BOMBED THE GMAT-NERVES TOOK OVER (S.O.S Stacy/Ron)

[aslan]

Hello all,

i have been a silent spectator of this wonderful community for the past four months.I'm an electronic engineers by profession with 7 years experience.

Since I had been out of school for a while, I took 2 months for prep for GMAT with prep course from PR as well.
Took GMAT and totally blew it with 580! (Q38,V27).I sincerely believe the Q section was totally unrepresentative of what I had been showing during preparation results and especially with GMATprep results.Verbal, I was not confident of before as well and after I knew that I had totally blew the Quant section sky high, my inclination and focus really evaporated!!.

My verbal results always fluctuated and the highest I got was V36 in Veritas free CAT.I have not really documented all my CAT but for PR CATS the range would be from V28-33.

For Quant in my first GMATprep diagnostic I had 45 and the GMATprep 2 which I saved for last day before yesterday I had Q48.

My CAT results:

GMAT prep 1 610 (Q45 V32)
PR 1 610 (Q42 V30)
PR 2 620 (Q43 V32)
Kaplan free online test 640 (Q38 V44) (!)
Veritas free online test (Q38 V36) 600 (internet problems during Quant)
GMAT prep 1 610 (Q45 V32)
GMAT prep 2 (Q48 ) gave only quant.

First GMATprep was with AWA.


[b]Today however all the things that went wrong .These would be.[/b]

-Lack of sleep.Woke up at 6:00AM and could'nt manage to sleep aftwerwards, even though the exam timing was at 13:30.

-Drink two cans of red bull to keep awake, which really made me jittery.Nervous tension was high.Even took more break time while the proctor remained aloof of the time in the next section and when reached for vebal it was 1:30 min past!

-On reaching the exam centre (I was the only one taking the any test there), felt really uncomfortable with the all the palm vein scanning, photographing, locker and especially the convex 15" CRT monitor I was given with small and awkward space for mouse.

-Couldnt see the enlarged fonts for the quant in the CRT and even the first question was a too simple average question, I was really blinking to check if there was no trick involved.Took maybe 4 minutes to answer it.Similarly I have taken note that I havent learnt the art of letting any complex question go.Kept on hitting at one question and when the chain reaction started, for each one of the remaining, the section was all out of control.Even for simple Quant i was verifying, if I had not done anything wrong here.From question 28 onwards I had to randomly guess as was out of time and finished on question #36!...same happened with verbal..went out of time and finished at verbal 40 with four guesses in the end!

PLAN:

I have now one last try to seal this thing off and I know that I'm honestly capable of more in the next month (nothing to loose now!) as the target is to have score of above 650.However I will be needing all of your guys advice here on what to do.

For verbal SC I practiced from OG12,Kaplan800 and PR (manual) verbal sections, but still had to go with my ear at the end.I don't know how the native speakers find it so easy to randomly score above V35 (even mother of 3 kids here!) while many non natives are going by scientifically noting down the 'past participle', noun pronoun, misplaced modifier before looking at the choices.

For Quant I'm now going to purchase the CAT tests as the real deal was much similar in type from MGMAT.Looked everywhere for Manhattan book set in the country but they only had "Kaplan" and "PR" books, even asked my brother in Dubai for the books but he couldnt find any.The wordiness of questions was at par with the Manhattan question banks, and better to practice with harder material out there.Still, I believe I have acquired one major flaw from PR workshop.The problem with PR is that it assumes every participant as having a non technical background and rarely advices to use algebra or formulating equations, at all.Instead the tutor used to ball park the answer choices by random guesses on some (like work rate problems or age problems) and using the POE (Process of elimination).These were totally new things for my background and he told me that for this it may seem strange in the beginning but with practice, this 'hard wiring' will bring results.Now, whenever I see a question on Quant, I'm always deliberating in which approach to use and waste time.Sometimes it is useful but sometimes it wastes time in just random guesses till i arrive at the correct one. (The tutor, himself a 99% percentile used to do this a lot!)...similarly for sentence correction he used to read from OG12 and just make us see the 2/3 split or other errors.For RC he advised of not reading the RC at all (except for general questions) and just read 5 lines above and 5 lines below from what is being asked and you will get the drift (he could do this easily on a number of times!)....never really got the drift of this scouring method..thankfully I never used this method and always read the passage fully in 3 mins time or sometimes even less, at normal reading speed.But even apart from all that I still believe that verbal should have been above 35 here (had been missing 12 or so in Gmatprep, random errors in odd places).


Stacey and Ron:

You guys are the best things (beings) to happen to GMAT!! (and counselors in general) and i earnestly require your suggestion on what to do differently in the next 30 days....I know I'm capable of more and as according to one instructor at GMAT on youtube..."Its not an IQ test..its like basketball...in Basketball ....if someone has some edge of pulling a great drop shot, and the other guy does it.. maybe 10,000 times than it doesn't remain an expertise"

I'm willing to work hard here, as have free time to pull as much effort as i possible can (work as a consultant on international contracts)....waiting replies from all!

Thanks

[fitzgerald23]

It sounds like nerves just got the best of you. What test conditions did you take all your practice CATS under? Were you pausing the exams at all as it seems that your biggest problem on exam day was time. I know in my prepwork I had a habit when taking the Manhattan tests of being very close to not finishing on time with the Quant. My biggest problem was that I would end up doublechecking questions that did not really need it and would also waste some time on questions I did not know. By the time test day arrived I knew which questions to doublecheck and which to just move on from. I also gave up on ones I did not know much faster than usual. One of the keys is to know the method to solve the problem. You dont want to waste a minute only to realize there is a better approach. I did that once or twice and it does cost time.

If I were you I would try to schedule the next attempt at a time that is representative of your practice testing. If you are a morning person schedule for the morning so you dont have to take caffeine to feel alert.

[aslan]

fitzgerald:yep,...i really blew it on the nerve game.Honestly I had thought that the quant would lift the game, but it ditched me at the moment.I call it nerves from the fact, that a second q concerning a simple GP took me some 3 minutes to do (and I was doing it manually without using the damn formula!), which I was doing in ten sec's on my way back.It was really like some fuse had gone out!.

Iam not a morning person at all and thats why booked it in the afternoon.One thing I would say is that I did all my CATS in the evening (when I'm most fresh...?!).I never paused in between any section and in my first GMATprep actually missed answering 3 questions due to timing.Later on it improved, but never became an art of exactly coming down to say 10 q in 20min..etc.With verbal I usually struggled with timing and I think I need to improve on it, as I usually have to rush with 3-4 questions in the end.

You are right about 'which questions to leave'...but I just believe that most are doable, thinking 'if only just one more min (!)...and maybe I can squeeze 1 min from the next one or so....'...like there was one question on DS that came on tritration principle...and I immediately left it thinking that 'ok thats wayyy beyond what I'm going to do in this time'....but others become a challenge to do in the 'doable and non doable border'

I think I also need to raise the verbal to some 7 points, so that in case anything happens with quant the V can take some fall...and I guess thats what most of the high scorers also have.Not really of a 50-50 split but something to fall back on.
I just need the proper way out as I read newspaper articles and other stuff at just about everyday and when doing RC or CR they individually pose no problem (SC is dicey), but somehow the score in V is highly erratic.