-
skang357
- Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
- Posts: 124
- Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:33 pm
- Location: Los Angeles
- Thanked: 5 times
Fatal defeat.
I wasn't going to make a thread on this section until I scored over 700 but I decided at least doing this was going to make me accountable. Now I have the burden of doing well the next time because I will post again if I decide to do retake (more on this if you keep reading)
Here are the three rounds I've had with the GMAT and the results :
R1 : 570 (Q 34 V 34) 4/30/08 2 week of study/prep
R2 : 680 (Q 41 V 41) 3/30/09 1 month of study/prep
R3 : 620 (Q 40 V 35) 5/26/09 1 month of study/prep
I could be off a point or two on the exact breakdown of the scores. I'm a little buzzed right now as I felt I needed a beer or two (although it was definitely not out of celebration).
So I studied in earnest since around the end of April. For the last 10 days of April I did the MGMAT Challenge problems thinking they would help me. Since then, I've been looking at more relevant sources for a GMAT test taker of my level.
I realized that at my stage, the MGMAT Challenge are not much help. They are for 700 scorers trying to get 750 or 750 trying to get 800. Simply, the questions they cover are irrelevant for my skill level. However, I will say that I learned a pretty good deal about complex probability and combinatorics problems from the MGMAT Challenge set. In hindsight, the 10 days or so I spent doing the MGMAT Challenge set (did about half) I felt I could have used for better purposes.
Here is a little about my biographical information :
33.7 year old, Ivy undergrad, unemployed, recently recovered hard drug addict. Formerly employed in financial services (equities) and as a corporate financial analyst. Degree in Finance. Currently trying hard to get into the right Bschool and his life back on track. I'm basically older, now washed up, but trying to make a comeback before it's too late.
Now that we got that covered, on to the debrief of the exam...
I answered 30 questions on the Q and 31 questions on the V. I actually answered 33 or 34 (I forget on the Q) but the last 3 or 4 I randomly guessed without even looking at the question. I ran out of time as usual on the Q. This has been an ongoing problem of mine. Till date I have not been able to get past question number 33 on any practice test or the real thing.
Today was also the first time I actually ever ran out of time on the V and by a substantial margin.
One disclaimer I will also make is that I took today's test at 8 am. Also I drove 60 miles to the test site. Furthermore, I slept at 3 am last night and had to wake up at 6. But I think I got a total of 1 hour of actual sleep because I kept stressing over the test and just tossed and turned. I know that if I was more well rested I would probably have answered more questions on the V. I felt my energy running out during that test and found myself going over the questions and passages at a slower rate than I normally do.
Here is a little theory based on today's test. The last time I scored 41 on the V, 92%, which is a respectable score IMO. That test I felt that the V section was much more easier than the Q.
Today's experience has been turned around. I felt the Q was very fair/easy and the V was the hardest V section I ever answered.
Honestly, it was comparable to an MGMAT V section. So I theorized that maybe ETS has modules of difficulty levels on the sections. Maybe, just maybe, given how I did well on the last test, they decided to give me a hard V module combined with an easier Q module.
SECTION REMOVED BY MODERATOR
There are probably some more questions that I slightly remember but I'm not gonna list here because I might actually totally distort the actual question. Basically I had a lot of word problems asked today. And they were relatively simple ones like the one asked in GMATPrep about the tree that was planted when it was 4 feet tall, growing at a constant rate and it was measured in the 6th year which was 1/5 taller than the 4th year. How much does it grow every year. This was basically around the difficulty level of the word problems I got today. And there were a lot. No work/rate problems. No probability problems. Also, a couple average, median problems.
A few number property problems. One problem involving absolute value inequalities. ( don't remember exactly what was the problem but it was a PS not a DS problem).
Generally, I thought the Q section was easier than my previous Q section the last time I took the test. It was easier than the previous Q section I took. However, here is another qualifier to this condition. I think ETS grades the sections based on their difficulty level. I felt that I got more questions correct on this section than last time, however my score was lower. No way to tell for sure, but that is my belief.
