I took the gmat today just wanted to share my story with everyone.
I started studying for the GMAT 5 months ago in February. Studying is a loose term. Really all I did for about 4 months was review Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT. When I finally felt like I had a good grasp of the material, I took my first practice test (GMATPrep #1) and scored a 640. I was definitely discouraged because I was aiming for a 730+ and now had less than a month to go. I overhauled my studying. Before now, I was doing an hour a day, 4 days a week. I turned all my attention to the test and began studying 2-4 hours a day every day. I used the offical gmat guide, kaplan 800, and a subscription to the
GMAT club tests. After a week of studying, I took a practice test on the weekend and scored a 710 (Manhattan free test). Another week of studying brought me to a 720 (Princeton review free test). At this point, I had taken a week off work and was doing essentially a test worth of problems everyday. The Thursday before the test I took my final practice test (GMATPrep #2) and scored a 740. Two good tests in a row really boosted my confidence and I was ready for the real thing.
Friday before my test, I tried to relax but ended up doing practice problems on and off throughout the day. For dinner, I had a footlong Subway sandwich and ended up going to sleep around 9:30. Saturday I woke up at 9 but my test wasn't until 12:30. I ate a brunch of a banana, a baked potato, some coke, and a multivitamin. I drove to the test center about an hour early and sat around until I was checked in and ready to start.
The AWA was interesting. My prep for this section was limited to reading a guide on gmatclub, but I never actually wrote any essays or did them in my practice tests. Probably not the best idea, but I'm typically a strong writer anyway and feel like I did sufficiently on them. I took the break and ate some peanut M&Ms and drank some gatorade. Went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face and went in for my most challenging section.
Quant felt like a nightmare. I couldn't focus, I felt like I was getting problems way more difficult than I had practiced (even in the Kaplan 800 book) and I was forced to guess on more than usual. I also ran out of time and ended up leaving 1 blank. At this point I was not feeling good about the test. My quant score is usually a 49 and after finishing the section I felt like I was in the high 30s at best. I shrugged it off, took my break and returned for Verbal.
I have always been able to breeze through verbal sections with 20 or so min left over. This time was no exception. One of the passages gave me some trouble because I kept thinking back to my bad quant section and I seemed to be running into a lot of sentence corrections that were correct as written but I chugged on.
After finishing verbal, I had to take an experimental section with chart and table analysis. It was only 12 questions long, but it took almost 15 min. At one point I just wanted to skip through it since it had no bearing on my score, but I felt it was my duty to help the GMAC build the new GMAT.
When it was finally over, I blazed through the demographic questions and got to the report test screen. I clicked the button to accept the test and the screen froze for what seemed to be an eternity (probably 10 seconds) I covered my eyes for a little and when I opened them my score was revealed as 740 (46q/45v). I pumped my fist in the air and left the test center with a goofy smile on my face thanking everyone along the way.
My top tip for people doing self study:
Review the material first and then hammer in as much practice as you can. For me, the key to success was stamina, and familiarity with the types of problems you'll come across.
It irks me a little that if I had done as well on quant as I usually do, I could have had a 760 but at this point, I guess I can't complain. That's my GMAT story! On to applications!
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Updated on: 09 Jul 2011, 22:14
