My GMAT journey so far, from 480

Hi All,

While I'm all for the use of free practice CATs, you have to be careful about what you use to assess your skills so close to Test Day. You should want the most realistic experience possible (that matches up with your Official Test Date in as many ways as you can reasonably make happen). Free practice CATs sometime do not include the Essay and IR sections and are sometimes not adaptive, so any score results from those simulations can be inaccurate (and often "inflated").

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

I will likely purchase exam pack 1 for the most realistic simulation as possible.

I wish I had booked the GMAT earlier though, because I am feeling pretty burned out and like I have peaked. But there is no sense in thinking about that too much, it's just demotivating. I will keep up practicing everyday and hopefully on test day, it will be worth it. If not I'll try again as soon as possible!

Great, best of luck with the practice exam. Keep reviewing those mistakes.

Don't over do it, but if you have time for another practice test or would like some additional questions to test yourself on, take the test here: www.gmatpill.com/gmat-practice-test/practice-test

...then review, review, review...

Thanks for tips and kind words! I decided to take this day off and do the mock tomorrow, since my anxiety went through the roof yesterday and felt like I was having a mental breakdown. My peers told me I'm putting too much pressure on myself (work, gmat, gym) and that I should take a day off. So I will be back at it tomorrow. I still have a month left and I can't afford to lose focus now!
I've decided to try and limit time spent studying in one sitting to two hours (other than mocks), since I feel like I'm losing it

CAT today from MGMAT : 620 Q37 V37

Was mentally drained by the end of this today, just wanting to be finished. I feel like my mental stamina is DIMINISHING. I'm quite worried. However, tomorrow I will review this test and hopefully gain some insight on what is going wrong and why!

I am finished with GMAT for the day, am so exhausted!

Hi sabineodf,

The feeling you described about "just wanting the Test to be over" is something that most Test Takers face (usually in the Verbal section when fatigue starts to set in). It's one of the most dangerous moments during the Exam - if you succumb to it, then THAT goal will take over. Your original goal is to score at a high level, but the moment you shift to "I just want this to be over" then you'll find that you stop taking notes, stop making smart choices, stop doing work and stop getting points.

The GMAT is going to take about 4 hours whether you nail it or bomb it, so you need to be comfortable with the idea that you're going to work hard THROUGHOUT the Test and that you have to maintain discipline to pick up all of the points that are reasonably available, including the ones at the end of the GMAT.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

I know dat feel. Planned some extra work for today because I was really motived during this week, but after scoring 680 in a mock yesterday, my motivation started to fade away a little bit. Decided just to do two hours of studying, 1 hour tomorrow and then get back at it. Almost feels like a little break, you should consider it.

Reviewed my most recent exam and I can tell it's fatigue that hindered me in the verbal section this time. At about question 23 is where I started getting answers wrong, and I remember getting to a reading comprehension question about LCD screen components and wanting to smash my computer. Those were the only reading comprehension questions I got wrong on the test though.

I had 11 total errors on verbal, 5 critical reasoning , 4 sentence correction and 2 reading comprehension. This is a little bit of a confidence boost for me because I know if I can beat the fatigue, I can squeeze out more points.

Weaknesses in quant are equations that need factoring and work/rate problems. I hate factoring first of all, I feel like I'm randomly guessing numbers that never fit and then have to end up guessing the final answer anyways.

These two types of problems come up a lot and it's very frustrating that they are my absolute downfall. I keep telling myself I will dedicate time to them, but they suck so much. But I'll do it tomorrow. I will get up and dedicate my day to these two horrible issues.

Other takeaways: I lost a few points on this test due to 1) not reading the problem properly and missing out on information that changed the answer, 2) not WRITING out the problems (tables, charts, lines, etc)

For my next mock I will definitely try to keep that in mind, because even though my verbal is quite strong I am more likely to succeed if I don't have to rely on my quant to pull up my average.

An update on my strategy thus far: I enrolled in EMPOWER Gmat, because I have realized that I need to get some strategy down and the video explanations are helping me a lot. It's a lot to go through in just under a month, so I will focus on the quantitative parts since my verbal is relatively stable. I'm following the plan, but not 100 % since I already had done CATs and already know I will do one on Saturday. There is a lot of strategy work that I will hopefully be able to apply that will maybe help improve my score. It's recommended to do the course over 3 months but since I have 3 months under my belt already, I guess it won't be terrible to try and get it in 1 seeing as I have some background knowledge.

So now I'm working through this, and it's motivating because I'm not aimlessly doing thousands of problems.

Hi sabineodf,

If you have any questions during your studies, then you can feel free to reach out to me or the Team (at info@empowergmat.com) at any time.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

After a week with zero focus on verbal, and all focus on quant strategy I scored 620 on my MGMAT mock today. Q39 V36

This is interesting to me because on quant I had to guess the 7 last questions because I ran out of time. This kind of insinuates that applying strategies really increased my results in quant, seeing as the last questions were probably wrong (barely read them). Verbal was truly affected by fatigue and decreased this week, likely also due to lack of practice. I will continue to apply strategies learnt through EMPOWERGmat this week and also try to focus a little bit more on verbal again to balance that out. I've hit 40 before on verbal, if I can keep quant at this level and bring my verbal back up, it looks like my score can be 600+.

Only a couple weeks left at this point, no time for slacking. Work is busy but I have at least 2 full days of study a week up until my exam, plus weekends.

I don't have more MGMAT mocks left, and my MacBook broke and is in for reparation which is annoying because that is where my GMATprep software is, so I'll have to do test 1 again on a different computer in order to access test 2.......

I should be doing 3 more mocks before test day (at least?). Notes for next mock: apply strategy but don't completely disregard timing..... Find out how to stay alert for verbal.

It's no secret that my biggest problems are nerves and confidence. 26 days until the big day. I've exhausted all of my MGMAT CATS, and will now hit the reset button on them.

I know I will see a lot of repeat questions but I will do one on Tuesday and Thursday this week: to see if I recognize how to tackle these problems. I will get an inflated score and am fully aware of that (Saturday I will do a fresh CAT that I have never taken before).

I am hoping to just apply some of the strategies I've learned and work on my timing for these. And maybe the inflated scores will give me a little confidence boost anyways, it is needed!

So for this week:
Monday: review CAT 6 taken on Sunday, practice some CR and SC on gmatclub
Tuesday: resit CAT 1
Wednesday: How did I do? Work on weaknesses
Thursday: resit CAT 2
Friday: How did I do? Work on weaknesses
Saturday: Fresh CAT: Not sure on resource for this yet.

Sunday: maybe a day off/review my CAT.

I really wanted to do my GMATprep CAT2 this weekend but my MacBook is currently with apple technicians hopefully being repaired... If I get it back before then, and my software hasn't been deleted, then I will do that.

I wish I wasn't so nervous.