story short, the proctor randomly accused me of leaving the building after my 8 minute break right after IR. We had a back and forth for a bit and when I went back to the exam, was shocked to see that I was 2 minutes behind schedule. I started off Quant extremely flustered and rushed, and it took me a quite some time to get back on exam mode. In the end, I ended up scoring a 37! (42 percentile). Verbal was 37 (82%) Total: 620. I was absolutely shocked, because I have NEVER scored below a 40 in all my practice tests, and I haven't take at least 15 ranging from GMATPrep, MGMAT, Kaplan...etc I am usually around the 45ish range for quant.

I am certain that proctor ruined my quant score and am wondering if I can have GMAC write a letter about this in my applications. Does anyone have any advice? I did talk with the other proctors and they suggested I give a call to GMAC and they said they documented this incident.

I guess another question I have is whether doing poorly on the first couple of questions on quant could have caused such as a gargantuan drop? All I remember is that I was extremely flustered for the first 6-7 questions and then got back on track later.

Hi Rich,

I have no idea... and didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I merely went to the restroom and came back into the room during the 8 minute break after IR. That was when the proctor abruptly stopped me and bluntly accused me of leaving the building. This actually shocked me for a split second because I actually thought I wasn't allowed to use the restroom and they would cancel my score. This incident completely disrupted my exam mode flow

Students have had worse things happen to them and the best outcome they were given is a free retake. However, they still had to wait 31 days for the retake. So be prepared to take the test again in a month.

You should certainly contact GMAC, but in my experience they will not alter your score and will not provide you with a letter. As Rich said everyone involved in the situation from GMAC to business schools will say that you should be able to retake and get the higher score.

Some examples of horror stories are "Test center was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit" "Jackhammer was being used on the floor above and the test center was actually shaking with the vibration" "Power went out in the middle of the exam" (in this last case, the rule is that if the power comes back within 30 minutes your exam will immediately resume, if longer than 30 minutes - you guessed it come back in 31 days).

I personally had to go over to the proctor and ask him to be quite as he was telling jokes to his friends and doing so in a very loud voice. These things happen and they are unfair. We all have to just be so thankful that this is not the Olympics. If you had to wait 4 years for a re-take that would be tragic.

I know this feels very unfair and 31 days can feel like a long time to wait, but can still do this!

Worst case is you have to pay for a re-take and try to avoid that proctor. Best case is likely to be that you don't have to pay for the re-take and you try to avoid that proctor.

I guess another question I have is whether doing poorly on the first couple of questions on quant could have caused such as a gargantuan drop? All I remember is that I was extremely flustered for the first 6-7 questions and then got back on track later.

The answer is yes and no. Certainly you can do poorly on the first several questions and still score a 40 or even a 45, but the task becomes more difficult. If you some of the questions that you missed early were of a low difficulty level (and these are questions you would normally have gotten right without the disruption) then what will happen is you will be given questions of a lower difficulty level because the test thinks that maybe this is the level you are at.

So let's say normally your question number 10 on Quant is about a 60th percentile question, meaning 60 percent of people are likely to miss it. For the rest of the test you get some right, you miss some, and that level never really changes and you earn a 44 on the Quant section (this is the 61st %ile).

Now let's say you miss several lower difficulty questions on the first 7 or so. Now question 10 is the 40th percentile. You can still get up to the 60th or even higher but you will need to make very few mistakes from here on out. If you end up getting some right and missing some and making a few careless mistakes throughout then you going to end up with the same sort of score. And you did, you got a 37 which is just about the 40th percentile.

You may have even been so rattled that you missed all of those first several questions and your question 10 was only like the 20th percentile.

Furthermore, you may not have really gotten back on track after the first several questions. You may have still made some errors right through the Quant section. Many questions are written so that the one who misses the question is still very confident in his answer.

This is why it is very important to be on your guard right from the start and to not miss any questions that are at a low level of difficulty. You can miss lots of high level questions and still get a great score. It is the "easy" questions that you need to get right.

Please read this article on the subject: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/12/ ... n-the-gmat