730 - Q43 / V48

[mattycross]

I've been a forum lurker for quite some time, and have benefitted incredibly from the comments and posts that people have made here. So, to start off, thank you very much to everyone who takes the time to ask questions, answer questions, and share tips of what worked / did not work. I haven't contributed much to date, but hope I can provide some insight now that I have slightly more time on my hands (though, not that much more time, as I now have to work on the apps...).

I wrote the GMAT for the second time yesterday and scored 730 (Q43 / V48). While I would have been very happy with a slightly higher quant score, I'm incredibly happy with the overall result and have no intention to re-write. I had attempted the exam once before, in September of 2009, and scored a 650 (Q35 / V44). So in that context, moving up to a score of 730 was pretty big for me, and moving from a Q35 to a Q43 fantastic, especially consdering that I have a stunning ability to forget basic math concepts when under time pressure.

I'll post a more detailed de-brief later on, but wanted to mention that in addition to studying my butt off, I received some fantastic tutoring from Brent Hanneson. He is a great teacher and I highly recommend him to anyone considering some additional help in their preparation.

[aslan]

woah...awesome verbal score!...I have seen tis kind of score only on few rare occasions!..how do you do it so many times?

[mattycross]

Thanks aslan!

The only time I studied for the verbal section was in 2009, leading up to my first attempt. My verbal studying focused primarily on practice question volume. Being a native english speaker with a lot of writing /editing experience, I found my biggest area for improvement was in idioms and wordy subject/verb agreement. After reviewing the basic rules (by way of the Manhattan GMAT verbal guides - which for me served more as a look up guide rather than a cover to cover read through), I focused on question volume. I completed all of the OG verbal questions, and then made it part way through the additional OG verbal book. I'm not sure if that helps - unfortunately my focus was primarily on studying for the quant section, so I was not particularly systematic when it came to verbal strategy.