Will this nightmare ever END?!?!?!?!

And about materials ...
Try using some general math/English books that teach you the basics of all the concepts used in the GMAT.
Try 'Elements of Style' for English I have heard good reviews for the grammar presented in it

This is not true.

From reading your post, I get the feeling that you almost 'neglected' quant. That might have been the reason for your low score. My advice would be:
1. Take a break from this stuff for a while. Go out, go on a vacation, read, play, drink, party, whatever. Do anything except study for the GMAT.

2. Refresh basic concepts. By this I mean the formulae, strategies, etc.

3. Start first with the non-OG material. Do the SC 1000, CR 1000 (the GMAT ones first and then the LSAT ones. Do not skip the LSAT ones)

4. Remember to work alternatively on quant and verbal. Alternatively as in not 1 week quant and then 1 week verbal. More like 1-2 days quant and then verbal.

5. Most important: Don't let this take over your life. Studying for the GMAT doesn't mean you can't do anything else. Spend some time on your hobbies. Trust me. This definitely helps.

Hey, don't sweat it. A bad day -- that's all. 640 is still a decent score.

What were you getting on GMATPrep? Perhaps you should try changing your study habits. Did you get nervous on test day? Did you simulate the test conditions well enough?

See where you went wrong, and improve on that. I'll be be keeping an eye out. You'll get to 700+ in no time.

Not that itd make a big difference, but why is my score a 640??? Q44 and V35 should be a bit higher than that?

No, a 640 is about right for a Q44,V35

Black Belt, look at the percentiles.

I think Q44 is only 73rd percentile?

Where as a 48 is a 85th

I was just curious b/c Combres had a Q42 and a V35. = 640

Like i said it wouldnt have made a big diff.

It also has to do with the difficulty level of the questions you got right. Combres probably got more difficult questions right whereas you might get more easy and medium questions right overall.

All the best man.

No, the question difficulty determines your raw score (Q_ _, V_ _), and it has nothing to do with the conversion from raw score to scaled score.

2 raw scores, such as the ones which produced the 640, will result in the same scaled scores because both scores fall within that scaled score's range.

Blackbelt.

I agree that a Q44 vs a Q42 wouldn't have matter much, but I think it should have boosted your score by at least 20 points I would think.

My Q42 was 66th percentile, I think.

On another note, I have been thinking about our 2nd gmat experiences, and I really am wondering if there is some type of foul play by GMAC going on with people who retake after a month of their previous test.

I don't understand how my score could vary so much in the quant, if the gmat is suppose to be an accurate assessment of your abilities.

I mean going from a Q42 to a Q35 doesn't make sense unless there was some sort of shenanigans pulled by the types of questions they were being thrown at me based on my previous test. Same goes for blackbelt, studying for a month and having a Quant score of 5 points decrease, wtf?. I agree that improving Verbal is difficult, but Quant, answers can be definitely found and studying should help.

The evildoers at GMAC must have given us more tricky questions because we took the another test so close to the previous test. I really think there is a conspiracy here.

The only thing that I changed when taking my quant this time around was going a little faster thru the questions and trying to answer all rather than having to guess on 5 questions at the end. Maybe this was my mistake, but I have tried to think back to the Quant questions that I received and I don't remember seeing anything that tricky. Yes I missed a few questions and I got a few easy questions at the end, but they were mixed with very difficult ones. Maybe my guessing ability just didn't work this time.

I am thinking that either I just got some questions wrong in a row and it found my weaknesses, or GMAC gave me extra hard questions as a smack in the face for thinking that I could actually get a better score in only a month later.

There is really no way to know what happened with our 2nd tests. I might wait until the new year to retake. Hopefully by then the test will clear my name, my punishment period is over, and I will get regular questions. The only problem with that of course is that I will have to start from square one reviewing materials, but that might be for the best.

Hi GMATBLACKBELT,

Don’t worry! You have a decent score.

On the GMAT I got 500 (Q36, V21) in December 2006. I retook it in May 2007 and scored 640 (Q44, V34). In total I prepared for the GMAT for 10 months almost everyday. I didn’t work at all. I got so nervous because of the test so that I was hospitalized. Prior to the preparation I had not done serious math, verbal and other analytical stuff for about 7 years so it took me 10 months to restore my analytical skills.