The V section :
This was the toughest V I had the misfortune of ever encountering. I never run out of time on the V and this time I was doing question number 33 with 2 minutes left (of course randomly guessing after skimming the SC or RC passage, which of course you can't expect to skim and get the question right). I left 4 questions completely blank this time. Totally unheard of.
The V section : I can't recall the types of questions asked but one thing I was surprised was the difficulty level of the SC.
They asked me questions concerning punctuation this time. This never happens in an SC question. I had to figure out one question whether it was more appropriate to use : versus ; .
Also there was a question where the subject was singular but I knew that the adjective needed was "were" rather than "was". There are a couple remote cases where "were" is correct over "was" for a singular subject and the test asked me this today. Wasn't totally sure today, so I opted with "were". Anyways, I totally fu.cked up the V today so what difference does it make?
Materials used in the study and their quick evaluation:
-GMATClub.com practice tests (Quantitative only)
I answered 20 out of 25 practice tests in the set. I felt after the first 10 that I got a good deal of the material in the Quant section that GMATClub emphasizes. The types of questions are asked again over and over. Here is why I felt (and today's experience confirms this) that the GMATClub may not be the best study tool : It emphasizes too much probability and asks too many work/rate problems as well as inequality data sufficiencies having to do with integer properties (example : is abc=1? given ab =1 and bc=1). In today's test I answered zero probability problems. I had zero integer property problems.
All in all the GMATClub might have helped me set up some word problems but it didn't help me much on the test today.
-OG12 I put up a previous post about the OG12 on the strategy section of BTG. I didn't answer all of it, but I thought it's a pretty good resource. A lot of previously unseen problems. I have yet to finish the final sections of PS and SC for OG12. Overall, I feel that OG10 is great for V and weak for Q. OG12 is better than 11. Still not completely relevant in terms of the difficulty level of the test versus what's covered in the book.
-MGMAT Challenge Problems : Good for 700+ scorers needing 750+ or higher. Very unlikely you'll run into any problems covered on MGMAT Challenge on the GMAT unless you are getting everything right.
-MGMAT CAT : I stopped doing these after I did the first few. I was getting below 600 in them except for the 3rd set. The scores were lowering my morale and made me feel inconfident, so I stopped doing them. I feel that they might be good for the long haul tester. Still think the problems are too difficult than what is covered in the GMAT. Also feel the material can be a little closer to the actual types of problems given in the test. However, I understand many of the MGMAT CAT'S were written a few years ago and that ETS probably continues to change its tests and evolve to stay ahead of the curve and keep the test as elusive as possible (clearly for a lot of people it is not because they are conquering the GMAT with scores like 770 which seems at least a once a week occurence on a site like BTG). I think MGMAT CAT will be good for helping timing, training at attitude, and being a general math subject expert. Which is good enough
-99 700+ and 99 More 700+ GMATPrep questions. These questions were posted in a file put up by Zuleron who is a member of this site. I did both sets. Pretty helpful. One bad thing is that doing them made me know the answers to most of the hard problems on GMATPrep. I did GMATPrep last night and scored 720. I think a big part of this is owed to going over 99 700+ problems and knowing the answers.
-Another set of 175 Quant questions that were also mostly off of GMATPrep that I posted as a file in the Strategy section of BTG. I did till number 65. The good thing about these questions is that the answer explanations are included.
So all in all, today, I got a Q section that was fair or easy, loaded with word problems, and didn't have any probability problems. On the other hand, I had a V section that was real ass kicker, comparable to an MGMAT verbal section, and that tested punctuation.
If I had to do it all over again, I think I will spend more time going over the basics. For me, timing has always been an issue on the Q. I have never really been able to get to question number 30 or 31 without running out of time. I consider that if I am on number 20 with 40 minutes left, I am doing good. But usually I am on number 13 or so with 40 minutes left, as it was today. I need to learn more about the basics and cover more problem types as well as go over the fundamentals.
I am considering the MGMAT guides. Either that I or I can keep working on regular problem sets or do practice CATS or even the math section of BTG to take a look at different problem types.
