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cking6178
- Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
- Posts: 18
- Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:43 pm
- Location: Houston, TX
- Thanked: 2 times
I am unbelievably disappointed with this score, mainly the Q34. My undergrad is in Finance and my GPA in Quant related coursework (Finance, Econ, Accounting, Stats, etc..) was 3.67 - so I obviously don't feel like Q34 is very representative of my quantitative abilities. I will say that the most important aspect, as has been repeated on this site countless times, is make sure you have your timing down! Well, technically, an understanding of the concepts tested is the most important, but anybody with a college education (or really even a high school education in the US) should have a solid grasp of the concepts since they are testing Algebra, Geometry and rudimentary statistics. My problem lied in my timing. I felt confident while I was solving the questions and feel like I was doing very well until, at question 25, I checked the clock and saw that I had 13 minutes remaining (essentially 1 minute per question). Everything after that became a blur because I lost my focus and began glossing over the question and randomly clicking answers. Hindsight 20/20, I should have continued to solve the problems and not worried about time until there were 2 minutes left - this would have allowed me to solve another 5-7 problems, leaving only a handful of "blind guesses" and giving the algorithm less time to penalize my time management mistake. I'm not sure if I will retake the exam, as I have a pretty strong overall package with that low score being the biggest obstacle. I am not applying to full time programs, so I feel like I am still very competitive to most of the schools, however I probably just blew my shot at the Duke Cross Continent program & probably my shot at MBA@UNC. My advice for those who are reading this that have not taken the exam is to go through your choice of study prep material, I used Manhattan GMAT & I think they are a great resource, and make sure you do the practice problems at the end of the chapters. Once you are comfortable with that material, complete a CAT (here my advice will break from others that I have read) untimed - this will give you an idea of what your actual strengths and weaknesses are (since you aren't under time constraints). Use that as your basis to go back and focus on your weaknesses. After you have established your weaknesses and you have focused on those, take another CAT, but this time make it timed so you can start to get your timing down (this is where I failed). My problem is I didn't give myself enough prep time before the exam to get my timing down - I gave myself 2 weeks and 2 CATs to get my timing down, which wasn't enough time. I would think that 4-6 weeks and 3-4 CATs should be sufficient time to get your timing down without overworking yourself. Best of luck to the rest of you & I will update my results if I decide to retake the exam.
Cheers!
Chris
Cheers!
Chris
