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Delusions of Grandeur: 730 - Worth Retaking The Exam?

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Delusions of Grandeur: 730 - Worth Retaking The Exam?

by nycdweller » Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:52 pm
Hi Forum -

I completed my first official attempt at the GMATs this afternoon after what seems like a lifetime of worrying, 8 months of studying, 3 weeks of cramming, and one very nerve-racking examination session.

The numbers:
  • AWA: 5
  • Quantitative: 50 (93%)
  • Verbal: 38 {83%)
  • Total: 730 (96%)
My practice exams, primarily off of Knewton, were in the high 600s/low 700s but I am easily dissuaded to not be very focused when I'm not doing it for real

My brief background:
  • College education: Graduated 2008 from one of the top 3 US universities with double major in Mathematics and Management
  • Work experience: Strategy and management consulting at start-up firm; leading delivery teams, guiding financial institutions to new levels of profitability, from market sizing to deep-dive analysis, to implementation
  • Extracurriculars: Various, including founder of NYC-based entrepreneurship forum, lead for college alumni interview, marketing lead for non-profit organization
My question:
I want to apply to the top US MBA programs (Harvard, Wharton, Stanford) and a few others (Columbia, Sloan). Should I retake my GMATs? I am concerned that my slightly lower Verbal score (if the scaled score is low, is the percentile score at least decent?) will hurt my chances.

I feel there would be opportunity for upside in my grade - I didn't time my math section well and ended up guessing (probably correctly) for the last two questions, and I panicked on the verbal section to the point of spending over 15 minutes on one RC passage, and subsequently, having to rush through the rest of the test to finish on time. I feel that the next time I take it, I would have a better grasp of my nerves, but still am at th whim of the luck of the draw.

I don't love the idea of spending more time studying for the exam as it's taken a lot out of me already, and I believe that although I could possibly see an upside of 20 points, it would be difficult to see an upside of more than that. However, that being said, I will do what needs to be done.

How does my application look compared to others? How are my chances? Should I invest another 4 weeks studying and retake my exam? Do people typically do better/worse on their second exam compared to the first?

Thanks in advance for your responses - could definitely use the vast experience of the Community here.
Last edited by nycdweller on Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
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by vineeshp » Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:05 pm
Congrats on your score. :) Expecting a debrief here :)

Your profile is amazing! Personally, I think your profile is good enough for a top program. (My judgement)

If you take the GMAT again, are you confident of scoring 30-40 more from your current score of 730? If not, I really recommend working on the other apps of the score. GMAT should not be the reason you dont get an admit.

The problem with a second attempt is the pressure of knowing that you have to improve. That pressure could deter your performance. Considering that your profile is extremely good, I do not recommend it. But only you can tell what kind of a fighter you are. :)

Just present your story (Which I am sure is a great one) in the best way possible in your essays!

All the best!
Vineesh,
Just telling you what I know and think. I am not the expert. :)
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by uwhusky » Thu Apr 07, 2011 12:03 am
Ivy League MBA programs like Ivy League, or similar in reputation, undergrads.

Sounds like you'll be fine.
Yep.
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by artistocrat » Fri Apr 08, 2011 9:41 am
Since when was a 730 subpar?
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by brood1989 » Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:05 am
I would find a hard time believing that they would reject you just based
on your V score. You're above the 80/80 split and have great credentials thus
far. I feel your time is best spent in preparing essays. Good luck!!!
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by nycdweller » Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:18 am
Thanks everyone for the responses - I know it may seems a bit counterintuitive to retake the exam, but here's a further debrief of my exam to hopefully add a bit more color and context to my situation.

Arriving at the Exam
I arrived at the exam 30 minutes before the test was to start, and after signing in, I pulled out my laptop to do a final review of my notes. I didn't realize that there were no laptops allowed in the waiting area, so when the proctor asked me to close my laptop, instead of starting my exam 30 minutes early, I opted to leave the waiting room and sat in the lobby of the building for 20 minutes to review my notes. There is really no reason to get to the testing site early.

AWA
I studied a total of an hour and a half on the AWA section - it was the night before the exam that I learned the two different types of essays and how to approach them. I didn't stress too much about them before the exam as they have zero impact into the scaled (800) score, and have minimum impact in the MBA application process.
When the test began, I wished I spent a bit more time on the AWA. The first prompt was fairly simple and straightforward, but the second prompt was much trickier. I brainstormed the second essay for 5 minutes, realized it was easier to argue the other side, and restarted. 25 minutes to cohesively answer a fairly difficult prompt stressed me out a considerable amount, so I reminded myself that the AWAs had no impact on the overall grade.