I will go over the 1000 SC, RC, and CR questions. Before I thought I that I had the Verbal section down pat. It was false confidence as today's test proved. I can still improve on this and today's test showed why I need to.
I think I will go over the rest of MGMAT Challenge Problems to get used to doing the hardest types of problems. The problems may not be relevant to what's on the test, however if I can do the hardest problems than what is on the GMAT will be easy to me.
Overall I think I want to get my skill level down to the point where when I take MGMAT CAT's, I am consistently scoring over 700. I think that is a pretty good indicator that I will be able to score over 700 on the real thing with near certainty.
At this stage, I am not completely sure if I will do a retake. I applied to Haas, Anderson, and USC... all PT programs. I am 50 points over the average GMAT for one program and about 10 or 20 points below for the other two. I am also unemployed as well as having a very very below average undergrad GPA (although I have built an alternative transcript with an A average recently.
I think I might have a fairly good chance at one of these schools and a less than a 50:50 chance at the other two. I am an unordinary candidate full of many red flags and the adcomms are going to really need to justify their acceptance of me.
I was hoping a high GMAT score would allay their concerns. Well that notion is out the window. If I am into the school that I think I have the best chance at getting in, I will have to weigh if I really want to attend there. I had my first choices and of course after that you have your other choices. No one really wants to be forced to pursue the other options out of necessity. However given my age and the stage of life I am in, not totally sure what I need to do.
If I do a retake, overall, I am going to study around 3 or 4 months this time around and then make sure I am able to complete every section on time. It's unfortunate that I already answered GMATPrep so many times that doing retakes are not indicative of my actual performance on the test.
I did Powerprep as well, but I realized that all those questions are covered on OG10 which I used to prepare for my 2nd GMAT test. And so even my scores on that one are not truly reflective. As such, I feel that MGMAT Cat is the way to go. If I do a retake, I will work on the fundamentals first, go over the Q and V sections of this site to see the problems people are having trouble answering, get access to more questions, and then work on the MGMAT CAT'S until I am scoring over 700 each time.
GMAT WINS AGAIN. FLAWLESS VICTORY
I wasn't going to make a thread on this section until I scored over 700 but I decided at least doing this was going to make me accountable. Now I have the burden of doing well the next time because I will post again if I decide to do retake (more on this if you keep reading)
Here are the three rounds I've had with the GMAT and the results :
R1 : 570 (Q 34 V 34) 4/30/08 2 week of study/prep
R2 : 680 (Q 41 V 41) 3/30/09 1 month of study/prep
R3 : 620 (Q 40 V 35) 5/26/09 1 month of study/prep
I could be off a point or two on the exact breakdown of the scores. I'm a little buzzed right now as I felt I needed a beer or two (although it was definitely not out of celebration).
So I studied in earnest since around the end of April. For the last 10 days of April I did the MGMAT Challenge problems thinking they would help me. Since then, I've been looking at more relevant sources for a GMAT test taker of my level.
I realized that at my stage, the MGMAT Challenge are not much help. They are for 700 scorers trying to get 750 or 750 trying to get 800. Simply, the questions they cover are irrelevant for my skill level. However, I will say that I learned a pretty good deal about complex probability and combinatorics problems from the MGMAT Challenge set. In hindsight, the 10 days or so I spent doing the MGMAT Challenge set (did about half) I felt I could have used for better purposes.
Here is a little about my biographical information :
33.7 year old, Ivy undergrad, unemployed, recently recovered hard drug addict. Formerly employed in financial services (equities) and as a corporate financial analyst. Degree in Finance. Currently trying hard to get into the right Bschool and his life back on track. I'm basically older, now washed up, but trying to make a comeback before it's too late.
Now that we got that covered, on to the debrief of the exam...
I answered 30 questions on the Q and 31 questions on the V. I actually answered 33 or 34 (I forget on the Q) but the last 3 or 4 I randomly guessed without even looking at the question. I ran out of time as usual on the Q. This has been an ongoing problem of mine. Till date I have not been able to get past question number 33 on any practice test or the real thing.
