710 92nd Percentile (Q44 V44 AWA 6.0)

I sat for the GMAT on July 31, 2009 and scored a 710, 92nd percentile. My breakdown: Q44, 69th percentile and V44, 97th percentile. Overall, I'm happy; though, I am disappointed with my quant score--it doesn't reflect my ability. But, instead of retaking the exam, I think I'll just focus on the rest of my application.

This debrief will probably be most helpful for those of you who have a strong grasp on verbal, but need serious quant improvement. I didn't study verbal (other than simply taking practice tests) during my preparation for the GMAT; I also didn't practice AWA. However, if you're looking for verbal tips, I'll offer my strategy for tackling RC and CR at the end.

Background:

I don't have much of a math background. I'm an attorney who studied Political Science and Economics in undergrad. When I first started thinking about the GMAT back in January 2009, I hadn't put pencil to paper and worked through a math problem in many years. I literally had to re-teach myself long division. I put that fact to the side (mere details) and set a target of 700+ for myself. On February 14, 2009, after re-teaching myself (so I thought) the basics and working through OG 11 (math only), I took my first GMAT practice test, GMATPREP 2, and scored 570 (Q27 V41). I knew I had a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, I became extremely busy with work and simply didn't have even an hour in the evening to study.

Quant Preparation:

I didn't start getting serious about my GMAT preparation again until April. Sometime in mid April, I purchased all of the Manhattan math books and went through each of them very thoroughly. I took copious notes and worked through every problem at the end of each chapter. After finishing the Manhattan books, I decided it was time to take another practice test. Sometime in late April, I took GMATPREP 1 and scored 640 (Q33 V44). I felt pretty comfortable with the quant section in GMATPREP 1; however, my timing was way off, which is why I scored a 33 instead of, say, a 40. In other words, after thoroughly reviewing the Manhattan books, my grasp of the quant section improved rather dramatically--more so than the jump from Q27 to Q33 suggests.

At this point, I decided to start working on my timing, so I turned to the MGMAT CATs. But, before I lay out my scores, I think that it's important to note how I reviewed every test that follows. For the verbal section, I only reviewed SC. However, for the quant section, I was excessively thorough. I began by reviewing all of the questions that I answered incorrectly. First, I'd try to answer them myself, sometimes spending 10-15 minutes on a single problem. Second, when I arrived at the correct answer without looking an explanation (either from this forum (for GMATPREP) or from the MGMAT CAT), I'd check the explanation to make sure that I got it right for the right reasons. Third, even if I got the right answer for the right reasons, I'd see if I could glean anything from the explanation to improve my approach. Fourth, I'd then review every problem, right and wrong, performing steps one, two, and three for each one--this means that I worked through the problems I got right twice and those I got wrong three times. This was a very time-consuming process (sometimes taking four hours for a single test), but it proved to be hugely beneficial for me.

4/30 - MGMAT CAT 1 - 600 (Q35 V36)
5/3 - MGMAT CAT 2 - 600 (Q34 V38)
5/3 - MGMAT CAT3 - 700 (Q44 V40)
5/9 - MGMAT CAT4 - 640 (Q43 V34)
5/10 - MGMAT CAT5 - 640 (Q34 V44)
6/6 - MGMAT CAT6 - 550 (Q25 V40) (See explanation below.)

Between CATs 1 and 2, I worked through all of the math in OG12. I took two CATs on 5/3 because I knew my score on CAT2 didn't reflect my true ability, and I was determined to see improvement. Between CATs 5 and 6, I left civilization for a mountaineering expedition that I scheduled in October 2008 (of course, back in October, I didn't know that my expedition would fall right in the middle of my GMAT preparation). I knew I'd be out of practice when I returned, having not thought about the GMAT or anything other than climbing for several weeks.

After reviewing CAT6, and all of the notes that I took from the Manhattan books, I began retaking only the quant sections of the MGMAT CATs.

