560...It's about time to quit

Question

I believe I wasted 3 months of my life!! What a disaster today at the GMAT, I actually thought I was doing ok until it popped up: 560 (Q38 V28). This was almost embarrassing to post here but oh well, need to vent.

Granted I probably didn't study as hard as I could have due to alot of pressure at work. Kind of hard to work from 8-7 or 8 at night and then come home and study 3 hours. I guess the MBA is not for everyone. Either way, I wanted to thank everyone for their support and help on all those Quant questions.

Good luck to you all!

trahul4 · Answer

sarl15,

dont break your heart, it might be just one of those bad days for you. this forum is full of people who have done miserable on the first attempt and then have crossed the 700 barrier on the second attempt. 
you can read so many of those stories in share your gmat exp forum. 
just be cool, analyse your mistakes , prepare well and give it another shot. dont lose your confidence. By the way, never say you wasted 3 months of your life, this test might have thought you many things even though you might have ended yup with a bad score.

fawreel902 · Answer

I agree. I've been studying like a mad man for 4 months. I was supposed to take my exam at the end of this month but moved it to september after getting scores I wasnt too thrilled with on the prep exams. I can only hope I get a great score at the end but whatever happens I dont consider this time as time wasted.

Himalayan · Answer

if you bear with gmat club for a while, you can hit 7xx. 

in fact you deserve more and you are asking less.




there is a big room to improve for you. you can easily raise qt to 45+ and verbal 30+.

goodluck to you tooo.

salr15 · Answer

I know the 3 months wasn't a complete waste, I meant it in the sense of GMAT score. I just have mixed emotions right now, angry, depressed, frustrated,disappointed...all that good stuff. I really didn't spend much time studying verbal which is evident in my V score (but I definitely didn't expect a 28!). What even disappointed me more was my Q score. Honestly walking into the test center my mentality was, 640 - 660 I will be ok, 660 - 690 I would be happy but probably take it again, 700+ I would be jumping out of my shoes! I honestly wasn't expecting a 700 today but really believed the possibility was there. I was thinking, if I get a 600 I will be pretty upset. I even scored 690 on the GMATPrep twice!! Not sure if retaking those tests was the best idea because maybe it gave me false expectations.

Now imagine how I felt when I saw a 560 pop up. I think I sat at my PC for about 5 minutes and just stared at the monitor in disbelief. I even sent my score to 3 of my schools prior to starting

, was this a big mistake???

I don't know where to go from here. Probably spend the next couple of days drowning myself in beer, actually I have the pleasure of getting a root canal tomorrow..but I do go to Vegas on Fri which is kind of keeping my sanity.

Clearly I didn't study as much as I needed to. I am seriously contemplating if I should take it again, but if I do you can believe I will be spending ALOT of time on Verbal and the 1000 SC/CR.

I just don't know how this 560 is going to look on my applications! :wall

, was this a big mistake??? I don't know where to go from here. Probably spend the next couple of days drowning myself in beer, actually I have the pleasure of getting a root canal tomorrow..but I do go to Vegas on Fri which is kind of keeping my sanity. Clearly I didn't study as much as I needed to. I am seriously contemplating if I should take it again, but if I do you can believe I will be spending ALOT of time on Verbal and the 1000 SC/CR. I just don't know how this 560 is going to look on my applications! :wall

zoltan · Answer

I have the same situation. Two weeks ago I did the GMAT exam and I scored Q48,V20 and AWA 4.5. After seeing this terrible Verbal score I was really depressed because I have never had such a low score during my practice exams at home. My verbal was always between 27 and 35. 

I made a same mistake what you did, because I repeated the Power Prep exam many times. Repeating the exam again and again made me overconfident since I scored above V40, which was not my real level. I thought before the exam that I will get easily a verbal score above 30 and, may be, I did not focused well during my verbal part.

I believe I had just a very bad day therefore I am going back again at the end of this month. My goal is 640 now. 


Work hard and remain motivated and you will get 700.

bsd_lover · Answer

Hey buddy,

Dont give up. Prepare for one more month and then give it another shot. A bad day with mental preparation (i.e. lack of sleep etc.) can cause a surprisingly lower score.

