A year and a half ago I decided I wanted to take the GMAT and get my MBA. So, I signed up and took one of the Manhattan GMAT courses. Unfortunately, it was a pretty rough period in my life and I definitely did not get as much out of it as I should have. However, in my practice tests I had done okay - 630-640ish.
Anyways, long story short, I went through the motions and decided to take the test. First time I took it I decided to cancel my scores - I messed up on my timing on the quant and ended up not leaving myself enough time. I took it again 3 weeks later and scored a 580. Not what I wanted by a long shot.
So, I put business school on hold for a bit and waited for things to calm down in my personal and professional life a bit. About 2.5 months ago I started studying for the GMAT again. This time, I did a self-study - I would study for 30mins-hour in the morning before work and an hour to 2 hours or so at night. I feel like I understand the material very well - much better then when I took the test last year. The one thing I did not do much of was take practice tests. I took a couple over the last 2.5 months - but this is mostly because I can't find any good practice tests (any suggestions?). I used the Manhattan GMAT books and went through them - did essentially all of the practice problems, all the recommended problems, and the Kaplan 800 book. I also used the practice problems on this site.
Today was the day of reckoning - I was up all last night and woke up feverish. For some reason, I have almost an allergic reaction to the GMAT - last year I lost almost 15lbs before I took it. I decided to tough it out and went to the test center. I ended up scoring a 530. I had about 15 minutes left when I finished my quant and almost 10 minutes left on my verbal. Obviously, my timing was way, way, way, off. I realized I was not doing well during the test, which made it hard to concentrate.
Anyways, just wondering if anyone has any advice. It's obvious to me that I have some pretty serious test anxiety (odd, but I don't remember having test anxiety like this in college), so I'm thinking I might look into getting some sort of medication or something for it? Is it unusual to take the test 4 times?
It's almost to the point now that I'm thinking I might just give up this dream and just move on to find a new one - this is the first time that I have committed myself to something, worked hard, but did not had a positive result. Maybe business school isn't for me?
Anyways, long story short, I went through the motions and decided to take the test. First time I took it I decided to cancel my scores - I messed up on my timing on the quant and ended up not leaving myself enough time. I took it again 3 weeks later and scored a 580. Not what I wanted by a long shot.
So, I put business school on hold for a bit and waited for things to calm down in my personal and professional life a bit. About 2.5 months ago I started studying for the GMAT again. This time, I did a self-study - I would study for 30mins-hour in the morning before work and an hour to 2 hours or so at night. I feel like I understand the material very well - much better then when I took the test last year. The one thing I did not do much of was take practice tests. I took a couple over the last 2.5 months - but this is mostly because I can't find any good practice tests (any suggestions?). I used the Manhattan GMAT books and went through them - did essentially all of the practice problems, all the recommended problems, and the Kaplan 800 book. I also used the practice problems on this site.
Today was the day of reckoning - I was up all last night and woke up feverish. For some reason, I have almost an allergic reaction to the GMAT - last year I lost almost 15lbs before I took it. I decided to tough it out and went to the test center. I ended up scoring a 530. I had about 15 minutes left when I finished my quant and almost 10 minutes left on my verbal. Obviously, my timing was way, way, way, off. I realized I was not doing well during the test, which made it hard to concentrate.
Anyways, just wondering if anyone has any advice. It's obvious to me that I have some pretty serious test anxiety (odd, but I don't remember having test anxiety like this in college), so I'm thinking I might look into getting some sort of medication or something for it? Is it unusual to take the test 4 times?
It's almost to the point now that I'm thinking I might just give up this dream and just move on to find a new one - this is the first time that I have committed myself to something, worked hard, but did not had a positive result. Maybe business school isn't for me?
