510- Gmat ate me today...I just couldn't stay cool.!

Question

The GMAT ate me today. I got a 510, a score that I was not expecting in my wildest dreams. :cry:

Will have to sit and analyze where I went wrong. Poor time management,(especially in quant where I got stuck in the third question and took more than 10 mins to solve it )is the main reason. After that, I was struggling with everything. Confidence was low when I started Verbal .Am sure I must have got a few qns in the first 10 wrong. The questions were of standard type.OG Maths is simpler than the real test.I had to do a lot of calculations (time consuming). There was 1 Combinations Ques, 1 on Probabilty and 2 on Mean,1 on Work and Time. Because of time pressure,I struggled with DS too. The questions were of average difficulty but I was tensed,confused and therefore messed up everything. The verbal section was almost of the same std as that of OG.I got 4 RCs. Iam definitely a 650+ material (actually think can hit 700). I had studied religiously for 2-3 hrs every evening for the past 2 months.Am terribly depressed now, will get back later. I had read posts in this forum and knew that I had to keep my cool. But I just couldn't...I feel like a loser.

I might be down but Iam not out. Will bounce back and give GMAT a fight again. It was a mental battle and I have lost this one. Here are my my pratice scores. Giving these scores to prove that Iam definitely not a 510 score material. Kaplan Diag : 610 Kaplan Paper Test:680 Kaplan CAT 1 :540 Kaplan CAT2 :550 Kaplan CAT3 :540 Kaplan CAT4 :570 Power Prep1 :700 Power Prep2 :650 GMAT Paper Test :640 Need to pull up my socks and start everything all over again. Iam an Indian IT engineer working in the US for the past two years. Work for a leading software firm of India. A couple of years back I made it thru the CAT exam(in India) and got admitted to some B schools (not the IIMs though) but did not join them. Am wondering if I took the right decision then...!! Any words of advice on what I need to do to get back on track.

crackgmat750 · Answer

Newkid:
 What is your individual breakup of scores?
Going by what you claim, GMAT has one more victim. Your practice scores suggest that you deserved atleast a 650 if not 680+. I mean it is extremely rare for people to score even worse than their kaplan scores.
I know that simply telling that you should work hard next time and forget about it, might not really help at this point. Real GMAT puts lot of pressure and some of us cave in. But that doesnt mean that we are not capable of doing better.
Though it might be bit early for me to claim,but my understanding is that 50% of the battle is fought in the mind. The kind of background you have, should not make achieving 700+ impossible for you. Iam sure that in your eagerness to perform very well , you took lot of stress and underestimated the importance of taking it easy and doing first few questions correct. You must have done most of the early questions incorrect .
I think the best you can do is that take it easy for some time, introspect and then prepare really well for next time. Dont target 650 or 700, just tell yourself that you are capable of achieving even better.
Iam sure you will succeed.
good luck

gmat1obsessed · Answer

Hi NEWKID, First of all, DO NOT GET DISAPPOINTED ! I was in a similar situation last Dec when I gave the GMAT for the first time and got miserable 530

Do not worry....You will get there...I prepared as you did for about 2-3 months seriously and off and on for 1 year.But still I got 530 even though I was expecting about 650+. I had also similar score as you... KAPLAN CD TESTS 520,580 and 550. Powerprep 700 On the actual test,I couldn't attempt about 4-5 questions in Quant. and 10-11 questions in Verbal I wasted a lot of time on couple of questions in Problem Solving....Questions in PS had higher standard than I did in ETS Official Guide and Kaplan Question Bank. I am preparing for the second time ..... Here is what I did : a) Identify your problem areas where you need improement. b) For Maths ,try Schaum's Series books... c) Critical Reasoning --Try LSAT questions... and last not but not least DON'T LOSE HEART ! Good Luck !

NEWKID · Answer

Thanks guyz.Itz been a day now and I have digested the fact that I have been defeated.To be honest, the scores are so low that I feel ashamed to give the other details.

My determination is even more stronger now and I'll take the test again in a couple of months.GMAT has to be tamed and I'll do that!

Verbal was my weak area and I was living with this fact.But I'll work harder even more now and see to it that I don't leave any room for improvements anywhere.

A question for you all:
1)SC is something where there are some particular types,eg: misplaced modifiers,improper pronouns,parallelism etc.
What does one do for CR ? I don't follow a particular strategy for this question type.The process I follow is that I simply read the question and then using Process of Elimination find the answer.Is this the correct approach?

2)RC has been my weakest.What should be the approach. Will practising a lot of questions help me?

3)CAT: Iam done with OG and Kaplan.I'll go through them again. But what do I do about Mock tests? I would like to give some more tests where the difficulty level is higher.Any suggestions.

I'll be an active member of this group and regularly take part in the discussions. GMAT MATH challenge was something that I was avoiding. I'll take those too regularly.

In short, I'll do everything and anything this time to succeed.
For the next two months, a 510 GMAT score will not let me sleep peacefully.I know that it is going to haunt me.

