Hi all,
I rarely post, but I have been to this site along with others during my past two years journey toward this score and I want to give back. My background, non native speaker although I completed undergrad in top ten US univ and top three graduate degree in England if this matter. Good resume with internship at Mckinsey among hedge fund and consulting job, but I never stayed at a job more than 2 years and I am working part time only current so my job background not that strong either.
Before this, my scores ranged from 580, 640, 620 with mediocre quant scores never higher than 35. My verbal started off with 70% before settling in the 90% in the previous two. Today my quant scored almost doubled in percentile from 35 to 48 (44% to 85%) and despite the fact that I have not looked at a single verbal problem in the past two months since I took the test in Feb to focus on quant, I scored 46v (99%). I was skeptical that I could improve my score. I couldn't sleep until 2am and I had to really hold it in in the past 30 minutes to use the restroom after the test was complete. I lacked sleep, I drank too much caffeine and red bull, yes I was crazy.
Basically, I did everything wrong, except for the pacing. I believe this is the single greatest element of the test as previously I had to guess on something like the last 8 -10 quant problems which I now realized lowered my score. I also used the restroom during the verbal section previously as well. Instead of focusing on hard problems, I focused on very simple concepts to prepare and I believe this combination made the most difference.
I kept everything to 2 mins, I only messed up at the last part of verbal when I thought I had 3 min for the last question and instead I had two remaining so I had to guess on the last one with 7 secs left. So, I would say that indeed it is ok to guess on some problems given from my experience. Previously, I hated guessing and it really ruined my timing. It took me four times to learn this lesson and although I improved my timing, I still made mistakes in lack of sleep, etc. During the quant section, my confidence was low because I noticed some really easy questions at the end which I thought indicated that I was doing poorly... Glad I was wrong. The thing about quant is the wording is very specific, and I had to change answers on several questions when I reread the question. My suggestion is to reread the question, after you have solve the problem as a check to yourself and do not trust your first instinct as the GMAT writers seem to be setting traps, unless I was just way paranoid...
As for verbal, I saw problem types which I have never seen before. Since I have not studied it at all since Feb, i don't know if the GMAT introduced new types or not. Some of them presented a statement and instead of asking to weaken or strengthen like standard, the question stem asked which of the following would be a good argument against the conclusion of the above statement? Perhaps it was similar to weaken/strenthen, but this was something I had not seen. I also saw man SC questions asking me to change more than two lines of text. Although they were long to read, they were not different in scope from smaller section. I had several very long passages RC types on biology and economics and I don't know if this is common for many, but I noticed the RC all had different lengths on my test and i don't know if this is on purpose or not. I also saw really weird question types and structure that I don't know how to categorize and my last 10 or so questions were incredibly long to read, with the CR offering me several unfamiliar question types... They may have been experimental so perhaps you should not worry.
Another key thing is pressure, I was very tense, and I was quite curt with the staff as I tried to focus on the test. In the test admit area, I barely acknolwedge them as I tried to block out everything and I must have seem rude. I even told someone before the test that I didn't think I would do well. Basically I lacked any confidence since I have never scored this high on the GMATprep, only the PowerPrep and I did not do verbal for those. Last night, I took the GMATprep and scored 41q despite redoing the quant section almost ten times already... I was obsessed and pressured. For one of the few times in my life, I actually prayed and I would credit this as much as anything I did, since I can't really explain this score.
The key thing, above all else, is pacing and dealing with pressure. I did the latter poorly and if I wasn't so desperate, I may have canceled my score since I had low confidence in quant.
I purposely avoided how I studied since it differs with each person. For example, I would not recommend not looking at verbal at all. I took time off from work to study the GMAT for a week and I took the last few days off from studying on day trips with my family. Although I still was stressed, I believe it would have been much worse if I had just continued to study to the final day. Only thing I have done different from others is that I also bought the GMAT quant focus bundle and I consistently scored in the 34-42 range which gave me many hard questions which was beneficial for preperation, but it also hurt my confidence a bit so use caution in inferring results I guess.
Another thing is DO NOT let the GMAT limit where you apply to. Even with 640, I was admitted into a top 20 program in the world according to some rankings. Granted I attended a top ten uni undergraduate and graduate studies, but my work history is poor as I changed jobs often. I was able to get interviews with a couple others that rejected me and I feel it was due to the GMAT, but again, I hope this shows that the GMAT is not everything and it really shouldn't be. This is what I want to stress the most to those who were in my boat and I hope my story shows that indeed it is possible to double your score in quant percentile and score high on the verbal without studying a verbal question for months after many tries. Lastly, do not let the GMAT dictate your life even though it may seem to have that much power. I hope this was helpful and encourage you on your journey.
