Final debrief - 780 (Q50,V46)

Hi folks,

Just took the GMAT exam yesterday for the first (and last) time .

I'm really happy about my score even if I did not scored 51 in quant (which I did in a lot of prep tests ...)

Background:
I am a non-native English speaker (but have studied some time in the US) and I have a maths/engineering background. So I guess I was already starting with an edge on the quant side (I always liked this kind of little exercises ). My bigger weakness was obviously on the verbal side (especially Sentence Correction).

Prep material:
I attended Kaplan classes (math and verbal, but I went there almost only for the verbal part), did some of their CAT Tests as well as GMAT Prep CAT tests and for quant I just tried to answer questions on the GMAT Club maths forum! For SC, nothing revolutionary: I bought MGMAT book and it really is top notch. I don't think I would have scored so high in verbal without this material. CR is just logic and RC is just reading, so I don't know how to really work on that (I didn't apply Kaplan methods since I think I didn't fit my "style" of answering questions).

My prep tests scores are as follows:
Kaplan CAT 1 (diagnostic test out of the blue): 680 (Q48, V34)
Kaplan CAT 5 (Ultimate Practice Test, very interesting feature): 730 (Q55,V38)
Kaplan CAT 1 (retake): 700 (Q49,V35)
GMAT Prep 1: 760 (Q49,V45)
Kaplan CAT 6: 730 (Q51,V41)
GMAT Prep 2: 760 (Q51,V40)
GMAT Club Maths 25: 35/37 (100%)
GMAT Prep 1 (retake): 770 (Q51,V42)
GMAT real test: 780 (Q50,V46)

Test day experience:
Since I am not a morning guy, I registered for the test at 1:45pm. Arrived at the test center early at 1:05 and they let me start at 1:15 (which was very fortunate since I had a train to catch right after the test).

AWA went pretty well I think (waiting for the results, anything above 4.5 will satisfy me anyway), I have nothing special to say about that.

Quant started as usual, and I made THE mistake I was trying to watch for : spending too much time on a question whose answer I did not find right away. I was something like 2-3 minutes early arriving at question 17, and then I Think I spent something like 10 to 12 minutes on this one... That has always been a problem for me: I do not see time flying while I am enjoying a problem that I find somewhat tricky... I looked at the timer and said something like "OMG, I need to click on something and go on". I did, but I was already around 7 minutes late for the second half of the test. I rushed during the following 10 questions and even answered almost randomly on 2 of them (which I never do but I really did not want to get caught by time at question 34...). Didn't doublechecked on my calculations neither (which I always do when I have the time). I finally arrived at question 35 with 4 minutes on the timer and answered the last question with an "educated guess" on the last 3 seconds...

Then the break: I knew I did not do my best on quant and I was nervous. Couldn't get entirely past this during the 10 minute break.

Started verbal and happily I found the 5 first questions very straightforward. I already was 2 minutes early by then and it helped me a lot in gaining confidence for the rest of the exam. I found verbal to be very in line with GMATPrep verbal. It went smoothly, got a lot more complicated during the second half (especially a very long RC on astrophysics...) but I thought during the test that I was doing things right. Had a lot of trouble during the last 4 questions to stay focused on the test (I knew it would soon be over and I wanted it to be already), but I finally did.

Asked for my score and was pleasantly surprised to see that I did my best performance for the actual test

Finally, I am a little disappointed about the quant part (I think I could have definitely scored a 51 on quant), but VERY happy about the verbal one. I was aiming anything between 40 and 43 as a target, but I was not even hoping to score that high. And VERY happy about my overall score too . I don't think that I would have got 790 if I had scored 51 on quant anyways, and this is not a big deal (just for my ego : I could have had 99% (99%,99%) and finally my least percentile is for my strongest part...)

My advice for you who suffer the same 'issue' as I do: do not keep your eye off the timer! This is really a stupid mistake to make and it could have cost me more...

Let's start the rest of the application now!