Hey all,
This past Saturday, I scored a 760 on the official GMAT (Quant 48, Verbal 47, 99%). I am male, 25 years old, and born in the United States. I have 3 years of investment banking work experience. I consider myself pretty normal, but a hard worker and think that has always been my saving grace.
I started studying for the GMAT in January 2013. I signed up for the 10 week in person Manhattan GMAT classes. These classes were great, because they motivated me and forced me to do lots of homework problems/studying. I highly recommend that most people attend the in person classes. Before the classes started, I took one of the GMAT Prep software exams and scored a 580. I was very disappointed and thought it might be impossible to obtain a good score on the GMAT. Nonetheless, I started the Manhattan GMAT course shortly after and hoped I could improve my score.
I started studying about 2 hours a day on weekdays and 3 to 4 hours a day on weekends. Over the course of the 10 week program, I took the 6 Manhattan exams. My scores in order of taking the exams were 640, 590, 670, 670, 650, and 680. After the class finished, I downloaded the free GMAT Prep software and bought the question pack. This was very helpful and improved my confidence. I took the two free GMAT Prep practice exams and scored 710 and 720. This really boosted my confidence, but I still felt unsure of how I would perform due to my Manhattan exam scores. I bought the Powerscore Critical Reasoning book to help my verbal skills and read the 5 main chapters ahead of my scheduled test date.
I scheduled the next exam for May 11, 2013. I told all my friends and family about my planned test date, which was a big mistake. It really stressed me out and made me nervous to impress everybody. I could not believe how nervous I was when I took the exam. I could not solve the very first quant question and sat at my desk for 5 minutes without doing anything. Eventually I realized that I misread the problem and had solved for the wrong variable. This really upset me to see that I wasted so much time on a problem that I knew I could solve. Nonetheless, I picked a random answer since I had already wasted so much time. I quickly rushed through the remaining problems without checking my work like I usually would. I think I must have made lots of careless errors. In the end, I scored a 640 (Quant 35, Verbal 41, 6 on AWA essay, 6 on IR). I was really upset to get a 640, because I had done so much better on the GMAT Prep software.
After the first official exam, I doubled my studying. I did every problem in the official guide, official quant guide and official verbal guide at least twice if not three times (for the medium to hard problems). I literally studied nonstop and was extremely stressed. I was almost unbearable to be around, because I put so much pressure on myself. I took two more Manhattan practice exams and scored 690 and 730. The 730 really boosted my confidence. Also, I took the GMAT Prep exam one more time and scored a 750. I thought the high score was really due to the fact that I had seen many of the problems before.
I took the second official exam on June 15 and felt pretty confident. I promised myself that if the exam did not go well, I would take a break and postpone studying more until next year. Studying for the test had been too stressful and exhausting. I did not tell anybody besides my girlfriend that I was taking the test. I think this really relieved my stress and helped me to relax. On the test day, I thought the essay and IR were both very easy. The quant section went very well from the start with increasingly hard problems (combinatorics, statistics) so I knew that I was doing well. The verbal section had a few extremely strange sentence correction problems that I could not feel 100% confident on. However, I felt very good about the critical reasoning and reading comprehension questions. Once I finished the exam, I was totally shocked and ecstatic to see a 760. I had worked so hard and came so close to giving up after getting a 640. The exam was honestly the hardest thing I've worked towards.
Thank you beatthegmat.com for all the encouraging success stories! I read them almost every day to stay upbeat. I loved the stories where people made huge score improvements.
This past Saturday, I scored a 760 on the official GMAT (Quant 48, Verbal 47, 99%). I am male, 25 years old, and born in the United States. I have 3 years of investment banking work experience. I consider myself pretty normal, but a hard worker and think that has always been my saving grace.
I started studying for the GMAT in January 2013. I signed up for the 10 week in person Manhattan GMAT classes. These classes were great, because they motivated me and forced me to do lots of homework problems/studying. I highly recommend that most people attend the in person classes. Before the classes started, I took one of the GMAT Prep software exams and scored a 580. I was very disappointed and thought it might be impossible to obtain a good score on the GMAT. Nonetheless, I started the Manhattan GMAT course shortly after and hoped I could improve my score.
I started studying about 2 hours a day on weekdays and 3 to 4 hours a day on weekends. Over the course of the 10 week program, I took the 6 Manhattan exams. My scores in order of taking the exams were 640, 590, 670, 670, 650, and 680. After the class finished, I downloaded the free GMAT Prep software and bought the question pack. This was very helpful and improved my confidence. I took the two free GMAT Prep practice exams and scored 710 and 720. This really boosted my confidence, but I still felt unsure of how I would perform due to my Manhattan exam scores. I bought the Powerscore Critical Reasoning book to help my verbal skills and read the 5 main chapters ahead of my scheduled test date.
I scheduled the next exam for May 11, 2013. I told all my friends and family about my planned test date, which was a big mistake. It really stressed me out and made me nervous to impress everybody. I could not believe how nervous I was when I took the exam. I could not solve the very first quant question and sat at my desk for 5 minutes without doing anything. Eventually I realized that I misread the problem and had solved for the wrong variable. This really upset me to see that I wasted so much time on a problem that I knew I could solve. Nonetheless, I picked a random answer since I had already wasted so much time. I quickly rushed through the remaining problems without checking my work like I usually would. I think I must have made lots of careless errors. In the end, I scored a 640 (Quant 35, Verbal 41, 6 on AWA essay, 6 on IR). I was really upset to get a 640, because I had done so much better on the GMAT Prep software.
After the first official exam, I doubled my studying. I did every problem in the official guide, official quant guide and official verbal guide at least twice if not three times (for the medium to hard problems). I literally studied nonstop and was extremely stressed. I was almost unbearable to be around, because I put so much pressure on myself. I took two more Manhattan practice exams and scored 690 and 730. The 730 really boosted my confidence. Also, I took the GMAT Prep exam one more time and scored a 750. I thought the high score was really due to the fact that I had seen many of the problems before.
I took the second official exam on June 15 and felt pretty confident. I promised myself that if the exam did not go well, I would take a break and postpone studying more until next year. Studying for the test had been too stressful and exhausting. I did not tell anybody besides my girlfriend that I was taking the test. I think this really relieved my stress and helped me to relax. On the test day, I thought the essay and IR were both very easy. The quant section went very well from the start with increasingly hard problems (combinatorics, statistics) so I knew that I was doing well. The verbal section had a few extremely strange sentence correction problems that I could not feel 100% confident on. However, I felt very good about the critical reasoning and reading comprehension questions. Once I finished the exam, I was totally shocked and ecstatic to see a 760. I had worked so hard and came so close to giving up after getting a 640. The exam was honestly the hardest thing I've worked towards.
Thank you beatthegmat.com for all the encouraging success stories! I read them almost every day to stay upbeat. I loved the stories where people made huge score improvements.
