GMAT Strategy

Hi dchan,

I know that you're probably not feeling great right now, but at some point you have to define you situation/problems so that we can go about fixing them. The immediate issue is that you really only spent 3 weeks of study to prepare - while you probably did learn to handle individual questions well, you weren't properly prepared for the 'endurance' aspect of Test Day. Most Test Takers spend 3 months (or more) on their studies to hit their goals. So the "short" answer to your situation is that you didn't spend enough time to earn the high score that you were aiming at.

The "long" answer is a bit more detailed, so I'd like to know more about your studies and Test Day itself:

1) How many practice CATs did you take and what were the specific scores for each (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores)? Did you ever skip the essay/IR sections on those CATs?
2) Did you take any of these CATs more than once?

3) What time of day did you start your CATs and your Official GMAT?
4) How long did it take you to get to the Testing Center?
5) What did you do the day before your Test? How did you sleep the night before the Test?

6) You mentioned that you noticed you were behind at the 60-minute mark. What does that mean exactly? What question were you on? Had you checked the clock at any point before the 60-minute mark?
7) Can you estimate how many questions you skipped per section? Did you run out of time and not get to any of the questions?

Pacing isn't actually the immediate issue right now; HOW you're approaching GMAT questions and how you're approaching the Test as a whole are the real problems (pacing problems are a by-product).

Thankfully, Business Schools don't care if you take the GMAT more than once. Also, now that you've dealt with the Official GMAT, you're more familiar with the process and should be better able to handle it when you retest. You are going to need significantly more time to study though and you'll probably also need to invest in a GMAT Course of some kind. I'd expect another 2 months of study, at the minimum, but we'll have a better idea once we have a bit more information to work with.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi dchan,

Assuming that there aren't any other noteworthy details about your studies or Test Day, then I have to go towards a simple and likely explanation: you got "caught up" in a few early questions in each section, spent too much time on them and paid the price as you tried to rush through the back half of both the Quant and Verbal sections.

While some Test Takers have pacing problems in either the Quant or Verbal sections (to varying degrees), it's not common to have the exact same pacing problem in both. This speaks to a lack of experience on your part. Since you weren't able to put in the necessary reps over a longer study period, you didn't really learn what 2-3 minutes "feels like." Thus, when you got lost in a couple of questions, you weren't able to "get out" in a timely fashion and the errors compounded.

Taking your CAT results at face value, you certainly appear to have the ability to score a lot higher than you did. You'll have to wait 31 days to retest, so during that time you can work on all of your GMAT skills and hopefully weed out the little things that caused this problem. You might also consider investing in some new GMAT resources.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Hi dchan,

You don't need to make any decisions on this immediately, but since you've put in some study time already, there's a certain logic to the idea that you could take a few days off, then come back and put in another month of study. In that time, you could hone your skills a bit, solve these little problems, and then retest. The longer you wait to come back to this process, the more work you'll likely have to do the next time.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich