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CCrunMiles
- Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2013 3:21 am
Hello everyone,
I took the GMAT exam last Saturday and scored a 700. I had less than three weeks to study but did not have that much time to prepare, probably only about 40 hours. However, I just graduated from college and am pretty good at taking tests. Below I will write about my strategy on exam day, my prep was two GMATPREP exams (scored 640 on each) and reading through a couple Manhattan quant guides. Below the exam day strategy I have a few questions about Quantitative scores that I will ask if anyone can help!
GMAT DAY
I took the second of my GMATPREP exams the Thursday before and scored a 640. I was hoping to raise my score by 20-30 points on exam day through whatever means I could. I got to the test center 30 minutes early for my 1 p.m exam time. The staff was very nice and allowed me to begin my exam early. One thing I want to say right now is that I did not have a good experience in the testing room. I had to sit right next to the door which constantly had people coming in and out off and distracted me to no end. Additionally, my noise cancelling headphones were not comfortable at all and I was not able to wear them. All of these factors made me struggle to keep my focus throughout the exam.
I had never practiced an AWA essay but I know I am a competent writer. The essay wasn't bad at all and I quickly jumped into the integrated reasoning. The integrated reasoning was similar to the practice exams but I thought it was a bit harder. I finished the section with about ten seconds left and decided to take the optional break. My strongest advice to people on exam day is to TAKE THE OPTIONAL BREAKS! I was an athlete throughout college and treated the breaks like I would in between races. I drank as much water as I desired and had a banana before heading back into the room two minutes early.
QUANT
I'm not great at math by any means because I haven't taken Calculus since freshman year in college. My practice exams had me in the mid 60's to lower 70's in terms of percentile. I made the classic mistake and took additional time on the first few questions. I thought it would be ok because I continually finished my practice exams way ahead of schedule but I didn't know how hard the actual exam would be! The real GMAT seemed much more difficult than the official prep tests to me and I fell behind on time where I had to guess 4-5 questions. Unfortunately, I guessed these very close to one another and may have had a continuous string of wrong answers. Looking back on it, I should have evenly spaced the guesses out or waited longer in the section. By the end of the section I could tell that I was not doing well and felt a little discouraged but happy to have my weakest area out of the way. I again took the optional break and had some more water and ate half a sandwich before I headed into verbal.
VERBAL
I was always in the 80th percentile for verbal on my practice exams and thought I could do better because I am a native speaker. My biggest weakness here was definitely in sentence correction and I was dismayed because I started out with several sentence correction problems. After struggling through these I had a few reading comprehension and critical reasoning problems that I breezed through and then had several more sentence correction problems. At this point I think I earned my score. Many of these sentence correction problem answers were very similar and even came down to one word being slightly different from another answer and having a slightly different meaning. I recognized these things during the test and I think that ability made my verbal score what it was (97th percentile). Throughout the verbal section the problems were extremely tough and I thought I was not doing very well because I wasn't confident when I was answering them. Looking back, I know the problems were so tough because I was ranked so high. Needless to say when I was done I was relieved and I even pondered not getting my score for a few seconds because I thought that I had done so poorly. I am extremely happy that I viewed my score and recommend that you ALWAYS VIEW YOUR SCORE UNLESS TRUE DISASTER STRIKES! If you have read through my rambling post for this long I hope it helps you improve your score in some fashion!
QUESTIONS ABOUT MY LOW QUANT SCORE.
I was in the 54th percentile in Quant and was truly disappointed. I know my math isn't as strong as my verbal but I don't believe it is that low. I am confused to see how I got 41 questions right when in my practice exams I had either fewer or about the same number and was much higher in terms of percentile. I am applying for Masters of Finance programs in Corporate Finance and am awaiting a decision from WUSTL this week, but if I don't get in I was wondering what people thought the best Quant study materials are? I had heard good things about the MGMAT books but completed over two, while taking notes and reviewing, and my score did not reflect that. I know that if I have more time, like a month or more, I could probably raise my quant to the 80th or so percentile. Does anyone have any thoughts on if I should retake if I am not accepted? My only concern is if my verbal is not as high will my overall score be lower?
Thank you in advance, and good luck to everyone studying!