Give it another try.

cheers.

UMB · Answer

Sarl15,

I hope u don't give up. Prepare ur arsenal for another shot. 
I believe one day ur 7xx score will decorate this forum. 
We would be happy to see you again in this forum.

Rsmith0087 · Answer

the same thing happened to me on Monday...I'm trying my best to find an excuse for why my score a 540 was 100 points lower than what i figured it would be, which i based on the 8 cat's (manhattan, powerprep and my first official gmat score (i got a 600). 

Maybe your score and my score were so dramatically different from our expectations was that they threw in a new algorithm or a whole new test that started this monday? Idk really but this seems to odd to me... maybe its just a coincidence...

helpmeongmat · Answer

I encountered a big drop off on the real exam also. Is the exam getting harder? I got a 480 with 6.0 AWA. Funny thing is I was scoring consistently between 580 and 600 on my practice exams. Now, I am back to another month of studying.

leeye84 · Answer

Hey man, I understand what you are going through. It's tough, I know. 

But if you give up now, you really have wasted the past 3 month of your life! You should stick with GMAT. Persistence pays off. 

I studied for the past 5 month. After taking a practice exam today, I found that I was 20 points below what I started from. DAMN! But I'm not going to give up. No way. Not after 5 month. I've got to work harder and I will improve. YOU CAN TOO!

fawreel902 · Answer

So good to see someone who has been studying for as long as I have. When I started I was only able to score a 350. Now I am able to score in close to six hundred if I keep my cool and my pacing right. Hopefully with some more studying I can break a 650. Kinda hard to learn all that I need to when I work full time but what can I tell you.

Rsmith0087 · Answer

When did u take the exam - the official statement i got from Gmat stated they haven't tweaked the exam but i still have my doubts

gablaze23 · Answer

Don't give up!
We're all trying to beat this monster.

RycherX · Answer

This happens sometimes to people.
I've been studying for 7 1/2 f*cking months total on my second attempt.
I got a 610 the first time around after 5 months. Material click in people's heads at different paces. I have come to the conclusion that I have poor short term memory, which explains why I can't apply what I learn immediately(especially at 700 level difficulty). So every other night, I go through stacks of my flash cards that I create so I don't gamble on the chance that I will fall below my previous score.

I enrolled in a Kaplan course and my instructor thinks I will pass beyond a 700 based on what I know in class and how quick I am to see clarity in difficult problem. I scored a 660 on my diagnostic exam. The way I see it, all the repitition of applying concepts and constantly reading flash cards pushed all the information from the little short term memory space I have onto my long term memory which is powerful on test day. Maybe things will be perfect the 2nd time around or maybe 3rd times a charm.
At least we have time on our side right now.

salr15 · Answer

Thanks for the feedback and support guys! I am going to take a little time off and enjoy the summer (going to Vegas today in about 3 hours :-D

). I have been thinking about it alot and I really don't want to give up. I think that night when I came home, I was so disheartened that I just didn't want to even think about the GMAT. But you guys are absolutely rigth, I am already too deep into it to just give up! I plan on starting to study again late August or early September and aiming to take the test in Dec (but this time I am not going to schedule it until I am 100% sure I am ready). Really need to practice verbal and there the few areas I am weak in Math. I did get a bit unlucky on the Quant section, I would say about 10 of my first 15 questions were Data Sufficiency and about 60% of those were tough number properties. I plan on going in fully confident with ALL areas of Quant and I can definitely improve my V score, just didn't practice at all.

Direwolf · Answer

What schools are you apping? See what the weight of the GMAT is for those schools. All you have to do is get in right? After that you can prove your self in other ways.

salr15 · Answer

The schools I am applying to are:

Columbia
Duke
NYU
Berkeley
UCLA

So a 560 will not cut it.

Direwolf · Answer

I wish you good luck.

kryzak · Answer

Oh man, now this thread has gotten me worried about scoring much lower than on practice tests. If it weren't nerves, I'm not sure how everyone is getting much lower real test scores than the averages of all the prep tests. From what I heard, the Manhattan GMAT and GMATPrep scores were all very close predictors, unless you freeze up on test day or aren't a good test taker in stressful situations?

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560...It's about time to quit

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