I think GMAT is a challenge in terms of the amount of time a person invests into rigorous (effective) preparation. The more you prepare the better you get. It is just that for someone it may take 1-2 months to prepare whereas for another it will be 1-2 years. But I doesn’t matter how long it is going to take as long one really wants to get a good MBA degree.

1.Do not treat the wording of the questions (especially the verbal questions) in a ordinary (casual) English. Just treat them as questions in foreign language which requires extra attention and digesting before answering.
2. Do the SETS
3. Have water AND chocolate during the break (before the verbal)
4. USE the ear thing (a sponge-like stuff to block outside noise)

Good luck. Just don’t give up!

Tohir

Guys as always thanks so much for the large amount of responses. I will not give up until I beat this thing. Last night did a challenges set and scored 96th percentile so i was pretty happy bout that. Did some verbal review 15 SC's, 13CR's, 1 RC, did very well on those as well.


Combres, I'm not sure if GMAC does that or not. Id prolly have to say it doesn't.

However, in your defense I must say this. The quant problems I got were very difficult. I was bombared with some impossible geometry problems. Had a couple of probabilities, so I thought I was in good shape.

Overall id say that the quant section on this past GMAT was def. the hardest i have ever seen. But there are only so many questions that GMAC can give u and sometimes I guess u just get ones that are easy and others that aren't. It maybe that I unfortunetly got the majority of the experimentals correct this time around and not the actual problems.


It could also be that both of us just did really poorly at the end or at some point during the test. 5 wrong answers in a row or something... this would have out Quants take a nose dive.

So many factors Ughhhhh..

Don't be down, I say take it as many times as you need to. Who cares if you have to take it 10 times to get the score you want? Sometimes luck does play a part and everything needs to fall into place. As the old saying goes, sometimes its better to be lucky than to be good. So I say keep trying and don't kill yourself over it. I killed myself over this test and my score was horrible. Now I am taking an algebra class, studying at a normal pace and w/e happens, happens. You can try your best but if your best isn't good enough than so be it. There is more to life than this stupid test. I hope you all agree with me.

I Took GMAT the same day as yours and got a 600(Q40,V32), The same score i got one year back, but then it was 600(Q44,V31). i didnt know how to comapare these 2 scores. Does my scores help you to understand Y u had 640.

Hey CookieMonster! It's good to see you are posting!

Not sure if I agree with you here... how would you explain?

Blackbelt: 640 Q 44 V 35
Combres: 640 Q 42 V 35

Mine: 710 Q 50 V 34
Another: 710 Q 50 V 36*
Another: 700 Q 50 V 35

(*All tests were taken this year except the 710 Q 50 V 36, taken in Dec 06)

Anyway, I don't want to hijack your tread Blackbelt... I do have a comment though.

Reading your posts, I felt that you are relying too much on your practice scores to determine your level. I did very well on my GMATPrep tests (700+) but ended up scoring 600 on my first exam. In my opinion, practice tests... well, are just practice tests. They can never replace the real thing. There are so many factors that come into play on the actual test day (stress, travel, exam center, alertness, pant pooping! etc.) that might effect your performance but you have to stay positive. You have to be able to deal with your nervousness and keep your composure if you want to ace the test.

If need be, take practice scores with a grain of salt. I would be looking at my 720 practice score and said 'Oh, that's nice but why did I get this question wrong?'. The most important thing is to learn - to really learn since the concepts are what will help you on your test day. Go over the questions that you get wrong and try to really understand them. I would suggest to go over the questions you get right as well and try to find alternative ways to solve them, which will help with your timing, and to make sure that they were not flukes, and learn.

Just my 2 cents.

Hey BCC,

the combos 710 (50/34) and 700(50/35) dont make sense to me esp if the tests were administered within a span of several months.
Are you sure the "another" reported his/her score accurately?

The point i was trying to make in my last post was that all those test taking factors (question difficulty, # correct, # wrong etc) determine the raw score. And there are multiple raw scores which convert to the same scaled score. This conversion should be independent of test taking performance, because that should already have been factored into the raw score.

take the following example:
a Q49/V45 (from this past summer) converts to a 760
if each increment in raw score resulted in a similar increment in scaled score, we would have something like:
Q49/V45 = 760
Q49/V46 = 770
Q49/V47 = 780
Q49/V48 = 790
Q49/V49 = 800

and this is obviously not the case...