GMATT73 wrote:
Pelihu, first and foremost I would like to extend a warm congratulations to you on your truly exceptional performance. You not only broke into the 99th %ile, but you tipped the scales towards GMAT perfection (~99.6%). Clearly, you have become THE authority within this forum. By all means, please continue to provide your value added insights to other struggling members who strive just to break the 600 mark, myself included.
On a non-related topic, I would also like to personally thank you for your consideration at the top of this thread. You and I had Yin-Yang results last month; whereas you blew the lid off the exam and went ionispheric, I imploded and sunk to the Mariana trench of GMAT hell. Therefore, I am very sorry to have posted so late. After last month's disaster, I spontaneously took a couple weeks off and went horseback riding deep in the hinterland of Australia to do a little soul searching and build up enough confidence to attempt to overcome this hurdle once again.
Your signature says it all: sometimes when you lose, you really do win.
Nevertheless, your raw, unwavering determination has served as a great inspiration for others here to push ourselves to new limits. For the greater sake of everyone applying this round, or any other time, please continue to update us (on this thread) on your application process, and if possible, try to become an MBA ambassador for others who aspire to follow in your footsteps.
All compliments aside, I must honestly say that I am
slightly disappointed that you did not hit the almighty 800. You, of all people, definately have the aptitude of doing so. It would have been a epoch-making achievement that so many people have been looking forward to reading about. This is not to say that you need to or even should retake, because as you said, you were firing on all 12 cylinders that early fall afternoon. I guess it's just human nature to be curious as to what it takes to reach the pinnacle (a Q51/V51 or a Q52/V51??). At what point does the bell curve once again touch the x-axis?
One final request, if I may. Provided that it doesn't breech your confidentiality agreement with GMAC, could you possibly jog your memory and enlighten us with the
kinds of questions we can expect towards the upper bin? Honestly, is the
OG (and it's supplementary guides) really representative of the difficulty level of Q/V 40+ problems? The word on the street is that the
OG caps off around the 600~650 level and that anything beyond that is essentially "no man's land." In your opinion, is there any validity to this rumor?
Good luck with your applications and all of your subsequent b-school related future endeavors.
Your friend and fellow member,
Matt
MATT, thanks a lot for the post. Like many others, I am happy to see that you are back to give it another try. This gracious message is just another indicator of why so many people here like you and want you to do your best.
I will definitely continue to update my application status as I go through the process. I have been posting in "The B-school Application" forum recently. Currently, I'm going to information sessions and visiting most of the places that I would like to apply to. I am targeting my applications R2 and will be shortening my list based on the advice of Paul from
accepted.com (blog also here at GMATclub).
You know, I don't know what score you need to get 800. I'm assuming it is 51/51 - I believe Rhyme confirmed with GMAC that currently the highest available score is 51 for both Q & V. Kevin said the same thing and I think those sources are reliable. I really cruised through the verbal section on test day - I finished with 20 minutes to spare and every answer just seemed so clear. I think that the difference between 50 & 51 on Q is probably 1 or 2 questions, so it's easy to sit back and wonder "what if". An extra 2-3 more minutes at the end might have made the difference, but that's probably the case for almost everyone. The honest truth is that without further preperation, 50 is probably the high end for me on Q; a 51 would require some good fortune.
Regarding the type of questions, let's see what I can remember. On the quantitiatve side, I would agree that the
OG and GMATprep probably do not have questions at the highest difficulty level. For a small handful of questions, you will probably have to be creative and think on-the-fly during the exam. This might not be the case for people with substantial math backgrounds, but for others like myself, you might need to make up some stuff along the way. I should leave the analysis to the math gurus, as there are others here at GMATclub that have score 50-51Q.
Now for the verbal, I do remember that I did not have any boldface CR questions. I think the prevailing belief in the verbal forum is that these questions are indicators of high scores, but that wasn't the case for me. I did have one extremely long RC (scrolled for almost 2 pages), but I found the questions to be exactly as expected. I think that as you work with official practice questions, you start to get a feel for the types of questions they will ask following RC passages. Since you can only see one question at time, it helps to be able to guess what they will ask later so you can focus your concentration while reading.
The SC questions did get to be very difficult, with multiple clauses and diverse answer choices. For example, on some simpler SC questions, you might get 2 basic answers with some variations in verb tense and modifiers. In the most difficutl SC questions, you'll actually get 5 distinct answer choices that use different language and are formed with different modifiers and verb tenses. It can be time consuming to work through these types of problems, and you need a good grasp of the basics to narrow the field and focus in on the right answer.
I do not recall any serious challenges from the CR questions this time around. I will disclose that CR is probably my strongest of any area tested on the GMAT. The LSAT tests CR, and law school is like one big 3 year practice session for CR. For those trying to improve their verbal scores, I would highly suggest focusing in on CR. I believe, especially for non-native speakers and those with non-rigorious english backgrounds, CR is the easiest of the 3 verbal question types to master. That's just my personal opinion, but I feel that CR has elements of logic, reasoning and quantitative skills and does not require extensive review of rules.
In addition to the
OG, I did find the supplementary guide to be useful. I will also suggest the old paper tests. It seems that very few people use these old paper tests, but outside of the
OG and GMATprep they are the difinitive source for REAL questions. They will help you get a feel for question types and even right & wrong answer possibilities. I believe that as you are building your foundation for the exam, practicing with REAL questions is paramount. Once you are very familiar with real questions, it can be useful to use other sources like the SC1000, CR1000 the PS & DS question sets and the challenges. Also, by the time I took the exam the second time, I had gone through each of the GMATprep tests 3 times, and while there were definitely repeats, it was still a very effective way to prepare. I have heard some people say they want to save the GMATprep for 2 days before the real exam or something like that. I think that is too late to really learn new things based on the results. There's not harm in taking the GMATprep early and often - it is the best way to help you figure out what you need to work on.
It's great to see you back. We are all rooting for you and I'll be happy to help however I can.