Hey guys,
I am gonna tell you my story here.
I started studying for the gmat around Sept 20th 2013 and I did my prep with both Economist gmat tutor and
Manhattan Gmat.
I took my first simulation test from Economist GMAT tutor before starting any prep, without knowing ANYTHING about the gmat structure of questions, without any kind of review of the basics and especially no clue on the topics and on the importance of timing.After some time during the test I even started guessing all the answers because it was seriously getting pointless. The result reflected perfectly my "ignorance" about the GMAT and in fact I got a ( I am a bit embarassed to say it ) 350 as a score (Q19,V21).
So I started my prep, I was a bit discouraged because I have never been good at math subjects. The weird thing however is that I actually love math subjects and I do not get bored while doing them. On the contrary, I found the verbal part being definitely more boring but still I could perform it better.
So after some time of prep, when I reached around 55% of the program, I decided to take another simulation test (11th Nov 2013). It was a CAT from
Manhattan GMAT and I got a 560 (Q39, V29). I know it is not a good score but still I was really happy to see that my quant score had improved, and believed it was going to improve further.
Time passed and prep continued. Around 80% of the course I decided to take another CAT from
Manhattan Gmat and got a 640 (Q42,V36). I must admit it actually took me more time than the regular 75 minutes for the quant part, so I felt as if I cheated and I promised myself that I would stick to the 75mins for each of the sections in the next simulation test I would take. However I was happy to see my score finally improved, especially in the Verbal part. Quant didnt improve much.
On Dec 11th I decided to take another simulation test, still a CAT from
Manhattan Gmat. So as I said before, I decided to stick to the 75 mins on each section, and put the timer. I could actually feel a bit of pressure of the timing. Final score:610 (Q38,V35). Not so good, but not as worse as I would expect. However I was a bit disappointed that my quant score was not improving at all, but actually getting worse.
I tried to focus on some sections I had a few difficulties in, like ratios, number properties and probability. I am really putting myself into trying to understand the whole exercise correctly and it seems I do get the logic behind it, but everytime I am presented with a similar exercise exposed in some different wordings or a few changes to it, I end up panicking and either taking lots of time to solve it or getting it wrong.
Today, after reviewing some (not all) of my weak sections I took one of the simulation tests from Economist Gmat Tutor. Final score: 650 (Q40,V40). This time, I must say, I was very happy with my Verbal Score, but quite disappointed by the quant one. How is it that I dont seem to raise it at all?
The Economist Gmat Tutor software provides the number of hours I spent on each section. The number of hours I spent on Verbal was 30 hours, the number of hours I spent on Quant was 80!!!! and I still get such low score. I feel as if I will never improve in quant, and it is sad especially because it is the one I "enjoy" the most.
My dream score would be to get around 700-720 but I do not know whether I will reach it if I keep on getting ALWAYS the same score on quant.
Do you have any suggestions on how I could raise it? I read the Manhattan guides and did all the Economist gmat program and I seemed to understand most of the subjects, but no matter what, everytime I get too much information in the question text, or too many variables, or different wordings, everything I learnt seems to just cancel out in my mind. Anyone ever had the same kind of problem/feeling? I really do not know what to do.
Thank you for reading this. any suggestion, thought or critic is welcome
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15 Dec 2013, 08:10
