Last Sunday, I got owned by the GMAT. I got a mere 600. I was obviously disappointed by the score. As this was my first time appearing for the test, I consider this as a trial run and am not letting it bother me any more. I exactly know what went wrong and I have an action plan going forward.
This probably will be a long read, as I am ranting, consoling and at the same time, encouraging myself to do better next time. So please bear with me.
Breakdown of the score - Q48, V25, IR7, AWA5. I have cancelled my score and obtained an Enhanced Score Report. I was targeting at-least 680. I am aiming to apply for a PT program at Ross, Booth or Kellogg in the upcoming months. Their deadlines give me about a month to retake the GMAT and get an acceptable score for these PT programs.
I always knew that Quant is my strength and, being a non-native speaker, Verbal my weakness. And this clearly shows in the score above. During my 4 months of preparation, I always got encouraged when I got the hardest Quant questions right. I used to get discouraged by getting Verbal wrong during practice and would switch to Quant to boost my confidence, and as a result, ended up practising more Quant than Verbal.
My preparation included
Magoosh videos, Manhattan 5th ed. guides and
OG 2013 ed. onwards. I absolutely love
mikemcgarry's voice and his way of explaining solutions, so much that his voice even resonated in my ears during the exam.
Amongst Verbal, Reading comprehension is my biggest weakness. I lose focus midway while reading the passage, and then switch to the question, come back to the passage and this cycle continues until I realise that I have spent too much time on it and click a random answer and move on.
I have an action plan to tackle RC. I plan to read business magazine articles and summarize those in one-two line sentences over the next few weeks. Being in Tech industry for more than a decade, and highly interested in sciences, I always read RC passages like a story. I would get lost in the details. If the passage was about the Solar System, I would day dream about the various scientific expeditions that NASA has out there. If the passage was about Frogs, I would suddenly recall a Discovery episode about Amazonian Rain forest. I will try not to do that any more. I recognize that this will be a big culture shift for me and will require an innovative approach. I have also started to read/listen to NPR news and realised that the way they construct their news stories is very similar to the RC, CR passages on the GMAT. Magazines like HBR, McKinsey Insights are also good sources of articles.
In SC, I missed preparing for Comparisons, did not practice enough and played it by the ear, which is wrong. As has being said about it, just like Quant, SC is very mechanical.
This youtube video gives great tips on how to tackle Verbal questions.
CR comes relatively easy to me. I love practising CR questions more than any other verbal question types. I love the varied subjects that appear on the CR. They are short, bite-sized and easy to understand. I guess it is a Gen-X/millennial problem.
From a test experience perspective, the Pearson Test Center let me down in a certain way. I reached the center at 7:35am, and the test was scheduled for 8am. I was asked to pick a call number which was 12, and there were about 8 people yet to be checked in. The lady at the desk was slow and by the time I checked in, it was already 8:10. I was nervous due to this reason, but once I got to my station and started breezing through the intro screens, I felt easy. I thought about the AWA prompt for about 5 minutes and then started typing. I finished with about 3 minutes left for review, correct spelling mistakes and re-arrange sentences. Then came the IR, I felt it was easier than the Manhattan or
Magoosh practice questions I had solved. I decided to stretch a bit between the IR & Quant section so took the 8-minute break. The check-out process was slow, so I lost almost half my break and did not leave enough to time to both eat a snack and visit the rest-room. By the time I was checked-in again, only 57 seconds were left. The restrooms were also at the other end of the building. The second break was the same scenario. So by the time I reached Verbal I was hungry and just wanted it to end. Next time I will eat a more filling breakfast.
My Action plan for Verbal improvement looks like this.
Total time - 4 weeks.
Time allocated to Verbal - 2 hours per day
Time allocated to Quant - 1 hour per day
Rule - Practice Quant only after successfully solving at-least 30 verbal questions per session.
Materials - I have all the materials that one could possibly have - Manhattan 5th edition guides,
OG from 2013 onwards, both Quant & Verbal Review, 2nd Edition onwards,
Magoosh subscription & Kaplan subscription.
With all of the above and my realisation of the mistakes I made, I hope to get 700+ in my next attempt.
See you in 4-6 weeks...
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07 Oct 2015, 08:56
