690

690 (90 percentile) - Quant 50, Verbal 32.

Could have been better. But i have quite a story believe me.

Preparation..
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MGMAT books
a bunch of peterson verbal and quant tests.
MGAT 1 640
MGAT 2 690
MGAT 3 680
MGAT 4 720
GMATPrep 1 720
GMATPrep 2 640

Story
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I work at a hedge fund. Considering how markets are doing, work was stressful and i did not have enough time to prepare. Total prep less than 2 months. Took only 1 day off and the rest of prep was on weekends that included visting MBA schools. In last 3-4 days before the test i studied a lot and was happy to see a 720 in gmat prep 1. Then i studied more and decided to take GMAT prep 2 the day before my test, since my time management was poor in verbal and i wanted to improve on that.

So on the day before the test, i finished the Quant section of gmatprep and was very confident about it. I was like all i have to do now is just blow away the verbal and 750 should be here. Because of studying a lot getting into that test, my brain was not able to process any more information. Add that to the fact that it was last prep test, it was t-1, RCs were not business/scientific i COMPLETELY BLANKED OUT. I was panicking and sweating, only looking at the clock. I could not even read a question. Ended up with a 640 and an all time low confidence. I had panicked so much that i was unable to read or process anything. I was sure "I can't do it. period". After that point, when i would try to even read the news on internet, all i had in back of my mind was "I can't do it". This became like a self prophecy and a vicious circle and it would come true. I wont be able to process any text in my brain. And the confidence kept going down. I wanted to cancel the test because i had 0 confidence in me at that point. My friends convinced me to to take it and made me understand i have nothing to lose. I decided i will take the test and if i had panicked in the test i would cancel the score. I went out with friends and we went to a bar and had a few drinks. Woke up the next day (exam day), a bit hungover. I was like What the F*** did i do. My brain was very inactive. Went for a light workout, took a shower and got things started. Then i sat down and started solving sentence correction problems from the basic. Spent an hour or so and did all right and got the confidence back. I am usually a strong person so it was not too hard to get out of that lame no confidence zone. I made a new test strategy in light of what had transpired in the last couple days and which would give me the best ROI. But believe me guys, drinking before the GMAT is a BAD idea.

So i went into the test. I felt 100% ok. The proctors were very nice ladies so it helped. Finished the essays with 10 min remaining. Went on to take a break. Did some miscalculation and when i got back to the exam, the clock had started 2 min. ago. I was like "seriously? As it is I am screwed to begin with. And i want to make things more interesting". Math was a breeze. On one DS question the answer was D and i incorrectly clicked on C thinking i was clicking on D and confirmed and immediately realized that too. That shook me down a bit but since i had already seen all sorts of lows, nothing bothered me anymore.

Went on take another 10 min break. I just told myself that if i can just concentrate for 75 min. i will be done for ever. I promised myself not to panic. I decided to hide the clock, only checking the time once in a while. Incidentally RCs were business/finance/scientific so that helped. But i am not good at skipping questions in RCs. few hard RC questions take a lot of my time and i usually dont have much time left for last 11. So my accuracy for first 30 is good and then it drops a LOT. I would get 7 out of last 11 questions wrong easily. I think the same thing happened in the exam. Since i was at a rock bottom confidence, i was not able to take much risk this time. My only strategy was "not panic" and i was able to implement that. I should have skipped some hard RC questions since that was my weak point anyways and would have saved me 4-5 min. I must have gotten them wrong anyways. It was bad exam strategy.

But with what happened last couple days i am not too disappointed. 10 points more would have been real nice.

Now i am not sure if i should re-take it again ? I can get a 50 in quant any day. The part that beats me in verbal is i don't know what to fix. I would solve OG questions with 1.5 min per question and get 90% right in CR and RC. In exam i don't know what happens, why i am always running out of time. I think i can get a 50 again in quant or may be a 51 and 32 is probably as low as it can get in verbal so i have nothing to lose. I don't know if it is worth spending time again or not. Your comments are welcome. !