720 (Q47, V42, AWA 6.0)

What tests have you been taking? I would ignore all the other scores except for the GMAT prep. What is your breakdown like?

Since you're so close to the test I would focus on the areas where you are a little weak, not the areas where you are really weak. You can make a lot of progress in those areas in a short period of time.

NN

Congrats, way to go!

Congrats. It's job done for you.

great stuff nognig!!!

welldone mate

Congrats bud - I'm shooting for the same score next week.

congrats noging. Well done.

Great Score!

In verbal, did you guess? If yes, what are specific question types you chose to guess?

How did you keep pace in RC? I know timing makes all the difference in this area. What worked for you here?

In GMAT, I faced CRs that are very abstract questions (none of the choice seems to be correct) than what we experience in GMat Prep or OG. Did you face such ones? How do we attack those?

Were your RCs science passages?

Great score and nice split, NN. Congratulations!

on those 2 GMATPrep tests you took, were there alot of repeats, in particular in the verbal?

I'd like to better gauge my performance, however it's hard for me to assess my GMATPrep scores since there are a few repeats, especially in the verbal. I know that my verbal score will be lower on the real thing, but I just want to have a better approximation by how much.

Thanks. BTW, great score!

I don't think I really guessed on any verbal, but there were a few questions where I wasn't really confident about my answer. I think I did it most with the SC questions.



Actually I think I took the timing a little too seriously. I was checking the clock every 10 minutes or so. I'd just do a quick calculation (if I'm on question 29/41, I've got 13 questions to go, if I saw 24-26 minutes left, I knew I was OK). Problem was, if I made a miscalculation, my stress level would go way up and it would really distract me from the task at hand.

I didn't really worry about timing for specific questions, I'd just check every 3-4 questions as I went along.



I agree 100%. I found almost all the questions in the OG11 book to be pretty obvious. I think I got 98%+ of them right, the first time. On the real thing, quite a few seemed to be a little more vague, as you put it. I initially though they were experimental questions, but apparently not.

Same thing with the GMAT prep. In both the tests I took, I got every single RC and CR question correct. The only questions I got wrong were SC. I'm pretty sure I got a few RC and CR questions wrong.

I don't think there is any easy way to attack those types of questions. I know I went back and forth a few times to see if there was something I was missing, but in the time I had, I couldn't see it.

NN

Yup, but coming from a science background they were the easy ones.

There was one RC question about global warming. Another one concerned old-style capitalism vs. the current market. The third I can't remember.

I didn't find any of the RC passages particularly difficult (in terms of the reading). The questions themselves were a different story.

NN

awesome, congrats!!!

No, none of the verbal questions repeated. That's the weird thing. I found the GMATprep verbal questions much easier.



I wouldn't bother trying too gauge how much your score will change. I was pretty sure I was going to get somewhere between 740-760 based on my GMATprep scores, but I didn't. The only real trend I've noticed is that your final score will likely be within 20 points of your GMATprep scores.

And I'm not sure your verbal score will necessarily be lower. I've read a number of these "after action reports" and people's opinions have been all over the place. Compared to the GMATprep, some though the quant was harder, others easier and some the same. Same with the verbal.

I'm starting to think that there is a decent amount of variability in questions from test to test. I mean, they can rank a question as being a 700 level question and another as a 750 level question, but when it comes down to you, will you see them the same way?

Also, if you look at the thread where the one guy is testing out a number of techniques using the GMATprep software (do well on the first 8, or do well on the last 8, etc), you'll see that your score can vary a lot depending on when you get questions wrong. I'm convinced that if you got 10 questions wrong out of the first 20, you'll get a much lower score than if you get 20 wrong over the entire test (evenly spread out).

So it would seem that the order you get the questions can have a significant impact on your final score.

For example, I must have gotten 7-8 SC questions in a row in the first 10 questions of the verbal section. Since SC is my weakest area, did that bring down my verbal score?

Then again, you have no control over that, so why worry?

NN

Oh, those are interesting subjects. Was the third one regarding mating habits of insects, specific chemical reactions in the body due to a certain drug, etc.?

Nope, neither one of those.

I'm sure the type of RC questions you get can have a huge impact on your score as well. Like you said, if I found the passages interesting, it was very easy to fully comprehend the subject matter and quickly choose the right answer.

Hmmm! Now I'm racking my brain trying to remember what that third passage was. Couldn't have been to interesting if I can't remember it.

NN

Congrats nognig ! Good verbal score.