Today was also the first time I actually ever ran out of time on the V and by a substantial margin.
One disclaimer I will also make is that I took today's test at 8 am. Also I drove 60 miles to the test site. Furthermore, I slept at 3 am last night and had to wake up at 6. But I think I got a total of 1 hour of actual sleep because I kept stressing over the test and just tossed and turned. I know that if I was more well rested I would probably have answered more questions on the V. I felt my energy running out during that test and found myself going over the questions and passages at a slower rate than I normally do.
Here is a little theory based on today's test. The last time I scored 41 on the V, 92%, which is a respectable score IMO. That test I felt that the V section was much more easier than the Q.
Today's experience has been turned around. I felt the Q was very fair/easy and the V was the hardest V section I ever answered.
Honestly, it was comparable to an MGMAT V section. So I theorized that maybe ETS has modules of difficulty levels on the sections. Maybe, just maybe, given how I did well on the last test, they decided to give me a hard V module combined with an easier Q module.
SECTION REMOVED BY MODERATOR
There are probably some more questions that I slightly remember but I'm not gonna list here because I might actually totally distort the actual question. Basically I had a lot of word problems asked today. And they were relatively simple ones like the one asked in GMATPrep about the tree that was planted when it was 4 feet tall, growing at a constant rate and it was measured in the 6th year which was 1/5 taller than the 4th year. How much does it grow every year. This was basically around the difficulty level of the word problems I got today. And there were a lot. No work/rate problems. No probability problems. Also, a couple average, median problems.
A few number property problems. One problem involving absolute value inequalities. ( don't remember exactly what was the problem but it was a PS not a DS problem).
Generally, I thought the Q section was easier than my previous Q section the last time I took the test. It was easier than the previous Q section I took. However, here is another qualifier to this condition. I think ETS grades the sections based on their difficulty level. I felt that I got more questions correct on this section than last time, however my score was lower. No way to tell for sure, but that is my belief.
The V section :
This was the toughest V I had the misfortune of ever encountering. I never run out of time on the V and this time I was doing question number 33 with 2 minutes left (of course randomly guessing after skimming the SC or RC passage, which of course you can't expect to skim and get the question right). I left 4 questions completely blank this time. Totally unheard of.
The V section : I can't recall the types of questions asked but one thing I was surprised was the difficulty level of the SC.
They asked me questions concerning punctuation this time. This never happens in an SC question. I had to figure out one question whether it was more appropriate to use : versus ; .
Also there was a question where the subject was singular but I knew that the adjective needed was "were" rather than "was". There are a couple remote cases where "were" is correct over "was" for a singular subject and the test asked me this today. Wasn't totally sure today, so I opted with "were". Anyways, I totally fu.cked up the V today so what difference does it make?
Materials used in the study and their quick evaluation:
-GMATClub.com practice tests (Quantitative only)
I answered 20 out of 25 practice tests in the set. I felt after the first 10 that I got a good deal of the material in the Quant section that GMATClub emphasizes. The types of questions are asked again over and over. Here is why I felt (and today's experience confirms this) that the GMATClub may not be the best study tool : It emphasizes too much probability and asks too many work/rate problems as well as inequality data sufficiencies having to do with integer properties (example : is abc=1? given ab =1 and bc=1). In today's test I answered zero probability problems. I had zero integer property problems.
All in all the GMATClub might have helped me set up some word problems but it didn't help me much on the test today.
-OG12 I put up a previous post about the OG12 on the strategy section of BTG. I didn't answer all of it, but I thought it's a pretty good resource. A lot of previously unseen problems. I have yet to finish the final sections of PS and SC for OG12. Overall, I feel that OG10 is great for V and weak for Q. OG12 is better than 11. Still not completely relevant in terms of the difficulty level of the test versus what's covered in the book.
-MGMAT Challenge Problems : Good for 700+ scorers needing 750+ or higher. Very unlikely you'll run into any problems covered on MGMAT Challenge on the GMAT unless you are getting everything right.
