Hi GMAT Warriors,
I'm new to this club, introduced by one friend of mine.
Well it's nice to see lot of people talking about GMAT stuff.
Well I'd like to share something with you all guys, just to keep you guys wary of something that happened to me, might happen to you.
Well i took my GMAT on 23 Nov-04 and now rescheduled for next week.
Here is the story.
I am from India with engineering and business background with a full time job, so needless to say that i'm bit confortable with quantitative section of GMAT. But, my verbal (Don't ask me
)......
So, i started thinking about GMAT in mid september and decided to go for it by 20th september-04 and started my preparation from 25th of september-04. I picked Kaplan as a basic material.
In last week of September I took my diagnostic.....here is the way things went on, till i get myself registered for GMAT on 25th of Oct-04.
Diagnostic 530; Verb-28%tile Quant-71%tile
After 10 days of my preparation i took my first Kaplan practice test...
Kaplan CAT-1:540; Verb-23%tile
Quant-55%tile
(C'mon i can do better than that.......
)
Kaplan practice test-1: 620; Verb-35%tile Quant-99%tile
(That looks cool..........i can do better than this
)
Kaplan Practice test 2:610; Verb-38%tile Quant-96%tile
(O'my gosch.... what happened
......I can handle it.......Bounce back)
Kaplan practice test 3:690; Verb-61%tile Quant-99%tile
(That looks cool............c'mon i can do better than this
)
I was done with everything from Kaplan's course book and CD by mid october. And i decided to go for my Kaplan CAT.
Kaplan CAT 2:550; Verb-19%tile Quant-94%tile
It was really a bad day for me.......i didn't know what to do about this.....somehow i consoled myself and decided to keep going......one thing i decided that i'll get myself register for GMAT if i score 650 on my Kaplan CATs (which are relatively tougher than practice test and real GMAT)....
Kaplan CAT3: 540; Verb:29%tile Quant:52%tile
(Again i got busted......
) I decided to crush this THING........
Kaplan CAT 4:650; Verb-52%tile Quant-95%tile
(Atlast i nailed it down
, it was 25th October-04 and i got myself registered for GMAT)
People around me, suggested me to focus on my verbal, if i can nail it down, GMAT is a piece of cake
.
So, since 25th October-04 till the last day of my exam i worked on my verbal section.
Here is the performance report:
Princeton Review test: 650; Verb-70%tile Quant-70%tile
(It was a funny score............u know why? i got only 4 problems wrong in total, but i got my third problem wrong, so.....
......i can handle it)
Barrons Test: 600; Verb-68%tile Quant-59%tile
(What is happening to me
)
Anyways, i revised the quant section and took last couple of tests.....
I took couple of tests where i scored 750 to 780, but i'm not mentioning it here because it was just twice so......it might be a fluke
Powerprep 1-650; Verb-52%tile Quant-93%tile
Kaplan CAT 5-660; Verb-61%tile Quant-86%tile (just two days before exam)
............u know what i said.........Let's do it BABY!!!!
On the day of my GMAT, which was 23rd nov-04, I was not feeling fresh anyways i went for the exam.
Till essay section it was ok
(but i found myself bit uncomfortable).......my uneasiness increased when i proceeded to next section which was Quant
, i found myself struggling with quant problems which were proven to be piece of cake for me during my practice tests.
And by verbal section, i was totally out of my mind..........i didn't know what i was doing..........anyways when it was time to accept the final score..........i denied............because i knew i had not done so well.....so hard work of last two months went through drain.........
The crux of the whole story is that............my dear friends, even if you are doing good on practice tests it doesn't mean that you'll be going to do better on your real GMAT...........it may happen to you. At this moment i'm a kind of disheartened.
I'm going for my GMAT again, next week.........and i'll nail it down......and i'll be back with a happy ending..............