raconteur wrote:
Well I took the GMAT for the first time today and they way I see it, I have two options: 1) I could be incredibly bummed or 2) I can take it on as a challenge (a sort of "reality check" if you will).
I'm trying to stay positive....just sucks after putting in a lot of time (about 2 months at about 25+hrs/week) and performing way lower than what you expected.
I scored a shockingly low 610 (Q42-67%,V31-61%) when I honestly was expecting somewhere around 680+ from my practice exams up to now. I honestly have no idea what happened. I felt good throughout. Answered all my questions on time - though it did come to the wire on Verbal. Had good control over my nerves, etc. and was stunned to see such a low score. I took the GMATPrep two times. The first time I got a 680 and the second time I got a 660 (though, I took the second really late into the night and was tired). I heard (not sure if this is true) that you can request to get explanations from your exam or at least see the progression of your mistakes. If so, I'm really curious. I felt, to be honest, that the questions were challenging but nothing really threw me off. But I've never scored anything near 610 before and I'm wondering perhaps I missed a lot of the first questions (maybe even the first one!) or something. /Shrug...just not sure...
Anywho, for me at least, conquering the GMAT is not gonna be the short and sweet process I was hoping it to be. I am determined to really breakthrough with my score and get somewhere around 730+. I have some ideas and wanna throw this by you guys and see what you think...
1) I'm in it for the long-haul but how much time should I take for a break before picking it back up again?
2) Obviously my verbal is nowhere near acceptable for me so I have a lot of work to do on that. From my practice exams, it was obvious that RC/CR were alright, but SCs were my weakness. After my real exam though, it's clear that EVERYTHING VERBAL is my weakness! I recently got my hands on the Manhattan SC GMAT book but was not able to get through the whole thing before the exam. Will this be enough? (I also have OG10 as well). Are the 1000 series a good place to start too? Any advice in this area is nice.
3) Quant, believe it or not, always scared me more than Verbal even though my score doesn't reflect that. I'm thinking that in order to increase my Q score to 47+, that I should take the GMAT Club Challenges.
4) Not setting a test date until I'm scoring upper 700s on the GMATPreps. I'm in no rush. It's only mid-April and I'm not even sure if I'll be applying for schools this fall anyway because I may need to stay in Shanghai another year. But I really want to be "ready" before I take it next time and wonder if I should just work at it until I feel prepared and then book?
5) Also, for the two GMATPrep exams that I took prior, I actually only used one of the tests and then reset it and took it again (only ran into a few repeats in total). So, in total, I still have 3 GMATPrep/PowerPrep exams left but I don't want to waste them. How should I utilize these few exams? I still want to measure my progress and get more practice taking a CAT, but I don't want to waste these gems.
6) Lastly, I really pushed myself at the end and I really neglected a lot of my "normal" life routines such as: working out, reading the news, etc. I think that was a mistake looking back on it because it really built up the stress and I'd cram 4+ hours per weekday night trying to get through all the material. I'm thinking that 2 hours or so on weekdays would be more realistic and just spreading it over more time. Long story short, I think keeping some balance in my life can't hurt for my next attempt.
Here are the materials I have available:
OG11 (completed)
OG11 Math and Verbal workouts (Didn't even start)
OG10 (Didn't even start)
PR 2007 (completed)
PR 2007 Math and Verbal workouts (completed both)
Kaplan 2005 (completed)
Kaplan 2005 Verbal workout (completed)
Manhattan SC (not completed)
Anyway, any suggestions/recommendations are appreciated. At this point I'm all ears. I really respect those of you who have put in all the hard work and have stuck with it to achieve such great scores! Inspiration for people like me. I just discovered gmatclub.com two weeks ago and what an incredible resource this place is! I plan to be very active on this site for the coming months...
Cheers for now - gonna go watch a movie and chill
how much of a difference is a 640 and 610. People say luck changes a person's score plus or minus 30 points. You think a 30 points can really get you in or keep you out?