GMAT Strategy

hi,
I am an indian male. I am a engineer. 1st time I took gmat in october last year and I scored 560. This time i was not well prepared. I studied hard for the retake. I used to get gmat prep and powerprep practice test scores in the range of 650 to 720. I was confident about getting a good score this time. Unfortunately I got a rediculous 500(Q 40, V19)last week. I could not believe on my score. The test was not so bad. I just cant beieve, i got such a low score.
I dont want to give up now because of my practice test scores. but yesterday I read on manhattan gmat site that most of the bschools consider the best gmat score and taking the test up to 4 times has no detrimental effect. but they also take a look at the gmat history. Will taking gmat again and getting a good score with a bad gmat history ruin my chances of getting into good bschools? My target b schools are UBC sauder, univ of pitts. katz bschool, HKUST, NUS etc.
Is it worth taking the test again? I hv a work ex. of 4 yrs in a top automobile company. I am in a big dilemma. any suggestion?

vertigo,
I suggest you ask the question in the ask experts forum. They know better than anyone else.
Thanks

go for it but keep some important things in mind....
Do not take the test again till you are ready for it.... I tool the gmat on June 3rd and got 690...... now i have decided to hit back at it .......
so i have joined gmat prep classes and i am planning to give myself another 8-10 weeks before i retake it......
So my advice to you would be that as we are from an over represented sample we should get our scores rigtht.. remeber a lot of people will tell you that GMAT scores are just one aspect of your application...... but no one would tell you that a stron GMAT score hurts....... so go for it but prepare hard and dont take the test for granted, only if you can do so than i would recommend to take the test again

vertigo05 wrote:hi,
I am an indian male. I am a engineer. 1st time I took gmat in october last year and I scored 560. This time i was not well prepared. I studied hard for the retake. I used to get gmat prep and powerprep practice test scores in the range of 650 to 720. I was confident about getting a good score this time. Unfortunately I got a rediculous 500(Q 40, V19)last week. I could not believe on my score. The test was not so bad. I just cant beieve, i got such a low score.
I dont want to give up now because of my practice test scores. but yesterday I read on manhattan gmat site that most of the bschools consider the best gmat score and taking the test up to 4 times has no detrimental effect. but they also take a look at the gmat history. Will taking gmat again and getting a good score with a bad gmat history ruin my chances of getting into good bschools? My target b schools are UBC sauder, univ of pitts. katz bschool, HKUST, NUS etc.
Is it worth taking the test again? I hv a work ex. of 4 yrs in a top automobile company. I am in a big dilemma. any suggestion?

Here is my honest advice to you man.

Take it from an old 34 year old old man like me who has been looking this Bschool stuff since 2002 and applied numerous times to a quite a few programs.

Your scores are way too low man. I don't know about the other programs like katz or whatever but I know that NUS and HKUST are top schools in Asia.

In my guess you need over 650 GMAT at the least.

You say you have 4 years of experience. That makes you only around 26 or 27.

Do me a favor and do yourself a GREAT favor.

Forget about Bschool for now. Just take a look at the essays for each school and just figure out in GENERAL what you want to write.

Go find a volunteer activity you can do for just a little bit of time per week or even month.

AND lastly, spend at least one year prepping for the GMAT. 1 year buddy. You can do it. Go look through this site and figure out what you need. Get all you bullets and study hard for a year.

It will not be too late trust me.

If you only study for a few more months, mess up on the test and get another similar score, it's gonna be really bad.

Next time you take the test you need to score at least over 600. That's just the way it is.

These MBA's are not running a charity. They won't give two sh.its about your situation. They just want people they know that are smart and are employeable and will stay employable because they're smart and can pay off their debt.

The GMAT is big indicator of this. For you, you need to just concentrate on the GMAT for at least a year to get your score up for good. You have time. Go do it.

tohellandback wrote:vertigo,
I suggest you ask the question in the ask experts forum. They know better than anyone else.
Thanks

A lot of these MBA consultants are just as clueless as you and me.

I've taken the advice of a quite a few consultants and their strategies which totally backfired. In the end, advice is totally subjective and illustrates how enigmatic the admission process is for the Bschools.

Anybody who has gone through the application process and spends a considerable amount of time surfing the web, reading sample essays, other blogs, what not will acquire a similar amount of knowledge as these consultants IMO.

thnx a lot sidtiwari and skang for your suggestions.
I think my situation is a bit weird because during my 2nd gmat even after scoring over 650 in all the practice tests I scored 500 in the real test. I dont know whether it has happened with anybody else. I will definitely try to eliminate all those weaknesses in my preparation before going to next test. My doubt is, does the past performance hamper the chances even after scoring well in the next attempt?

vertigo05 wrote:thnx a lot sidtiwari and skang for your suggestions.
I think my situation is a bit weird because during my 2nd gmat even after scoring over 650 in all the practice tests I scored 500 in the real test. I dont know whether it has happened with anybody else. I will definitely try to eliminate all those weaknesses in my preparation before going to next test. My doubt is, does the past performance hamper the chances even after scoring well in the next attempt?

Put it this way. All of the business schools say they only consider your highest score.

What that means is that include your highest score as a member of the sample set used to derive the median and median gmat for the entering year of your class.

However, they will see all of your GMAT scores because all of the scores are reported on the ETS report.

It's up to you to try and decipher what all this means. But it's best to take it as little as possible and get a high score.

IMO if you take it just once and get a 700 that means more to the schools than a person who takes the test 5 times to get 700.

thnx skang.

Dont loose hope. First and foremost thing is take a break, review yourself and feel confident enough that you can do it. Its just $180 dollars you can spend one more time but thing is , do it differently this time.

I can clearly see problems with your verbal.
However, there is also improvement corner in quant.

Forget about questions, think of basics. If a house has good base, it stands well enough in bad times irrespective of number of storms.

Try to find out a very good study method first. This you can achieve by closing the question banks and just looking at basic explanations of the topics. How and what are they trying to tell, try to go through that. take one section at a time, go through videos, youtube, google, documents, all sort of stuff. If you feel you are not understanding it, take a break. dont forceyourself you have to do it now and right at this moment. do it when you feel doing, go back to that topic and try to understand.

If you get basics right and have a gut feel that you are bit better than last time, start with questions. Another suggestion is that after completion of your test, try to understand both , right as well as wrong, questions you attempted in your test.

Hope these few things help you, you can never fail GMAT unless you stop trying. Try it with difference from scratch, build up your basics. you can raise higher.

At the same time, try doing volunteer stuff. But be aware of this thing, business schools know that if you are doing it just within one year span of applying for admission you may be doing it for admission. Build your profile from all rounds, but focus on GMAT score to be high enough and then start other stuff quickly.

Good luck and keep us posted.

thanx indir0ver. You have given some valuable suggestions. I have started strengthening the basics. Can anyone help me find out the reason behind the big difference between the scores of my practice tests and the real test?