I have accepted it as a challenge to beat the exam. :!:

Thanks again folks !

Thanks again folks !

Antmavel · Answer

Hi Newkid, First everybody say that it's just a test and that you will certainly do better the next time but I think that everybody also understand and feel that it's quite a terrible feeling to get a bad score at GMAT...we are all part of this website because we are all very focused on getting a great score at the GMAT. Some people will just do a MBA to do one, they won't try to get the best school...however this is why we are all here, I think it's like a common objective for all of us... I hope you can really get a better score, I would like everybody to get a 700 :-D

However, after that the schools will require to get 750 instead of 700 :evil:

Anyway, Verbal is also my weak area. I've never taken the exam so far, it is scheduled early next month for me and I'm currently studying hard on Kaplan. I got a 650 on the diagnostic that I've never done before so I feel like I have some opportunities to reach 680-690. It would be enough for me

However, I am so poor in RC..it seems like I am 3 years old. Even following the instructions of Princeton/Kaplan, I'm still bad at it. Fortunately the SC is not a big deal for me, I even think it's the easiest part of the GMAT because, mainly, there might be 6 or 7 different types of error...so it's ok. I'm gonna check all the posts and the advices on the RC this month as I really hope to improve it. And on the other part, I'll try to improve my skills on permutation, combination and probabilities because it's my weak point on the Math section. I know this website is full of this but it's difficult to find a good way to learn step by step this permutation/probabilities things. It seems so easy in the exemples and so hard in the exam question :shock:

Come on Newkid, let's show that we have some skills ! I am with you ! We can make it

Praetorian · Answer

Its been a long time since we had someone from china on the club. welcome to gmatclub antmavel. i have a friend in shanghai. would be nice to visit china. dont know anything about the chinese language though. :oops:

Allow me to write a bit here. It might be helpful to you and our new friends who joined since the past two weeks or so. Your problem with probabilities is a very common one. When i started off, I found learning concepts to be extremely difficult. it was very tempting to directly solve problems and feel good about getting the right answer. When you start off , I think the best way is to solve tough ,tough problems without time limits. Try to understand the entire process and fight for getting the answer. do not post it on gmatclub or try to look up the answer unless you have absolutely no clue about what the question is talking about. We have written some lessons on permutations and combinations and some guys have found it useful. Please go through that material. I hope you find it useful. Genuises like AkamaiBrah have taught me all this. Akamai says that Knowledge is best retained when you struggle hard to learn it. I listened to him and it made a lot of difference. Many of us, including myself, try to avoid tough problems because they make us uncomfortable. We tend to think that such kind of problems are never there on the real GMAT. So, lets not do it. but thats not correct. What we need is strong concepts and independent thinking. No formulas, just raw concepts. And that can only be done when you try problems that are frustrating to solve. With time, those frustrating first two weeks will begin to show results. Note down all the problems and all the errors you did when you solve problems. hope fully, you will never make those mistakes again. For RC/CR, i strongly suggest that you use Official LSAT material. Not only is this stuff standardized, but most of the questions are also tougher than the real GMAT. This is consistent with our philosophy of practising with tougher questions in the beginning to really understand how a question is solved. Hope this helps you guys to plan your prep better. Sincerely Praetorian

NEWKID · Answer

Praet, right said.

I realize this every time I think about my scores now . Well, I'll be called a fool if I repeat my mistakes again. So won't take any chances now.

Antmavel, thanks for the encouraging words. Work hard and all the best for your exam. If we dream big, we need to believe that we can do it.

The SC is usually the first question on the verbal section. And this is an area where one can improve by constant practice.So if you don't want the GMAT beast to beat u in the first few moves,master the SC questions.

ashwini17 · Answer

i took GMAT 2day and scored 570,i just cant believe it ,this is way below what i expected,the least i expected was 650 even in the worse circumstances.i scored 700 in pp and i guess that was the real culprit.
The questions in real GMAT was way too lengthy,i did well on probability though but i really messed up the timing in both the sections.
SC was very long and i had 3 RCs back to back and one at the end when i had only 3 minutes left. :evil:

i guess now i should seriously start taking full length tests and concentrate more on timing this time
can anyone suggest me some material with lengthy questions which could help me work on speed and also some tips to keep cool

i guess now i should seriously start taking full length tests and concentrate more on timing this time can anyone suggest me some material with lengthy questions which could help me work on speed and also some tips to keep cool

ashwini17 · Answer

thanks alot for ur advice,i am goin to take it again next month and i wont spare that monster(specially the timing devil who is major accomplice of GMAT monster)

i swear i will take more full length tests every alternate day .
when are u planning to take it up,pls keep me updated as we are in the same boat

ash

myfrankenstein · Answer

The iim decision was right. i cleared but did not join even iima so don't fret over it.
Yep yu had some hard luck in yur test. Try once more, may be this time i's 700+ and make sure to post yur story here

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510- Gmat ate me today...I just couldn't stay cool.!

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