Quantitative
In practice exams, I usually get the first problem incorrect, so I made sure that I went through the first question very carefully. I clipped through the rest of the exam without much issue, though there were some questions I was not completely sure on, so I worked them out and then I went back and double checked through plug-in/brute force. I was doing pretty well on time, except when I realized there were three questions left and a bit more than 4 minutes to do them. I worked through the 3rd to last question with 2 minutes to go, spent 30 seconds on the 2nd to last question and realized that I wouldn't be able to finish it in 2 minutes so I decided to guess and spend whatever remaining time I had on the last question. I had to re-read the last question a few times before I understood what it meant, and by that point, the timer went from one-second increments to five-second increments. I decided to, again, guess, and just after I clicked an answer choice, the section ended. I wasn't sure if the answer registered as I didn't confirm the answer, but I had to move onto verbal.

Verbal
I took the 8 minute break and ran over in my head all the notes I made on the verbal section (my pre-test notes were 35 pages, more than 75% verbal). The first few questions on the verbal exam were challenging, but I noticed what they were testing. When I got to question 5, I got to my first reading passage. During my reviews, reading passages are very hit-or-miss with me, and this first passage should have been an easy read for me. However, the logic was so convoluted and there were so many terms that even though I practiced for these term-heavy passages, I could not understand the passage. I read it through once, took notes, but the notes ended up contradicting each other, so I re-read the second time. It honestly didn't make any more sense, so I started to panic a little as I had spent about 5 minutes already at this point. I re-read the passage a third time, and as I didn't understand the passage anymore, I completely panicked. I tried to use the notepad for my work, I tried everything else, but to no avail. I literally had to turn my eyes away from the screen, take off my headphones/ear plugs, and try to talk myself off the ledge. I finally was able to calm down a bit, read through the passage carefully, and made a set of notes that made sense to answer the questions to. Unfortunately, I spent about 20 minutes on that one passage. So now I need to average about a minute and fifteen seconds per question or else I wouldn't finish the test on time. So for the rest of the exam, I worked faster than I had to during my practice exams - after reading the question stem, I quickly selected an answer and moved on. I speed-read through the other reading passages, and without double-guessing and questioning myself, I sped through the rest of the test. I don't remember anything else that really bothered me, but I was hoping that my months of review and practice had made a lot of my testing ability rote.

Cancelling the score
Honestly, one of the hardest decisions I've had to make in a long time was to either keep my score or cancel it. I felt that the combination of mistiming the quantitative section and panicking in the verbal section would mean certainly a low score, and if I had to retake everything again, why does it matter what I get in this test? I finally convinced myself that, as time was running out, that it's better to know and lost than to never have known at all. Seeing the final score, I must have busted out laughing and crumbled into a heap on the floor. I could live with 730.

Question
I come back to the question as to whether I should re-take the exam, given the above situation. I know that if I didn't panic during the first reading passage, I could have done much better on the verbal section. I know if I managed my time better in the quantitative section, I could have done a bit better there.

Any advice/response would be greatly appreciated.
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by neodante » Tue Apr 12, 2011 2:56 am
Oh God! You have a 730 and you are still thinking of retaking the exam ? Phew!
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by armyoftim » Tue Apr 12, 2011 3:44 am
nycdweller, I think you should retake the test only if you study in the intervening month. Definitely do not take a month off studying and then retake - I think there's enough upside to warrant the effort. The worst thing you could do would be to slack off and retake the exam rusty on quant or verbal... or both. Anyway, I wouldn't take it for granted that if you do retake it, everything will be the same except this time you won't screw up the initial RC.
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by chouky » Wed Apr 13, 2011 11:54 pm
If I had to decide whether you get into my Ivy League Mba and if I were in a bad moon, maybe I would think if I see you got 730 and then 760, "well this guy has nothing better to do in his life than retaking the gmat to prove us he is clever... or maybe he just wants to work in a gmat prep company like mgmat... I don't want this guy"

Seriously, what the hell ??!! If you want to prove yourself that you can do it, fine, and you probably will, but in my opinion it's useless because 730 is a great score and if you don't get into the schools you want, this won't have anything to do with the gmat

My opinion may be tough but that's the way I think about this this morning...

If you want new challenges, go run a marathon for example, it may even help you for your interviews :-)
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by armyoftim » Thu Apr 14, 2011 2:37 am
No way - really? He's going to get dinged for trying to improve his quant score? That's absurd!

This was his first attempt, there's nothing to be lost by retaking the test. And the adcom certainly won't ding him for retaking to improve that quant. Yes it's a very good score, but there's plenty of room for improvement, and there's nothing wrong with putting forth a little more effort to achieve a spectacular score. If this were his third or fourth attempt, I might agree with you, but I see very little downside (unless the score goes down) and plenty of upside.

I'm adding this link because I just read through the post (it's from the other board):
https://gmatclub.com/forum/my-journey-fr ... 91386.html
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