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GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice

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nikhil.jones.s
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GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   17 Jan 2014, 17:11
Hi all,

I just gave my GMAT and I was seriously not hoping to go down this lane. :(
I graduated from college last year and have a low Grade Point, 2.8/4. The colleges I am aiming for are IE, IESE, NUS, NYU INSEAD, HEC, HAAS and Columbia.
Currently I'm working in EMC as an Associate Consultant and am dealing primarily with projects related to Big Data Analytics.

My Preparation:

I had initially prepared from May 2013 to the ending of July 2013. That is a solid 3 month preparation. However, I couldn't give any tests and off load GMAT from my planner because of the joining that came in between. I had to report early to my Job location and amidst all the chaos and excitement I lost touch. I started preparing again from November. This was more mellow than the previous prep. I regularly gave an hour or so to solving compilations from gmatclub and some other books such as Aristotle. Again, focussing primarily on verbal. It took me a month to really get into the groove and i scheduled the test for 17th Jan. I started writing practice tests from 4th Jan onwards and gave 11 complete tests. Below are my scores:

Grockit Q50 V46 S740
Princeton Review#2 S720
Manhatan Gmat Free Online Test Q47 V37 S690
Manhattan Gmat PDF Test 1 S720
Manhattan Gmat PDF Test 2 S750
Manhattan Gmat PDF Test 3 S770
Gmat prep 1(Retake) Q48 V41 S720
Kaplan Test 1 S760
Kaplan Test 2 S750
Kaplan Test 3 S760
Gmat prep 2(Retake) Q50 V35 S710

GMAT TEST Q50 (89Percentile) V35 (80Percentile) S710 IR 7 (82Percentile)

On the test I could not complete my verbal on time. I had to guess an entire passage and that i believe just screwed it up for me. :(
However I feel I am worth more than that and I can overcome the time factor by practising more full length tests. The disappointment is that although I scored fairly well in the MGMAT tests and Kaplan premier 2013 tests, I failed to replicate the same performance on my GMAT prep and in the end i got the same result as I did on the GMAT prep tests. The MGMAT tests were PDF tests and the score is estimated using the score sheet i found on gmatclub. I was always confident of scoring at least a 730 and optimistic about a 750 score on the GMAT.

My questions are:

1> Going by my mock test performance is it realistic to retake the exam. I understand that there is no hard and fast rule here but i need one of you experts to gauge my performance.
2> Is a 710 and the current gpa good enough to get me to my targeted schools?
3> If i do retake the exam what should be the procedure? I am really frustrated that I have to wait for 31 days to really write it again, is there a workaround?
4> Since i have exhausted a lot of resources already, what are some good advanced compilations for verbal?

Thanks in advance.
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   17 Jan 2014, 22:03
Expert Reply
Assuming you have to retake, You will have to wait for 31 days. Yes. No workaround.
When are you planning to apply? This year or next one? You only have one year of work experience and most want at least 2-3 by the time of matriculation.

If you are applying now, you probably don't have time to retake, and need to fill out/submit applications. You can try to retake, which means spend 100% of your time on applications and then retake the exam. Some folks get a fairly good bump by doing this. Not much harm in taking besides the nagging $250 which are burning a hole in your pocket probably anyway.

If you have to retake and have time, you can consider one of the courses that offers money back guarantee (e.g. Magoosh, GMAT Pill, or Knewton I believe all have different money back guarantee policies). That's pretty easy and if you don't score 760, you get money back... not too bad. However, READ the policies carefully. They all require different things.

You have a great quant score (you still need to practice though about 10-20% of your time on Quant to keep in in perfect shame and spend the rest of the time on Verbal. You should be able to nail 750.


Good luck!
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   18 Jan 2014, 04:09
Hi BB,

I am planning to apply only after I have completed at least 2-3 years of work experience. I will be working on my profile simultaneously.

All the 3 courses look good. However, after having gone hardcore for the past few weeks and having comprehensively studied once for the GMAT, wouldn't a plan like the below work?

1: Solve 4 practice tests for the first 2 weeks. 2 on a weekend.
2: Keep practising questions online on a regular basis for the first 2 weeks.
3: Start writing full length tests again in the last 2 weeks.

Maybe if i tell you a little bit more about how my exam went, you can help me pin point my flaws:

1: My quant was not very smooth, a little rugged but i was kinda sure of getting my questions right except a select few questions. I did not feel weak in any of the sub topics, was fairly confident.
2: My verbal was sailing smooth till 21 questions. After which i spent around 7 minutes on 2 questions - an SC and a CR. :oops:
3: Because of that huge wastage in time, I was left with only 17 minutes for the last 12 questions. Which is when I got another RC. I had to take a call and since RC was not my strength I decided to guess the entire RC and to my plight, it had 4 questions in it. :( After which a flurry of SC questions followed which seemed easy and towards the end I just couldn't handle the anxiety and i believe messed up that final 2 CR questions as well.

I feel time bummed me. Is there a definite way to overcome this? :roll:

Thanks in advance.
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   18 Jan 2014, 08:40
For all schools other than NYU, Haas, Columbia you score is good enough if you can build up rest of your profile, extra curricular, promotions at work etc.
For US Top 15 schools you should try to score as high as possible >=760, then do all the rest as mentioned above :).
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   18 Jan 2014, 08:48
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Just adding to the list that BB mentioned. You can also try our Verbal Live Prep course. We offer a 4 point score improvement guarantee. Click herefor the terms.

I am assuming that you are a non-native. We have more reviews and success stories by non-natives than any other company on GMAT Club. Click hereto see the audio interview of a guy who improved from V21 to V41. Click hereand here to see a few more success stories. You can also verify the student's Linkedin profile.

Attend this free session tomorrow and take the free trial to evaluate the course. You may also just take our Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension diagnostic tests to assess where you stand.

-Rajat
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   19 Jan 2014, 23:48
First of all, 710 is a great score. Congrats on that. I can see how you want to improve verbal - though I would only retake if you are absolutely sure you can improve at least 30 points. Otherwise you may come off as a compulsory test taker who already scored 710+

Having said that, I can vouch for egmat if you want to improve your score from v35 to v40.

Posted from my mobile device
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink] New post   22 Jan 2014, 04:09
JackDaniels wrote:
First of all, 710 is a great score. Congrats on that. I can see how you want to improve verbal - though I would only retake if you are absolutely sure you can improve at least 30 points. Otherwise you may come off as a compulsory test taker who already scored 710+

Having said that, I can vouch for egmat if you want to improve your score from v35 to v40.

Posted from my mobile device


Yes I'm going through the EGMAT course structure. I am still not sure if I should be taking it up. My confusion arises from the fact that during mocks my verbal score was consistently higher than it was on the actual GMAT test. As of now, I plan to give a few mock tests on the weekend and reassess my quantitative and verbal ability. I will post my scores again here and seek advice of all of you.
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Re: GMAT 710 - planning to retake, seeking advice [#permalink]
22 Jan 2014, 04:09
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