-MGMAT CAT : I stopped doing these after I did the first few. I was getting below 600 in them except for the 3rd set. The scores were lowering my morale and made me feel inconfident, so I stopped doing them. I feel that they might be good for the long haul tester. Still think the problems are too difficult than what is covered in the GMAT. Also feel the material can be a little closer to the actual types of problems given in the test. However, I understand many of the MGMAT CAT'S were written a few years ago and that ETS probably continues to change its tests and evolve to stay ahead of the curve and keep the test as elusive as possible (clearly for a lot of people it is not because they are conquering the GMAT with scores like 770 which seems at least a once a week occurence on a site like BTG). I think MGMAT CAT will be good for helping timing, training at attitude, and being a general math subject expert. Which is good enough
-99 700+ and 99 More 700+ GMATPrep questions. These questions were posted in a file put up by Zuleron who is a member of this site. I did both sets. Pretty helpful. One bad thing is that doing them made me know the answers to most of the hard problems on GMATPrep. I did GMATPrep last night and scored 720. I think a big part of this is owed to going over 99 700+ problems and knowing the answers.
-Another set of 175 Quant questions that were also mostly off of GMATPrep that I posted as a file in the Strategy section of BTG. I did till number 65. The good thing about these questions is that the answer explanations are included.
So all in all, today, I got a Q section that was fair or easy, loaded with word problems, and didn't have any probability problems. On the other hand, I had a V section that was real ass kicker, comparable to an MGMAT verbal section, and that tested punctuation.
If I had to do it all over again, I think I will spend more time going over the basics. For me, timing has always been an issue on the Q. I have never really been able to get to question number 30 or 31 without running out of time. I consider that if I am on number 20 with 40 minutes left, I am doing good. But usually I am on number 13 or so with 40 minutes left, as it was today. I need to learn more about the basics and cover more problem types as well as go over the fundamentals.
I am considering the MGMAT guides. Either that I or I can keep working on regular problem sets or do practice CATS or even the math section of BTG to take a look at different problem types.
I will go over the 1000 SC, RC, and CR questions. Before I thought I that I had the Verbal section down pat. It was false confidence as today's test proved. I can still improve on this and today's test showed why I need to.
I think I will go over the rest of MGMAT Challenge Problems to get used to doing the hardest types of problems. The problems may not be relevant to what's on the test, however if I can do the hardest problems than what is on the GMAT will be easy to me.
Overall I think I want to get my skill level down to the point where when I take MGMAT CAT's, I am consistently scoring over 700. I think that is a pretty good indicator that I will be able to score over 700 on the real thing with near certainty.
At this stage, I am not completely sure if I will do a retake. I applied to Haas, Anderson, and USC... all PT programs. I am 50 points over the average GMAT for one program and about 10 or 20 points below for the other two. I am also unemployed as well as having a very very below average undergrad GPA (although I have built an alternative transcript with an A average recently.
I think I might have a fairly good chance at one of these schools and a less than a 50:50 chance at the other two. I am an unordinary candidate full of many red flags and the adcomms are going to really need to justify their acceptance of me.
I was hoping a high GMAT score would allay their concerns. Well that notion is out the window. If I am into the school that I think I have the best chance at getting in, I will have to weigh if I really want to attend there. I had my first choices and of course after that you have your other choices. No one really wants to be forced to pursue the other options out of necessity. However given my age and the stage of life I am in, not totally sure what I need to do.
If I do a retake, overall, I am going to study around 3 or 4 months this time around and then make sure I am able to complete every section on time. It's unfortunate that I already answered GMATPrep so many times that doing retakes are not indicative of my actual performance on the test.
I did Powerprep as well, but I realized that all those questions are covered on OG10 which I used to prepare for my 2nd GMAT test. And so even my scores on that one are not truly reflective. As such, I feel that MGMAT Cat is the way to go. If I do a retake, I will work on the fundamentals first, go over the Q and V sections of this site to see the problems people are having trouble answering, get access to more questions, and then work on the MGMAT CAT'S until I am scoring over 700 each time.
GMAT WINS AGAIN. FLAWLESS VICTORY
Impossible is nothing
