610 - Good news & Bad news
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20 Apr 2004, 07:50
Took the GMAT for the first time yesterday. Got 610 with 41 Verbal and a very dissapointing 32 Quant.
Will take again next month, and need to improve my Quant scores. Did quite a lot of preparation on Quants (compared to Verbal where I put in about 1 hour of effort). My practice scores (which I think are a part of my problem) were as follows;
1. PR 510 - 30V, 31Q
2. PP 590 - 38V, 33Q
3. PR 570 - 36V, 31Q
4. PP 660 - 41V, 39Q - problem!
5. PR 590 - 41V, 31Q
6. PR 590 - 40V, 32Q
Why do I think the practice scores were a problem? The high score I got on the second PowerPrep really increased my confidence. As I recall I was in a fairly indifferent mood when I took it which I think helped. After that I focused mainly on mental preparation rather than focusing on my weak math areas. And you can see that after that my maths score went back to its normal low 30's and never improved. Probably I spent too much time just doing general practice questions rather than focusing on the areas where I am weak.
So, back to the books. First task will be to go through all of my practice test results and compile a proper weak list and study plan from that. Don't really remember in detail what I fell down on in the actual test since the math section is really just a blur now in my memory.
Other general observations: The test day was actually less stressfull than I was expecting (despite serious butterflies whilst waiting outside). I was glad that I had taken 6 practice tests since this really helped my stamina - which was not helped by the flickering screen and terrible ergonomics of the workstation that I was given.
Something that I had not had a problem with in practice tests was the reading comprehension passage changing without me realising. I had a "the purpose of this passage" question which I thought had rather strange answer choices. After I accepted the answer I realised that I was now on to a new passage and hadn't realised. How dumb is that? I guess that since reading comp. questions were always punctuated by other question types in the pratice runs I didn't need to look out for that.
I was also irritated by the way that ETS make you answer a whole load of marketing questions before they give you the score - because of course everybody will stay around to fill that stuff in after they have the scores!
If anybody has advice on my particular math challenge then I would love to hear!
mark.[/quote]