Hello,
I took the GMAT a week ago and scored a 680(Q-47;V-36). I was hoping to break the 700 barrier in which case I would not be very serious about retaking it, but now that I haven't I'm seriously considering it.
I'm from India and have been working for more than a year in the IT industry here. A large applicant pool from India is Male/IT - The Indian education system focuses largely on test scores to accept candidates, consequently, the GMAT scores of the people who apply from here are reasonably high.
Regarding my preparation, I prepared for about 2 months using two books, the Official Guide and Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT. I solved a lot of questions, but did not spend much time reading any theory at all. In fact, I only solved problems for math regardless of the mistakes I made, and used the Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT book to give a loose reading of the Verbal Concepts. Even here, I spent a large portion of my time just solving problem after problem hoping to see better scores. To be fair, I got largely consistent scores on all my practice tests (650 - 690). However, I found that the score that I received on my first GMAT prep test (680), which was taken before all the other tests and practice was the same score I got in the end.
Not seeing any improvement at all was disappointing, to say the least. One thing that I did notice was that, I was cosistently scoring 47-50 on Math in all my practice tests but fluctuating between 30 - 37 on Verbal. Thus, I feel that if I focused my preparation more on my weak areas - Verbal - Specifically SC and RC, I would do a much better job on this test. In this light, I have done some digging online and on this website and have narrowed down the material to The Official Guide, Manhattan's SC Guide and Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible. I will also look up formula for math and just brush some skills here and there which may have gotten rusty over the years.
Unfortunately, I came across this website just a week before my test and could not utilize the wealth of information here (which I fully plan on doing if I retake it). If I do retake the GMAT, it will be sometime during the end of April or the beginning of May, which will give me roughly 3 months of preparation time, which I feel is sufficient.
Finally, I would like to mention my target schools as I feel that would vastly determine my requirement on the GMAT. Columbia is my 1st choice, the others in no particular order are - MIT - Sloan, NYU -Stern, HBS, Wharton, Booth, Darden and Tepper. I plan to apply for Fall, 2013 or Fall, 2014, based on other parameters, but I want to get the GMAT part over with right away.
Although it seems like I have already made up my mind, I am actually open to discussion on this subject. I am trying to objectively evaluate whether taking the above mentioned steps will increase the chances of me landing up with a better score. Otherwise, I don't think there's really any point. Looking forward to some enlightening input.
Thanks Guys!
Cheers,
Aditya.
P.S. - I just got a note today saying I scored 5.0 on my Analytical Writing.
I took the GMAT a week ago and scored a 680(Q-47;V-36). I was hoping to break the 700 barrier in which case I would not be very serious about retaking it, but now that I haven't I'm seriously considering it.
I'm from India and have been working for more than a year in the IT industry here. A large applicant pool from India is Male/IT - The Indian education system focuses largely on test scores to accept candidates, consequently, the GMAT scores of the people who apply from here are reasonably high.
Regarding my preparation, I prepared for about 2 months using two books, the Official Guide and Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT. I solved a lot of questions, but did not spend much time reading any theory at all. In fact, I only solved problems for math regardless of the mistakes I made, and used the Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT book to give a loose reading of the Verbal Concepts. Even here, I spent a large portion of my time just solving problem after problem hoping to see better scores. To be fair, I got largely consistent scores on all my practice tests (650 - 690). However, I found that the score that I received on my first GMAT prep test (680), which was taken before all the other tests and practice was the same score I got in the end.
Not seeing any improvement at all was disappointing, to say the least. One thing that I did notice was that, I was cosistently scoring 47-50 on Math in all my practice tests but fluctuating between 30 - 37 on Verbal. Thus, I feel that if I focused my preparation more on my weak areas - Verbal - Specifically SC and RC, I would do a much better job on this test. In this light, I have done some digging online and on this website and have narrowed down the material to The Official Guide, Manhattan's SC Guide and Power Score Critical Reasoning Bible. I will also look up formula for math and just brush some skills here and there which may have gotten rusty over the years.
Unfortunately, I came across this website just a week before my test and could not utilize the wealth of information here (which I fully plan on doing if I retake it). If I do retake the GMAT, it will be sometime during the end of April or the beginning of May, which will give me roughly 3 months of preparation time, which I feel is sufficient.
Finally, I would like to mention my target schools as I feel that would vastly determine my requirement on the GMAT. Columbia is my 1st choice, the others in no particular order are - MIT - Sloan, NYU -Stern, HBS, Wharton, Booth, Darden and Tepper. I plan to apply for Fall, 2013 or Fall, 2014, based on other parameters, but I want to get the GMAT part over with right away.
Although it seems like I have already made up my mind, I am actually open to discussion on this subject. I am trying to objectively evaluate whether taking the above mentioned steps will increase the chances of me landing up with a better score. Otherwise, I don't think there's really any point. Looking forward to some enlightening input.
Thanks Guys!
Cheers,
Aditya.
P.S. - I just got a note today saying I scored 5.0 on my Analytical Writing.
