Hi,
First of all, let me say big thanks to gmatclub community for sharing gmat material, experience, tips so generously, notwithstanding my abysmal GMAT performance. GMATclub was especially helpful in providing solutions for tough
OG gmat quant questions.
I retook the GMAT in December '13 and scored 750 with a very poor score of 48 on quant. Here is the breakdown Q48+V46+IR4+AWA5. I studied for about 1.5 months. All I studied was for quantitative section. I used the following material:
1.
OG 13 (did verbal section only once but repeated quant questions I got wrong)
2.
OG for quant review 2nd edition
3. GMATPrep Question Pack1 (finished only quant questions)
3. GMATPrep 1, 2, 3 (I could not get to Test4)
4.
MagooshOverall I solved more than 1500 gmat quant questions. I chased down each question I got wrong: studied the explanation given on gmatclub and manhattan club forum and really tried to understand where I went wrong and how I would not commit the similar mistake again. After so much of hard work I was totally crestfallen to see 48 on my quant section. I took the gmat first time in 2008 and my gmat score was 710 (Q48+V39). That means my quant score has not budged one bit with all my efforts. What's more frustrating is that my undergrad was in mechanical engineering. So I don't think fundamentals is my problem. However here are few areas I really struggled with:
1. Silly mistakes: I am guilty of Real brain farts- calculating that A is bigger on note pad and picking B as an answer instead on the screen, not counting no. of columns properly in DI questions, answering Sam's age whereas Mandy's age was asked, writing down a number in such sloppy hand-writing that it looks 35 instead of
31, not switching signs while flipping the inequality, or not distributing the negative sign properly, making a mistake while trying solving the entire quadratic equation in the head etc etc..
2. I hate writing with the note pad and pen given at the test center. As if my handwriting is not despicable enough all ready, now I need to deal with this evil stationary. Believe me, writing down the calculations is the most stressful experience for me during the test. Has anyone faced the similar problem? Will it help buying Manhattan's note pad and pen?
I am just sick and disgusted at my inability to figure out GMAT math. So absolutely any advice will be really appreciated -
- what books, testprep company material I should try?
- Whether I should memorize tables up to 30, certain squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots etc etc
- Whether I should create flash cards for math formulae?
- Any exam or test strategies I should follow?
I am not a perfectionist but really need to retake the GMAT to improve my quant score. I just got rejected by every single PhD Finance program in top75. I need to up the quant score at least to 50. I have spoken with professors on the adcoms and they told me that without 50 on quant it is just an auto reject.
Thank you