Miserable about the GMAT

[oberlove]

I had a miserable GMAT experience last week. In fact, it was so miserable that only now am I able to bring myself to even think again abou the GMAT.

I have been studying for almost a year by now and taken many practice exams. I have also taken the actual GMAT two previous times but not with this kind of studying behind those attempts. By the end of this past August, I was finally able to get my score into the high 600s, low 700s ... which is where I was aiming. I had taken KNEWTON over the summer and spent lots of time studying but somehow when the moment came last week I was unable to shine.

I don't know if it is just anxiety that got the better of me or what but I am at a loss on how to go forward. Can anyone out there speak to how one can qualify for taking the test without the timing constraints? I for one was extremely unhinged by the tick-tick-ticking of the clock. I am just about ready to give up because I don't know what else to do. As you can probably understand, it is VERY frustrating to have no tangible gains to show for all my effort.

Signed,
Down in the dumps

[mj78ind]

@oberlove

Sorry to hear about your experience. I can empathize as I got a decent score in my second attempt.

I think the key for me was to figure out can I really do it? I asked myself and in my heart of hearts i just felt that I had been wronged by the 1st attempt score and this was backed by my past FLT scores and the last FLT score that I got before the real exam.

So essentially the idea was internally you gotta be clear that you deserve better. Once that was out of the way, it was time to analyze what went wrong, the details are mentioned in my post- link below. But the bottomline was I could not figure materials to prep from since I had pretty much exhausted a lot of GOOD material and when you are in the 650+ range quality material is very important.

Finally, talking about an untimed test I believe that is possible but you have to prove to the GMAC that you have sometype of a medical condition because of which you deserve the exemption. I do not know about your medical history but that section can be explored on the GMAC website I remember it being there but do not remember exactly in which section, so that will need some digging.

Another approach is may be you could learn how to deal with it - I was pressured by that in the first attempt but one thing that really helps is if you have narrowed down to 2 - 3 choices and no matter how much time you spend you know you are not going to get the right answer just tick one and move on, at least you will save time for the next question. Now this is easier said than done in the real exam but it was crucial for me. Secondly, i made a rule not to look at the clock every time I clicked an answer, in Quant which was my forte - i decided to look at the clock after the 12th, 24th and 33rd question. however, in verbal which was not as strong as verbal I decided that i will NOT look at the time for the first 10 questions, even after that I developed a mental timer (due to the practice in the FLTs) which was more useful since looking at the clock in area where you are already on the edge actually pushes you over, hence need to be extra cautious there. I did look at the clock but by the 20th question then by the 31st and then at the end i was pretty regular as in every other question as i had 10 mins to do 14 questions which was a bit scary, but by then i was in the flow.

Do go through my debrief (the debrief for the second attempt is as under)-

https://www.beatthegmat.com/760-done-dea ... 66740.html

The disaster that was the first attempt also got a debrief its link is in the above debrief.

Hope this helps!

[nehs]

oberlove,
First of all, do not even think of giving up as yet! I do understand that it is a frustrating experience for many of us ,including me. I landed a shocking 490 on the real test when I used to score in mid 500s to high 500s on my practise tests. I have written a post in this forum too about my experience. Many of us give up a lot of personal commitments and still do not perform on the test. That sure hurts!!! But, don't allow all this to come in the way of your prep. Also, another thing that I learnt during my Prep was it is important to have good books.

Give the GMAT one more try. You have not mentioned the score that you got or range of schools that your are targetting. Did you try speaking to your schools of interest? If you can get through with that score then that's what you would want isn't it?
If you still want to take the GMAT again then ,I would say take it up in a couple of months. Do not wait a year or so. WE have a lot of concepts fresh in our mind now. Just brush it up and further tune whatever is necessary.
All the best.