Got a 720. 44M 44V - Happy

congrats caspace! i remember talking to you a couple of months ago and remembered that you were taking the test in march. please share your prep method when you get a chance.

Congratulations, Caspace. Good Luck with your apps.

Nice score..

Good luck for ur apps..

Congratulations Caspace! This is a great score. Please come back when you have time to share your experience and strategies with the club, and tell us all about the beach.

So I am quite pleased with a 720 (44Q, 44V). I do wish I could have done just a little better on my Quant but...

I started my studies in mid January and had a very difficult time getting enough study time due to my somewhat unique situation. I am living abroad and the late winter and early spring are the best times to visit Mexico. I have had about 3 different visitors since January which nulled several weekends.

I started off with studying Kaplan knowing well in advance that math was going to be the bigger challenge for me. I focused about 80% of my time on that: math. I began by reading through the P-review and Kaplan math tutorials to basically refresh my memories from 10 years ago in tenth grade. The most helpful information to me was to really memorize all the triangles and to memorize the number properties - like how to tell if a number is divisible by 3 etc.

I don't remember all my practice scores but the basic trend was a consistent increase in math scores and a consistent decrease in verbal. I think it may have had more to do with my concentratino levels at the end of the test that my abilities in verbal. I was pretty confident based on my SAT performance etc so i didn't get too worried. I did how ever get very worried about the math. DS gave me fits and PS was no cake walk. I went over all the Kaplan Problem sets but better performances there did not seem to translate into good practice results. Mostly because i would take too long in the beginning and feel rushed through 12-22 and missed almost all of them and then end up with much easier questions later in the test which i would do okay on.

The above mentioned triangles and number properties helped plus I started to write down catch words like "pos int" for positive integer so that i would not get confused (especially on DS) and end up falling for the well documented tricks that ETS likes to play. I also started discussing the problems on this website which helped both my confidence (i suddenly didn't feel so dumb) and with the ways i was thinking through the problems - kind of an understanding of what to do and how to think.

The website also helped because my boss complained about me having my GMAT book out once - I swear he snuck up on me! - so started with the paper free approach of gmatclub and that was helpful. i even timed myself on problems.

As for verbal, I waited and waited having a relative confidence and a relative lack of quant confidence. I eventually studied the SC types of problems listed in Princeton Review and i also started to make the relatively easy first step of reading the CR question first so that when i read the statement i knew what i was looking for.

This is all for now because i gotta get back to work. I will write more about the test day experience as soon as I have the time.

Please feel free to ask any questions. BTW i was getting mid 500's on Kaplan and got a 720 on PP five days before the test. I will explain all this a little later but i wanted to get some tips out there to anyone who is interested.

Oh I almost forgot.

Thanks to everyone for the words of encouragement and congrats.

I really appreciate it. Good luck to all!

I will be back soon to talk a little more in depth on the prep work and on my test day experience.

Niiiice Job Caspace:

Please provide your percentages for your Quant and Verbal scores

Oh yeah:

Q 73%, V 97% and overall 96%

It is clear how the GMAT folks weigh the verbal section. However B-schools weigh things differently as I understand which is making me tinker with the idea that I could take it again and try and add a few points to my math score. I didn't feel that I got enough time to really study so I felt i left a little on the table. You may be hearing from me for another three months or so, but I would start studying again in June. I need a break.

I have a pretty mediocre GPA and need the GMAT to offset - not thinking about this for pure pride reasons.

What do people think?

I am sure that getting 49 or 50 in quantitative is not out of your hand. IMO, to improve math is not so difficult as to improve verbal. Al my effort now is to break the level 40 in verbal.

Even though, 720 is wonderful score.

All the best

SOP is not something that is frequently discussed, it is highly normal for so many students to be unaware of it. However, once someone begins the process of studying abroad, they are exposed to the idea of SOP and how important it is to the admissions procedure.

Then, you should probably keep going on Quant and retake to achieve a higher score.

With a Verbal score in the 40s, you could score 750+ with a higher Quant score, and increasing you Quant score is a fairly straightforward matter of mastering one concept, strategy, or question type at a time.

For some tips on how to increase your Quant score, see this post.

How to Increase Your GMAT Quant Score: Top 25 Tips

Hi Marty.
I am a bit confused. You are replying to the post from 2005!?