2 YEARS I THINK WASTE MY TIME

I’m sorry to hear about how things have been going with your GMAT. First off, since you have been studying for 2 years and have still not broken 480, you need to look at HOW you have been preparing and make some changes, right? Looking at your current study routine, I see you have been following the approach of what I call “practice first and figure the rest out later” -- in other words, doing practice problems before understanding the concepts on which those problems are based, and thus trying to learn solely from reading solutions to problems. Trying to learn in such a way will leave gaps in your knowledge and impede progress. Thus, since you have not been improving, you should try a more linear and structured approach to your prep.

Regarding your test date, honestly, it’s unlikely that you will be able to improve your score to 600 in the next 3 weeks. So, if possible, I would give yourself more time to prep, and take the GMAT when you are truly ready to do so. Certainly, if you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your verbal and quant skills, feel free to reach out.

Lastly, you may find it helpful to read the following articles:

The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT

How to Learn More, Learn Faster, and Retain More Knowledge While Preparing for the GMAT

Hi
I would suggest to study the topics in which you are weak. Go through the error log, if you are maintaining one.
Instead of practicing lots of questions, focus on the theory and basics behind each topic, rest will fall in place. Also following too many resources will confuse you. MGMAT guides are sufficient for Quant and Verbal theory. If you are facing problem with MGMAT then you can study theory from the Ultimate Quant Megathread of Gmatclub. For Verbal, you can study from Veritas Prep on the topics that are difficult to you.
Hope it helps.

I do not know how interesting bb make this site !!! I solve nearly 6 thousands questions with 60% correctness and GMATCLUB error log estimate my score to be 480 .... then I go for GMATPREP FOR first time and got EXACTLY 480. it is a little bit strange !
ArtVandaley thanks for suggesting

now this is really really my last post in GMATCLUB .... I have very good time here. MY REAL GMAT SCORE IS 430! I am done.

my advice= in my opinion, "guys" please go for GRE test. GMAT is not a standard test. (especially non-native )


I send this E-email to GMAC but I think they do not want to answer me after almost 20 days! ::::::


at test center I have 2 problems.

1- main problem: I wanted to start the exam but someone near me typing very loud, then I ask your staff to solve the problem but he says "you like it or leave it!" that causes break my focus during exam. they give me noise cancelling but it is not helpful at all. I cannot argue with them for long time.

2- I look my passport in break-time and your staff told me “hey, you are cheating?”

what does it mean such nonprofessional behavior? I am from Iran and travel to turkey and spend a lot of money to do the exam. You get 250$ for what? you cannot buy a silent Chinese keyboard?

………………………………………………………………………………………………

And about the exam, I solve 5000+ questions from OG 10 to 2020 and paper test. I go through All OG ever published. But all questions were new in real test!

I REMEMBER a few questions, searching them ,I find out from old gmatprep …I search the tag in gmatclub then I see 3000 new questions from gmatprep source that I do not solve it and I feel all questions in real exam is from that source not from Official guide! I attach my gmatclub error log and you can see 60 percent be correct and 40 percent I get wrong answer which is very time consuming to learn something that I did not see that at all in REAL test. If it is standard test ,I must get half of the score at least.

If you are dubious. I can send my user and password gmatclub and you can check it .

………………………………………………………………………………………

When I think as a whole and see my 1.5 years efforts for gmat test. With this situation and circumstance that you make ,I think you are a fraudulent. Just make money and not a nonprofit organization. You published another 300+ questions advance recently! what are you doing?

Not sure why this should be your last post on this site, but to your points.

The first one regarding test center problems should be definitely addressed with GMAC. It appears that the staff engaged in improper behaviors and refused to accommodate you. This may have influenced your scores.

Second, you state that you have solved "thousands" of problems. Yet, from your writing, it appears that you will likely need much work to improve your verbal abilities. Yes, the GMAT favors native testtakers in some ways. However, you can train yourself for the test. Plenty of non-native speakers do well. You can as well.

Solving a lot of problems does not assure understanding. You must make sure that you understand the content and the types of questions.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but you seem to have expected that the actual test questions should have been taken from either the official guides or the official prep. This is not correct. The actual test questions may and will liekly be different from these sources. Although some may be repeated, you should not hold any expectations of seeing repeat questions.

If you work with a fresh perspective and not worry so much about the large costs, you can aim to do much better. You may need several months of study. GL!

maybe you have some problems with ENGLISH too


why almost all questions are similar to gmat prep not from thousands of uselessness tips that were said in OG?
if you solve all og math questions you almost got up to 20 probability questions from thousands but I see about 3 questions from probability in actual exam! is it not strange to you !?
you must get questions with the same pattern or same logic. you cannot go through +100000 tips of grammar rule. if you understand.


why they published 8000 OG questions? for what reason? for practice or for fundamental? if these questions must not be repeated ( or at least SAME LOGIC) WHY THSES QUESTION MUST BE PUBLISHED? it is nonsense.

this obviously means they want to MAKE MORE MONEY

Just improve your basics, which will lay a strong foundation to do OG questions. I feel you need to bring a lot of improvement in both the sections of GMAT, especially Verbal.

All the best!

Clearly you do not understand the concept of "typos". Your statements don't make you appear to be serious.

GMAT can give you any number of questions from any topic listed in its syllabus, regardless of what you saw in your thousands of questions over two years.

"this obviously means they want to MAKE MORE MONEY "

How is this related to anything about your score or the test?

Props to you for being able to count that there are 8000 or more published questions.

the reality is obvious! moreover, you can count questions from gmatclub very easy. Goodluck

I strongly think you need to change the way you study, or in other words your behavior. If you have been studying for almost 2 years and have not improved your score, you must have developed bad habits. I have been studying for almost 1.5 years and my score has not increased because of some bad habits. One of them is that I never reviewed my review log (you should not call it error log). It is like you create something, but you do not know for what. Another one is that I came across some quant questions that I had previously solved incorrectly then learned from them, but I was not able to solve them correctly again. At this point, I knew there was something wrong! My current score is 480.

In order to make this more fun than now, I am going to quit my job in the beginning of December. I am serious. My last day at my current company is Dec 4th.

So I do feel you my friend! Life can be tough sometimes. But never give up. I am also a non-native speaker of English. There
are many people who speak English as a second language and yet break the 700 barrier. In this wonderful GMAT community, there is a guy who spent almost 4 years studying GMAT and he finally scored 700+. If he can do it, you can do it too!

Now may not be the best time to return to studying GMAT. I think you should spend 1-2 weeks reading debriefs from successful GMAT scorer and creating a flexible, but strong customized GMAT study plan. You need to make e-GMAT SC course a must-to-do on your plan. It will definitely help.

Also, listen to videos of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist. He is truly amazing! The link to his videos is shown below.
https://www.youtube.com/user/EditsByVibe

YazedMA Thanks for sharing the video and the page!!

I think you made a mistake giving up! You are from "Iran". This part alone would have qualified you for the top business colleges even with a 300 score, let alone a 490 or more. If you had by any chance ended up with a 500+, you would certainly have ended up in Harvard. If you ever see this message, I would recommend trying it again, take the online exam and apply to all the top US colleges. YOU WILL GET IN!