I am a lurker, but the forum has helped me a lot so posting anyway.
Second GMAT today... happy to report I smashed it. :D
I first sat it in Feb... Maths was my issue, not English, and I had a feeling I wasn't ready going in... then everything went wrong on the day, with a ridiculous amount of stress - a very odd experience for someone who doesn't normally suffer from exam stress! Lady forgot to give me the book, toilet was really far away from exam book, no clock to watch time by, came back 40 sec late, palm reader took FOREVER, etc... Just a broken exam day.
Anyway, I went from a decent 680 (Q42, V41) to a 750 (Q48, V45)...
I had felt unprepared for the maths first time round, although I had done the
MGMAT books and had GMAT
OG and Exam Pack 2. Second time round, no exam stress but I've also done a lot more work. I used:
-
Magoosh online course (quant. Didn't add much to basic knowledge from
MGMAT but lots of good tips and nice to have a different perspective than just the
MGMAT books, which are quite dry in parts.)
- the GMAT club maths book
-
MGMAT books again
- GMAT Quantum for different explanations of
OG questions;
- A bunch of practice tests and a lot of work on weaknesses and went through the
OG again;
-
GMAT club tests, explanations and GMAT app (sometimes, the explanations are a bit beyond me, but useful nonetheless)
AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY
- a change in mindset.
I knew I would do better when I started seeing geometry questions as a puzzle instead of an insurmountable challenge. What lead me to that point was the study. Once my knowledge and background were good enough, it stopped being a situation where I just COULD NOT see a solution...!
Verbal - I've got no advice, I just made an effort to consider each option carefully in the exam, rather than rushing through. I didn't do any prep for verbal as I'm a native speaker and work in a language based industry.
I'm pretty excited right now and can't believe the score is real!
So those of you who did badly - take heart, study hard and work on your weaknesses - you can DEFINITELY improve...!!!
Oh - I also got a little bit lucky - didn't see any speed/time/distance or complex percentage problems which were KILLING me to date...! Did see a surprising amount of geometry and luckily, not too many calculation heavy questions (also a weakness).