Hello all,

I am planning to give the exam in 10 days. I bumped into this forum very recently and I was overwhelmed at the amount of preparation that everybody in the forum here does. I am a bit scared now.

I have not given any practice tests yet. I have been practicing the questions from the Official Guide, Princeton Review, Cracking the GMAT, Kaplan Verbal Workbook, Kaplan Advanced Prep.

Please guide me as to what I should do now before the exam. Which practice tests should I go for and are these tests available for free?

Please help me!!!!

Thanks.

Actually, honestly, I would reschedule now that way they only charge you 50 bucks. If you try to reschedule within 8 days of the exam, they charge you the full amount of the test hence it is pointless to reschedule it if you are taking it for the first time

Call today, reschedule for like a month. month and a half, get prepped

I don't know of anyone who could get an awesome score without studying for at least a month. You don't want to waste $250 dollars!

Thanks for your advice. I will take the GMAT Prep today or tomorrow and then decide if I want to reschedule. I have time till 17th to reschedule it with $50.

Are both the GMAT Preps the same level, in terms of what score people usually get?

Agree with rhyme. Take GMATPrep (entire, with essays) today/tomorrow. Then decide if you like that score. If you don't, postpone by at least 1 month (it takes most people 2-3 months of studying to maximize their score) and prep like all us other crazy fools on this board. Also, most all of the schools say that either round 1 or 2 is about the same in terms of competitiveness... don't push it... if you don't like your GMATPrep score, then push back exam 2 months and shoot for Round 2. Only exception to this is Columbia, in which Early Decision makes a big difference. Good luck.

Marcus

here is the link

http://www.mba.com/mba/TaketheGMAT/Tool ... in2006.htm

just do it!!!! download the software, see what it offers and take the exam... the software has additional practice problems in addition to the test!

I gave the Prep 1 today and it was a dismal failure -- 530

I felt very disappointed and the same time I am happy to know I have a chance to reschedule. I am planning to push my test to a month.

Though this was just a practice exam for some reason I was very tensed and was not able to maintain it cool. At one point in Q I thougt I was doing it well, because I started to get diffcult questions. I spent more time on difficult questions to get them right and time started running out. This made me feel nervous and then I think I got a bunch of them wrong somewhere in the middle of the Q section. I started getting easy questions then...I then lost hope of a qood score. I got 19 questions wrong in Q.

The same mood carried over to the V section. Somehow I felt I could handle V better than Q. I had a couple of mins left, but then the final score made me feel I cannot handle this test well.

Please help me out.....

Thanks for all your time

He never said his target score was 700 though...

Whats your target score?

700 is my dream score, but I do not want to get less than 650.

I dont think 1 month will be enough to jump 120 points to be honest. The reality of it is this -

To really be sure you will pull a 650 on the real exam, you should be scoring higher than that on practice exams. Most people tend to score a little bit lower on their real exam than on the practice exams - you should aim for 670 or better on practice tests to be confident of a 650.

Based on my experience, jumping 120 to 140 points is going to take work - I'd guess upwards of two months, and quite possibly three. This is, of course, just my view, so I'll see what others say, but you should prepare yourself mentally for a signficant push. My 130 point jump took me near 300 hours to achieve. A friend of mine jumped 80 points, and worked even harder than I did.

I'm not trying to scare you here - you can do this - but you need to be realistic as to what its going to take. Percentages help put the numbers in perspective. A 530 is 47%, a 650 is 84%. A 670 is 88%. A 700 is 93%. To go from 530 to 700, in percentage terms, were talking about doubling your performance. Thats a significant jump.

My advice:

Create a 2 month schedule that covers all the material. Take one practice exam every 2 weeks at first, then 1 a week for the last month. If, by the time you get to the end of the 2 month mark, you are scoring 660 or better on your last three exams, you are ready.

Remember:

The GMAT is not a test of intelligence...The GMAT is a test of endurance, both in studying for it, and in taking the exam.