Brandon
I took the GMAT exam last Saturday and scored a 700. I had less than three weeks to study but did not have that much time to prepare, probably only about 40 hours. However, I just graduated from college and am pretty good at taking tests. Below I will write about my strategy on exam day, my prep was two GMATPREP exams (scored 640 on each) and reading through a couple Manhattan quant guides. Below the exam day strategy I have a few questions about Quantitative scores that I will ask if anyone can help!
GMAT DAY
I took the second of my GMATPREP exams the Thursday before and scored a 640. I was hoping to raise my score by 20-30 points on exam day through whatever means I could. I got to the test center 30 minutes early for my 1 p.m exam time. The staff was very nice and allowed me to begin my exam early. One thing I want to say right now is that I did not have a good experience in the testing room. I had to sit right next to the door which constantly had people coming in and out off and distracted me to no end. Additionally, my noise cancelling headphones were not comfortable at all and I was not able to wear them. All of these factors made me struggle to keep my focus throughout the exam.
I had never practiced an AWA essay but I know I am a competent writer. The essay wasn't bad at all and I quickly jumped into the integrated reasoning. The integrated reasoning was similar to the practice exams but I thought it was a bit harder. I finished the section with about ten seconds left and decided to take the optional break. My strongest advice to people on exam day is to TAKE THE OPTIONAL BREAKS! I was an athlete throughout college and treated the breaks like I would in between races. I drank as much water as I desired and had a banana before heading back into the room two minutes early.
QUANT
I'm not great at math by any means because I haven't taken Calculus since freshman year in college. My practice exams had me in the mid 60's to lower 70's in terms of percentile. I made the classic mistake and took additional time on the first few questions. I thought it would be ok because I continually finished my practice exams way ahead of schedule but I didn't know how hard the actual exam would be! The real GMAT seemed much more difficult than the official prep tests to me and I fell behind on time where I had to guess 4-5 questions. Unfortunately, I guessed these very close to one another and may have had a continuous string of wrong answers. Looking back on it, I should have evenly spaced the guesses out or waited longer in the section. By the end of the section I could tell that I was not doing well and felt a little discouraged but happy to have my weakest area out of the way. I again took the optional break and had some more water and ate half a sandwich before I headed into verbal.
VERBAL
I was always in the 80th percentile for verbal on my practice exams and thought I could do better because I am a native speaker. My biggest weakness here was definitely in sentence correction and I was dismayed because I started out with several sentence correction problems. After struggling through these I had a few reading comprehension and critical reasoning problems that I breezed through and then had several more sentence correction problems. At this point I think I earned my score. Many of these sentence correction problem answers were very similar and even came down to one word being slightly different from another answer and having a slightly different meaning. I recognized these things during the test and I think that ability made my verbal score what it was (97th percentile). Throughout the verbal section the problems were extremely tough and I thought I was not doing very well because I wasn't confident when I was answering them. Looking back, I know the problems were so tough because I was ranked so high. Needless to say when I was done I was relieved and I even pondered not getting my score for a few seconds because I thought that I had done so poorly. I am extremely happy that I viewed my score and recommend that you ALWAYS VIEW YOUR SCORE UNLESS TRUE DISASTER STRIKES! If you have read through my rambling post for this long I hope it helps you improve your score in some fashion!
QUESTIONS ABOUT MY LOW QUANT SCORE.
I was in the 54th percentile in Quant and was truly disappointed. I know my math isn't as strong as my verbal but I don't believe it is that low. I am confused to see how I got 41 questions right when in my practice exams I had either fewer or about the same number and was much higher in terms of percentile. I am applying for Masters of Finance programs in Corporate Finance and am awaiting a decision from WUSTL this week, but if I don't get in I was wondering what people thought the best Quant study materials are? I had heard good things about the MGMAT books but completed over two, while taking notes and reviewing, and my score did not reflect that. I know that if I have more time, like a month or more, I could probably raise my quant to the 80th or so percentile. Does anyone have any thoughts on if I should retake if I am not accepted? My only concern is if my verbal is not as high will my overall score be lower?
Thank you in advance, and good luck to everyone studying!
Brandon
