Test DayIt was a beautiful day in upstate NY and I felt at peace with the world. I went out to my car to start the long drive from Ithaca NY to Syracuse and guess what my car wouldn't start! How frustrating!!! I waited a few minutes and it finally started. But this little set back was an omen of how my day would go. I drove 21 miles and got to Cortland. At that time I needed to use the rest room. I stopped at a Sunoco (pronounced Su-no-ko) station. My bladder and bowels were not cooperating. I'm not sure if it was nerves but it was distracting. I decided to buy a soda (Dr. Pepper) to soothe my stomach. Well, my Honda Civic doesn't have a cup holder (weird, huh?) so I jam the cup between the passenger seat and e-brake lever. I pulled out of the station feeling better when I noticed that my cup had slid backwards dripping Dr. Pepper on the carpet. I quickly slid the cup back into place and soda must have accumulated in the straw. In the process of putting the cup back, the straw, serving as a catapult, launched soda all over the inside of my windshield and all over the top of the dash. I got some on my shorts too. I thought to myself "What else can go wrong?" I shouldn't have asked. On the unintentional comedy scale I would rate my experience a 7.5.
A little city called Cortland has a college there and is on the way to the 81 freeway. The NY Jets decided to hold training camp on the SUNY Cortland campus. I had planned for this and intended to leave two hours early. However, with the car and bowel problems I was running a little behind schedule. The traffic was horrendous in Cortland because of the Jets and because of construction. This led to more frustration and stress.
Once I got onto the 81 freeway things were good. I listened to No Doubt's greatest hits and tried to relax. During the drive I saw a cloud that looked like an equilateral triangle and quickly recited the formula for the area of an equilateral triangle which is \(s^2\sqrt{3}/4\). All was good.
I got to the testing center in East Syracuse with 15 minutes to spare before my 2:00 p.m. appointment. Then BOOM I had to use the bathroom AGAIN! After bonding with the porcelain, I approached the front desk and the girl gave me a list of instructions. Pearson VUE now has palm recognition software. Interesting.
I breezed through the two essays. Went to the bathroom again (My dang bowels!) and came back ready to conquer the GMAT.
I finished the GMAT and scored a 620 (39Q 53%, 36V 78%). [EDIT: AWA 5.5]
As the last one in the testing center I sat there for a few minutes stunned. I thought, "All of my hard work and the best I can score is a measly 620?" I am extremely disappointed with this score. My diagnostic back in June was a 650 (38Q, 42V). So I expected at the very least a 660-680. Here's how I screwed up the test:
1. My timing was off. I should have practiced this more instead of leaving it for the week before. My logic behind this was that if I knew the content really well then my speed would increase and the time spent on questions would decrease.
2. I don't think some of the fundamentals were as solid as they could have been. As Rasheed Wallace says "Ball don't lie" ... and so it is with the GMAT ... "GMAT don't lie." You either know the stuff or you don't. I got hammered on that probability question and a difficult geometry question.
Quant ExperienceFor the quant section I was behind from the beginning. Around the 4th or 5th question I got a difficult probability question followed by 2 equally difficult questions. I spent 6 minutes on the probability question and I think I got it wrong. I keep thinking to myself "Move on, move on." I couldn't bring myself to do move on since I felt that I was close to solving it. The question was really quite difficult to extract the information needed to solve the problem. By question 20 of 37 on the quant section I had approximately 20 minutes left. It was a race to the finish.
Verbal ExperienceVerbal was worse than quant. I had a lot of difficult CR problems and two really difficult reading passages. I was cursing GMAT the whole time because the beginning CR passages were crazy difficult. One particular CR was an LSAT type question with a long passage, at least for the GMAT, with an A-to-B,-B-to-C,-C-to-A,-what-can-you-infer-from-this-type-of-question. On question 21 I checked the time and was shocked to find that I had 19 minutes remaining with one long RC passage to go. The last 7 questions were absolute guesses.
The lesson learned from this experience as J. Walter Weatherman would say: "And that's why you don't put off your timing practice."
Practice Test ScoresI'm providing my practice scores to help guide your advice ....
GMATprep 1650 (38Q, 42V) June 21, 2009 DIAGNOSTIC
670 (38Q, 44V) July 6, 2009
660 (39Q, 42V) July 18, 2009
740 (45Q, 47V) July 30, 2009 - Verbal may have been skewed due to several repeats
After my 740 score I uninstalled the software. I had an old CD version of GMATprep so I decided to download the software from MBA.com. I took the test and saw one familiar question in quant and all new questions in verbal (even the reading comprehension passages!). I scored a 710 (45Q, 42V) August 8, 2009. I even made a thread about it:
does-anyone-know-whether-gmac-changes-questions-in-gmatprep-82087.htmlThe Wednesday before the test I took GMATprep 1, primarily for timing purposes and scored a 700 (48Q, 38V). I was a little worried because I never scored below a 38 on verbal. I wrote about that here:
someone-console-me-has-this-happened-to-anyone-82303.htmlGMATprep 2680 (42Q, 40V) June 27, 2009
720 (47Q, 42V) July 11, 2009
720 (45Q, 42V) July 25, 2009
710 (42Q, 46V) August 5, 2009
This was after the reinstall from MBA.com. I saw all new quant questions and some repeats in verbal (mainly RC passages ... I freakin' hate TQM!!!).
730 (49Q, 40V) August 11, 2009
Final ThoughtsI think I should retake the test. What do you guys think? After decompressing I realized that, although I screwed up, my score isn't that bad. Plus, knowing what I did wrong is half the battle.
My dream school is INSEAD and my current score is not good enough since INSEAD's 80% range is 650-740 or something like that. I am really disappointed with my performance. However, I am optimistic that I can break the 700 barrier. What do you GMATClubbers think? If you think I should retake, how should I prepare, what materials should I use to prepare with and when should I take the test?
Any advice is appreciated!
Franklin Delano Bluth
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Updated on: 28 Aug 2009, 13:07
) I saw your profile and I would like to tell you that I had no single attempt with more than V40 result, so u are destined to score 700 + )) 90% of people on gmat club have the opposite problem with high math and low verbal - and believe me that is far more difficult to handle.
