I have been reading this forum of beat the gmat for months now and finally decided to write my story too. I took my GMAT on Sep 14, 09' and scored exactly 700 ( Q48 , V37). i was consistently scoring above 740 in the practice tests. I had decided i won't take the actual test till i consistently start scoring above 740. And after 4 months of practice and studies, i was finally very close to my target.
I took two manhattan GMAT tests in the last week and one GMAT prep test two days before the actual test and scored 740, 750 and 750 in the three tests. What i did not pay attention to was time. I was only finishing the test at the last second and sometimes even missing the last question. I took it too lightly thinking that i'm only slow because this is a practice test and i'll pay more attention in the actual test on the timing.
The day started off just as planned, i woke up at 8:30 for a 12:00 test.Got ready, talked to my folks had a decent breakfast and left for the test center. I had made myself clear that i will not open the book on the last day coz it will reduce my attention level during the test. It took me about 15 minutes extra to find the center since i did not check the place in advance ( another mistake i won't repeat ). After starting the test and doing great in the essay questions, my confidence was high.
I had read in this forum before about some people who took a longer break and ended up with less time for maths. So i quickly completed my break time after having a red bull and going to the bathroom and was at my desk 1 1/2 minutes before the break finished. The problem is, the guy who is supposed to log me in clicked on end and i lost a minute and half of my break time. So here was the "easy section" for me. Maths. I was consistently scoring 51 in the practice tests in maths and was very confident i'll do the same here. I was able to catch a lot of tricks GMAT was trying to use and was working fine except i again forgot about the time. After i was almost sure my first 15 questions are right, i had to rush through a few questions but i did not guess at all. I was working through all the questions, even though some of them took 4-5 minutes to calculate and this mistake ended up costing me last four questions in math. I could not even attempt the last four questions due to shortage of time and ended up leaving them unanswered.
This really lowered my confidence and I almost panicked in the verbal section and ended up scoring four to five points less than what i could have scored.
Anyways, I just wanted to share this with everyone coz i have learned a lot of you guys and wanted you guys to learn from my mistakes too.
I am planning to take the test again, i had a pretty long break time since the last test so its taking me a while to get back in momentum but i will finish the test in the next two weeks and hopefully this time " I will beat the GMAT "
If you guys have any questions for me, please comment to this thread
thanks