I rarely post, but I have been to this site along with others during my past two years journey toward this score and I want to give back. My background, non native speaker although I completed undergrad in top ten US univ and top three graduate degree in England if this matter. Good resume with internship at Mckinsey among hedge fund and consulting job, but I never stayed at a job more than 2 years and I am working part time only current so my job background not that strong either.
Before this, my scores ranged from 580, 640, 620 with mediocre quant scores never higher than 35. My verbal started off with 70% before settling in the 90% in the previous two. Today my quant scored almost doubled in percentile from 35 to 48 (44% to 85%) and despite the fact that I have not looked at a single verbal problem in the past two months since I took the test in Feb to focus on quant, I scored 46v (99%). I was skeptical that I could improve my score. I couldn't sleep until 2am and I had to really hold it in in the past 30 minutes to use the restroom after the test was complete. I lacked sleep, I drank too much caffeine and red bull, yes I was crazy.
Basically, I did everything wrong, except for the pacing. I believe this is the single greatest element of the test as previously I had to guess on something like the last 8 -10 quant problems which I now realized lowered my score. I also used the restroom during the verbal section previously as well. Instead of focusing on hard problems, I focused on very simple concepts to prepare and I believe this combination made the most difference.
I kept everything to 2 mins, I only messed up at the last part of verbal when I thought I had 3 min for the last question and instead I had two remaining so I had to guess on the last one with 7 secs left. So, I would say that indeed it is ok to guess on some problems given from my experience. Previously, I hated guessing and it really ruined my timing. It took me four times to learn this lesson and although I improved my timing, I still made mistakes in lack of sleep, etc. During the quant section, my confidence was low because I noticed some really easy questions at the end which I thought indicated that I was doing poorly... Glad I was wrong. The thing about quant is the wording is very specific, and I had to change answers on several questions when I reread the question. My suggestion is to reread the question, after you have solve the problem as a check to yourself and do not trust your first instinct as the GMAT writers seem to be setting traps, unless I was just way paranoid...
As for verbal, I saw problem types which I have never seen before. Since I have not studied it at all since Feb, i don't know if the GMAT introduced new types or not. Some of them presented a statement and instead of asking to weaken or strengthen like standard, the question stem asked which of the following would be a good argument against the conclusion of the above statement? Perhaps it was similar to weaken/strenthen, but this was something I had not seen. I also saw man SC questions asking me to change more than two lines of text. Although they were long to read, they were not different in scope from smaller section. I had several very long passages RC types on biology and economics and I don't know if this is common for many, but I noticed the RC all had different lengths on my test and i don't know if this is on purpose or not. I also saw really weird question types and structure that I don't know how to categorize and my last 10 or so questions were incredibly long to read, with the CR offering me several unfamiliar question types... They may have been experimental so perhaps you should not worry.
Another key thing is pressure, I was very tense, and I was quite curt with the staff as I tried to focus on the test. In the test admit area, I barely acknolwedge them as I tried to block out everything and I must have seem rude. I even told someone before the test that I didn't think I would do well. Basically I lacked any confidence since I have never scored this high on the GMATprep, only the PowerPrep and I did not do verbal for those. Last night, I took the GMATprep and scored 41q despite redoing the quant section almost ten times already... I was obsessed and pressured. For one of the few times in my life, I actually prayed and I would credit this as much as anything I did, since I can't really explain this score.
The key thing, above all else, is pacing and dealing with pressure. I did the latter poorly and if I wasn't so desperate, I may have canceled my score since I had low confidence in quant.
I purposely avoided how I studied since it differs with each person. For example, I would not recommend not looking at verbal at all. I took time off from work to study the GMAT for a week and I took the last few days off from studying on day trips with my family. Although I still was stressed, I believe it would have been much worse if I had just continued to study to the final day. Only thing I have done different from others is that I also bought the GMAT quant focus bundle and I consistently scored in the 34-42 range which gave me many hard questions which was beneficial for preperation, but it also hurt my confidence a bit so use caution in inferring results I guess.
Another thing is DO NOT let the GMAT limit where you apply to. Even with 640, I was admitted into a top 20 program in the world according to some rankings. Granted I attended a top ten uni undergraduate and graduate studies, but my work history is poor as I changed jobs often. I was able to get interviews with a couple others that rejected me and I feel it was due to the GMAT, but again, I hope this shows that the GMAT is not everything and it really shouldn't be. This is what I want to stress the most to those who were in my boat and I hope my story shows that indeed it is possible to double your score in quant percentile and score high on the verbal without studying a verbal question for months after many tries. Lastly, do not let the GMAT dictate your life even though it may seem to have that much power. I hope this was helpful and encourage you on your journey.
