So today was the scheduled day for my GMAT test. I have been prepping for the past 3 months pretty seriously and did upwards of 20-30 hours a week (largely due to the benefit of things being somewhat slow at work and being able to also do GMAT during work hours). Never a bad thing to get paid for studying for this painful test, someone should indeed pay us for all this stress, pain and tears that come with the process.
However, unfortunately I only scored a 690 (Q48, V36) which is way below my practice GMATPrep tests and pretty much any test I have done so far. The quant was a bit below my range (49-51) but the verbal was terrible as I typically averaged somewhere between 40-47 although noticeably with more variability than in quant. Looking back maybe the fact that I had probably seen some of the verbal questions in the
OG and supplemental guides before the GMATPreps gave me a false sense of confidence?
The test started well, the first question in quant was extremely easy (I know people have recently encountered a tough one to start with, but that wasn't the case today) and the test progressed and got tougher as expected. Towards the later part I saw a couple of probability / combination / permutation problems which gave me a sign I was doing well. I was very nervous going into the test and on top of that had a rough day at work yesterday after getting into an argument with my boss but once quant was over I felt much more relaxed and was ready to do verbal. Going in I felt that CR and SC were my strong points. I hardly ever got CR questions wrong (95% hit rate) and I had an SC hit rate of 85-90% in practice. RC had always been problematic but I had not found a way to get better at it (had probably a hit rate of around 70-80% on these). However to my surprise the CR were brutal!! At times up to 3 of the answer choices could have been correct and I had doubts almost every time I picked an answer. Even SC seemed to be focusing on many odd expressions and not the typical paralellism, pronouns, idioms, structure, etc. I also encountered one long science passage that I actually felt was not that bad and 2 shorter business passages that probably gave me a lot more trouble (once again, many times down to two choices). I started getting a little tired towards the end and was also realizing that I am probably not doing too well. Not sure if this had anything to do with the verbal performance.
Needless to say I am dissapointed, depressed and not sure what to do from here. I would kindly welcome your guys' support, this thread has been one of the best things I discovered in my preparation even though I haven't had a chance to post much. I feel extremely burned out to the point of exhaustion. I am also starting a new offsite project at work which adds a four hour daily commute to my day so studying much during the week is going to be out of the question. I am also lost as to how to study for a retake. Please help! I feel like I have exhausted ALL materials. My strategy had been from the beginning to go through as much material as possible and assimilate along the way. I did keep an
error log of the
OG and supplemental guides but I tried to do as much and all material I could.
For reference here is what I used:
-
OG 11 (re-did last 30 problems of each quant section a second time)
- Verbal and Quant Supplemental Guides (re-did last 30 problems of sentence correction, and quant a second time)
-
Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction Guide (went through it twice)
- Kaplan GMAT 800
- Princeton Review - used it to get started
- Kaplan Premier Edition - used it to get started
-
Manhattan GMAT Number Properties
-
Manhattan GMAT Equation and Inequalities Book
- ALL GMAT Club Challanges including the 5 Verbal ones - by the way these are absolutely awesome! I managed to score in the 70-75% on quant ones and ironically in the 85% on the 5 Verbal Challanges
- 1000 CR and SC questions - went through maybe 50 of each, felt it difficult to gauge any progress since they do not have explanations for the correct answers.
Tests I took in order, although I did not keep track of the dates and lost my sheet with breakdowns for some;
- Princeton Review CAT - 650 - first test
- Kaplan CAT - 640
- Powerprep 1 - 700
- Powerprep 2 - 730
-
Manhattan GMAT Free CAT - 670
- GMAT Prep 1 - 710
- GMAT Prep 2 - 750 (Q49, V42) had a bunch of lucky guesses on the quant part
- GMAT Prep 1 - (retake) - 710
- GMAT Prep 1 - (retake2) - 730 (Q49, V40)
- GMAT Prep 2 - (retake) - 770 (Q50, V47)
- GMAT Prep 1 - (retake3) - 770 (Q49, V47)
- GMAT Prep 2 (retake2) - 760 (Q51, V41)
- Also re-did the Quant portions of both GMAT Prep 1 & 2 a few days before the test and got a 50 and 51 respectively (skipped verbal)
As you can see my quant score averages 49 which is close to what I got today, while my verbal ranges from 40-47 and looking back maybe somewhat deceiving due to the
OG repeats on the actual GMATPreps. At the same time I have a very good photographic memory - once I see a question I will almost always remember the answer to it even after going through 100's of other questions. So maybe another factor contributing to my false sense of verbal level?
First thing I did when I got home (after feeling sorry for myself and being on the verge of tears due to the frustration) was to set a new exam date - July 2nd, the earliest I could do with the 31 day wait period. The question is how do I prepare from here on? I dont have a good strategy when it comes to focusing on a specific area and my strategy from the beginning has simply been do as much as possible and see where you stand. When I noticed a problem with my SC for example I re-read the Manhattan SC Guide but aside from that I cant honestly say I have a very tailored approach. It also looks I may not be as good as I thought with CR?
I am very worried guys and on top of feeling extremely, extremely burned out (to the point where I think my health is starting to suffer), even worse, I dont know how to prepare for the retake. Your thoughts are very kindly appreciated and please feel free to ask me any questions about the test today.
close
31 May 2008, 17:09
) When solving OG, especially verbal, explain why each incorrect answer is incorrect. We must point out all flaws. That is if there are three violations, we must explain all three. Don't worry about the correct ones. I will also try this now.
