At some point between 2 and 3 pm today I was staring at the screen at the end of the exam at the test center at 100 Williams Street in the Financial District of Manhattan. I was unsure if I was reading it right: "Overall: 710". I still feel the need to go online and verify if this was true, or were my eyes deceiving me.

I did not feel that I was doing well throughout the exam. I remember thinking during the bathroom break after quant that I screwed this up, but that I should go forward with the verbal anyway. I felt very stiff, unrelaxed, and unable to work out multi-step equations.

My GMATprep scores were 620 on the first, and 690 on the second. I took the first one 8 days before my originally-scheduled test date, and postponed it 2 weeks because of the low score. I took the second one a week after the first one. I stepped things up after getting those low scores and really beat my brow at this.

My primary issue during practice was that I was never able to finish any 37 quantitative questions within 75 minutes. I did not have this problem with verbal, but with quant it was a persistent problem. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn't get the pacing down. I did manage to finish a 37-question trial of easy questions on the day before the exam; I needed to deceive myself into thinking that I can actually do it. Guess what? On the actual exam it was the reverse: I finished quant on time, but had to do random guessing on the final 3 questions of verbal. Bizarre!

Overall this was a stressful journey, though it was rewarding and challenging. I learned a lot of math that I didn't know before in the process, and I learned interesting ways to apply it to real life situations. I also learned to write better and think more critically.

This site was a major resource for me, and I appreciate the help of all the brilliant users here who helped make this happen.

Now on to applications...

congratz on the excellent score. I am on my road there as well

Congrats Mendeley - u pulled a rabbit out of the hat....

leave some more rabbits in there, I wanna pull one soon

Great score...
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Thanks, Sri
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keep uppp...ing the tempo...

Press +1 Kudos, if you think my post gave u a tiny tip

I honestly don't remember. I did not really pay attention to anything other than the "hundreds digit" of the overall. I do remember vaguely that they were in the upper 40's each. I will post when I get the full score.