I gave my real GMAT about a week ago and scored a dissapointing 650 (Q43 50% V36 81% AWA 5.5 and IR 5 55%).
I have been preparing for a long time. I took a classroom course with princeton review in 2015, and did all the practice tests and exercises, and let it expire. The classroom course included about 10 tests, and I started at 610, and improved to about 680 in the princetonreview practice tests. But after losing touch, I picked up GMAT Prep again with the
OG,
MGMAT tests, and Veritas prep tests recently and scored about 670 in the most recent tests. Again started with 600 on
MGMAT and ended up with 660.
CAT EXAM #6 Completed 01/30/2017 Score: 660
CAT EXAM #5 Completed 01/29/2017 Score: 580
CAT EXAM #4 Completed 01/29/2017 Score: 620
CAT EXAM #3 Completed 01/26/2017 Score: 590
CAT EXAM #2 Completed 01/16/2017 Score: 630
CAT EXAM #1 Completed 12/04/2016 Score: 600
On july 17th, I took the official GMATPrep software practice test for the first time, and scored a 690 (Q47 and V38). I had about one month of prep time left and practiced by reviewing and redoing all the Quant mistakes from my
MGMAT And Veritas Prep CATs and
OG questions. And I also went through Powerscore CR bible and
MGMAT SC stategy guidewhile practicing
OG questions for verbal.
More recently I did some Veritas prep tests
Total Score / Percentile Quant Score / Percentile Verbal Score / Percentile
August 17 650 / 76 45 / 59 34 / 72
August 18 670 / 82 46 / 62 36 / 81
August 22 670 / 82 45 / 59 37 / 83
On August 19th 4 days before taking the actual GMAT, I took the second official GMATPrep Software test for the first time and scored a 710 (Q48 and V40).I even finished the verbal section with ten minutes to spare.
I didn't worry too much about the 670 and 660 scores on
MGMAT and Veritas because I was doing significantly better in the real prep software from GMAC, and I had read online that there is usually only +/- 20 point difference between the real test and GMATPrep. I dont know if I got nervous, or what happened, but I scored way below my expectation in the real test( 650 with a Q43 and V36). While I am redoing my Quant mistakes, I can't seem to identify any particular areas of weakness to study and rectify my low Quant score. I did notice that I was given Questions on topics that seemed kinda rare and obscure like geometric mean in the Quant part of my real GMAT, something that I had never seen in practice tests from
MGMAT or veritas or Official GMAT questions. I wasn't even aware of the formula to solve for geometric mean. And I got a passage in RC that was from the
OG, but had different questions than the
OG. Is the real GMAT harder than what is represented in the GMAT Prep Software?
I have decided to retake the GMAT. But I am kinda stumped about how long I should practice before I reschedule(because if I was just nervous on test day, I should be able to do better with a months worth of practice, or if I am really lacking in certain concepts, like geometric means, do I need to take out more time to study those) and what kind of questions I should practice to break the 700 barrier in the real test. Should I consider verbal a strength and focus more on quant prep, as I have been doing so far? Should I put in equal effort. Should I do like 50 tough questions everyday from GMATclub? How do I go about this? I am aiming for a 700+ because I come from an overrrepresented group. (indian female engineer). Funnily enough, I seem to totally suck at math and twisted and difficult math questions totally throw me off my game.
Any advice would be appreciated.