Took the GMAT last Saturday (07/12/08) - 410

[altez]

My GMAT quest.
Took the GMAT last Saturday (07/12/08) and scored a 410. I had taken the GMAT before a year ago in April 2007 and I scored a 440. I think I scored lower this time because I really needed to go to the bathroom during the verbal part and wanted to try and finish the test.
First time:
Quant – 31
Verbal – 20

Second time:
Quant – 30
Verbal – 17

My background:
I was born in the United States but English isn’t my first language. My parents are immigrants from Vietnam and didn’t know English so they only spoke Vietnamese to me. I’ve been out of school for close to three years and received a degree in Computer Engineering. I kind of get discouraged from reading debriefs since most people who have an engineering degree seem to not have a problem with the quant section. Then there are people who are weak in quant but strong in verbal, but it seems as though I’m weak in both.

Study Material:
First time I studied the for about 8 months on and off
First time:
Quant
- Princeton
- Some of Kaplan
- OG
- GMATPrep
Verbal
- Princeton
- Some of Kaplan
- OG
- GMATPrep

Second time:
I decided to try Bellcurves.com since I heard a lot of positive reviews for both Math and Verbal. I thought I was doing well during the studies but my practice tests showed different

- GMATPrep: 490
- GMATPrep: 460


I plan to take a few weeks off and I’ll get back to studying. It may take me a while but I’ll keep trying. I’m open to any suggestions. I’ll probably redo the OG and buy the verbal OG. This time around I think I will do a lot of questions and analyze what I got wrong and why.

[D Terman]

Hi,

I'm allow a fellow Vietnamese American and scored a 460 my first time and 620 on this last try. Bottom line is that I believe you have to attack the GMAT in a different fashion as you would a normal test. It is not just about practice and memorization, you have to understand how the test is evaluating you... i.e how CR questions are designed to trick you to seeing the most obvious/logical answer as being correct, eventhough it may relate to information not presented in the passage.

Also, you have to attack it like a project and continually check yourslef to see how you are progressing and what you need to do in order to improve. One of the most important things I did the second time around was track on a calendar everyday what I was doing, my test scores, progress, etc... It helped to not only keep me on track, but to keep me calm.

Here's is my full story, hope it helps.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bombed-the-g ... t8577.html

Fyi - I'm taking the GMAT again in about 5 weeks, wish me luck!

All the best!

D Terman