6/7 - MGMAT CAT 1A - Q47
6/11 - MGMAT CAT 2A - Q42
6/14 - MGMAT CAT 3A - Q42
6/20 - MGMAT CAT 4A - Q40

After MGMAT CAT 4A, I began retaking GMATPREP tests 1 and 2 repeatedly (quant section only). I took each test four or more times between 6/20 and 7/19, sometimes two tests on a single day. I scored one 48, three 51s, and the rest were 49s.

7/19 - MGMAT CAT5A - Q42
7/19 - MGMAT CAT6A - Q43

I reset the pool and began retaking the MGMAT CATs again. Up to this point, I saw very few repeat questions. However, in the CATs that follow, repeat questions increased, but I always saw new material (incidentally, this holds true for the GMATPREP tests too; but, I saw many more repeats in GMATPREP than in MGMAT CATs towards the end).

7/21 - MGMAT CAT1B - Q29 (phone calls, an unexpected knock on the door, and other distractions)
7/22 - MGMAT CAT2B - Q49
7/25 - MGMAT CAT3B - Q40
7/27 - MGMAT CAT4B - Q48
7/28 - MGMAT CAT5B - Q48

Between 7/21 and 7/28, I also took each GMATPREP test (again quant section only) two times, scoring Q49 or Q50 each time.

7/29 - I took a full practice test around 8:00AM. Up to this point, I'd done very little studying in the morning and my actual GMAT was scheduled for 8:00AM on 7/31; however, I'm a morning person, so I thought I'd be fine. I scored a 730 on this test; I didn't note my breakdown, but my verbal score wasn't as high as I thought it should have been. So, on the night of 7/29, I took two GMATPREP tests, but this time I only tested myself on the verbal sections. Nearly all of the verbal questions were new to me and I scored a 45 and 47; this really boosted my confidence. I took 7/30 off of work and tried to take a full exam in the morning, but I felt seriously tired, and instead of fighting it, I gave in and took a 3.5 hour nap. I woke up, ingested some caffeine, and took another full GMATPREP test and scored a 720; again my verbal score was lower than expected. So, later that night I took another GMATPREP test (verbal section only) and scored a 47. Despite not sleeping well (I kept dreaming about quant and waking up), I felt wired (as in very alert) in the morning with very little caffeine.

G-Day:

I followed my normal routine in the morning. I arrived at the test center feeling surprisingly calm, though very alert, about 50 minutes early and the proctors let me sit almost right away. The center itself was clean and quiet and the proctors were very personable. I attacked the test with confidence; this was game day, I thought, and I wasn't going to be intimidated--I knew my stuff and I was there to show it off. I thought of it like a game--it was almost fun, though I choked on the first quant question, which took me five full minutes to get right. There were several other questions that I had to make educated guesses on. Unfortunately, I didn't quite finish the quant section--I had to guess blindly on the last two questions. As for verbal, there were two SC questions and one or two CR questions that I could only narrow down to two answer choices. In the end, I had four questions to go with four minutes on the clock--I selected my final answer with nine seconds to spare.

Generally, my strategy for CR and RC was not terribly sophisticated; I simply tried to never make an educated guess and move on. Instead, I always tried to be 100% before moving on. "The answer is right there in front of you," I would tell myself after I'd narrowed down the answer choices to two, and then I'd re-read the question and/or passage. This almost always worked for me; upon re-reading, I'd notice something that I overlooked on the first time through. Additionally, for both RC and CR, I read slowly and deliberately, thinking about the message that the author was trying to communicate and how each sentence/idea fit into that message. If I didn't understand part of a passage (meaning what I read didn't make sense to me logically or I didn't understand how the part in question fit into the author's message), then I didn't continue reading; instead, I stopped and re-read what I didn't understand. Using this method, I rarely had to refer back to the passage for RC questions.

A hearty thanks to the founders of this forum and to all of its contributors, particularly Ian, Stuart, Ron, and cramya.

Best of luck to everyone.

Desmond

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