practice results greatly skewed towards Verbal

[oldgeezer]

First of all thanks for the great forum!

I just took my first practice CAT (GMATprep from mba.com) and got a 700 (41Q, 44V). 18/37 questions wrong in Q section, 63% percentile (I was surprised I could still get a 700 overall with such a low Q %). I am clearly going to devote most of my limited remaining time to math problems and review. My prior study has consisted of the Princeton Review "Cracking the GMAT" and the Barrons "GMAT 2008" books. I haven't started OG11 or GMAT800 books yet.

I have 2 questions:

1. how much can I realistically hope to improve the Q section? Anyone out there with experience on this? I have ~6 weeks left. I am not starting from scratch, I have gone through 2 books, practice exercises, etc... not sure how much room to grow there is in a few weeks.

2. is a 700 score so skewed towards verbal a major concern? I hear quant is more important. I am an older, potential EMBA applicant. Could I persuasively attribute it to rusty math after all these years?

I am encouraged but somewhat uneasy about my Q section.

[VP_Tatiana]

Hi again,

Wow, I think most people would give their right arm to get a 700 on their first CAT. Congratulations.

I would strongly advise you to make sure to devote enough time to studying Verbal as well, so that you don't miss any low hanging fruit. The biggest regret of my GMAT studying is not studying Quant just a little more... I focused on it very little because I was a math major who got a perfect math score on the SAT.

All admissions committees have slightly different criteria, but especially for finance/quantitative schools, a strong Quant score is very important. If you can't find any published information specifically regarding the Quant scores required/desired by those schools, by all means call them. Out of the 4 schools that initially interested me, 3 were consistently very happy to answer my questions. I never bothered to apply to the 4th, figuring my admissions experience was a sign of things to come in the program.

If your low quant score comes from being rusty... well, I'd need to know your major and professional background to help figure that out. If it is just a matter of being rusty, then a little studying should go a long way to making your score shoot up, as I saw.

On a side note, I think the eMBA is a great choice for someone more experienced like yourself. I am in a blended learning program for professionals, Babson's Fast Track Program. It's pretty much an eMBA (but for some reason they don't officially call it that)...avg is 10 years of experience. I'm studying abroad right now for my electives (to add a Latin America focus to my degree), and my classmates are mainly 23 year olds with just some internship experience. I'm having an awesome time here learning about cross-cultural team work and the cultural influence in Latin American business. However, I'm not learning from my classmates like I did back home. This experience has made me even more appreciative of the quality of my cohort at Babson.

Best wishes,

Tatiana