I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi all, First of all thank you all for contributing on this forum because it made studying a lot easier. I have several tips but I also need some advice so please respond with any hint of encouragement or advice or insight on whether to retake.

Anyway to start off, I got a 680 one hour ago. 44 Q 40 V. The reason I am confused is because the score is decent but I know I could do better in each section because my GMAT prep scores were around 710. My Quant was usually between 44-47 but my verbal was never as low as 40. In fact, my first GMAT prep I scored a 41 in verbal and then my second GMAT prep I scored a 44 in verbal (after studying SC). I guess my question is whether I should retake if I could get a 720. I am applying to USC Marshall MBA (https://www.marshall.usc.edu/) so please base your judgements on the school rank and what you know of the general tier that Marshall is in.

On to my experience: Test center was great. I arrived early and they let me take it early (I am told this is a fairly common just FYI). We were able to go into our lockers only for food and drink during the break. Glasses cases are not allowed in the testing room btw. The first essays I wrote for AWA were on the test and they went fine (5 paragraphs each etc, examples, I don't see a problem here). My advice: if your a native speaker and can type, you shouldn't spend too much time prepping AWA.

Quant - GMAT PREP STYLE.

NO matter what anyone says the GMAT PREP sofware (after my original attempts I took them at least 3 times each to see all the possible questions including the supposed 700+ level questions) is EXTREMELY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ACTUAL TEST, MORE SO THAN OG! Don't waste the prep software!! All I used for Quant was Princenton, OG, AND OG GREEN. And although my Quant Score on my actual test doesn't seem high, trust me my quant score reflects an extremely bad timing experience on the situation than not knowing material / having adequate prep. OG AND OG GREEN are all you need for the Quant to get 47+ scaled score in IMHO. Why do I recommend OG Green? After doing GMAT prep software I realized that easy questions as defined by the GMAT are not always easy when you see them the first time...you guys know which ones...those silly exponent questions etc. Anyway, my point is the OG Green has some different question types than those of the main OG, and the OG green has generally easier questions than the main OG. The advantage of using OG Green is that by doing it you can speed up and improve accuracy of the easier GMAT questions which is key. Ok so if I have it down then why the bad Q score on day of? - My own fault.

TIMING.

One timing error can reduce your score by 3-4 Q points I believe. Specifically, for me the error was on a rather easy problem (that recquired three seperate calculations that needed to be added,....percents) I didn't read a word "less" and ended up getting frazled when I couldnt find my answer choice. I panicked and redid the calculations without re - reading the problem. Anyway found my error after burning 6-7 minutes .... BAD. Anyway what this does for your confidence on the test is unreal... Anyway, this contirbuted to rushing on several questions etc.... Verbal on day of ? Pretty much like GMAT prep, but got one bold faced and LOTS AND LOTS OF SC!! That was something i didn't expect. I preped for SC but I seemed to get a dispoportionate amount of S.C. so my advice is not to neglect this. CR was pretty simple. RC was varied and extremely trick towards the end and for the first time I had to literally bust out the marker pen and write down some relationships .... I consider myself pretty good at verbal and so this was huge for me. My SAT's, PSAT's, gmat practices, have all been 90+ percentile for verbal. Verbal I just felt was harder than a lot of the GMAT prep questions I got. I can't explain it but the thinking processes involved in lots of RC were much more advanced than stuff I have encountered in GMAT Prep (and I scored pretty high in that and in OG!) How did I prep for verbal? OG + PURPLE OG . + all those notes posted on this site and Manhatan SC guide.

HELPFUL MATH TIPS:

-dont overspend your time on combos and perms...i didnt get a single one but you still have to know it but dont go too in depth
-same with rates
-inequalities, tricky equation questions in ds, ratios, number properities, and prime numbers are much more important!
-PRACTICE divisibility questions, it seems there is always one of these no matter what useful links
https://www.purplemath.com/modules/lcm_gcf.htm https://www.purplemath.com/modules/mixture.htm https://www.purplemath.com/modules/workprob.htm https://www.purplemath.com/modules/distance.htm https://www.790gmat.com/GMATGuruFreePrim ... sEdit5.pdf

So once again, I am semi-content because I am realist, but sad that I underperformed on the day of, and wish everyone good luck on this test. Please

Think Pharma wrote:I guess my question is whether I should retake if I could get a 720. I am applying to USC Marshall MBA (https://www.marshall.usc.edu/) so please base your judgements on the school rank and what you know of the general tier that Marshall is in.

According to Businessweek's stats on USC:

https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/ra ... s/usc.html

Mean : 689
Median : 690
Applicants required to take the GMAT? Yes

Middle 80% range GMAT scores:
From: 640
To: 740

Your 680 score is certainly in their range, but I think a 720 would make you a much stronger candidate.

If you really believe you had a very unlucky day with timing and can hit 720 on a retry without further prepping, then I'd suggest you take it again. A 720 certainly will look better than a 680. But a 680 isn't too bad for USC. It's definitely within their range.