I have just returned from my exam this morning and I would say I am a little disapointed specially with my Q score which leaves me in percentile 54 for the category.
About me:
I am a native Spanish speaker, did my undergrad back in my home country in Biotech. Engineering (2009), so obviously lots of quant classes (Calculus, algebra, stat, Physic, physical chemistry, to mention a few), I cam to the US about 5 years ago and got a research based masters in microbiology at arguably the number 1 or 2 university in that field, and have been working out of school for about 2.5 years now. I work as a scientist now apply decent quant skill in my job (mostly statistics and graph analysis).
I work 60 miles away from home so commute each day is 2 hours, so not much time to study in reality, but tried to put at least an hour each night.
Study:
At the beginning I did not have much of a plan, so I purchased the the Kaplan GMAT premier guide and started by taking a test (this was back in october). I started with quant as I did not score very good and I new that was something I could improve fast and well (See scores below). I realized my week point were rates, combinations and probability, and number properties. I also very often answered the wrong question (e.g. asked for X but solved for Y). I finished my quant studies by the in a month and then started focusing on Verbal which I finished in right before Christmas, I then tool my first GMAT prep exam and started the Original Guide . I should say that during this time I would do pretty religiously at the suggested questions from GMAT club so 5 verbal and 5 quant each day, mostly at the beginning of the day.
From the
OG I did all the math problems, and did all the verbal problems in the verbal specific book. I did most of these using the online tool which at the end realized was a mistake, At least for quant.
By the time I started with verbal, I had realized I was very good at CR. Probably a skill I have acquired through my grad studies and years of reading papers very critically. So I focused on the sentence correction, which I believe got a good hands on. I did not prepare as much CR as I though it was just a longer version of CR, and was doing fine.
For IR I did not study much, a few problems here and there, but was getting very anxious since my results weren't the greatest. A few days before the test I studied for about 2 hours on the graphs and tables, which I though were easy to improve given my work and background.
Scoring History:
Kaplan 1: 640 (Q47, V36. IR2) (10/06/2014)
Kaplan 2: 690 (Q49, V40, IR2) (11/08/2014)
Kaplan 3: 730 (Q51, V37, IR5) (12/23/2014)
GMATprep 1: 690 (Q47, V38, IR4) (01/02/2015)
Veritas Prep: 720 (Q48, V41, IR5) (01/24/2015)
GMAT prep2: 720 (Q47, V40, IR4) (01/31/2015)
The approach and day of the test: (Test scheduled for Monday morning at 8am.)
On Friday, I went to Chicago for the night and stayed through Saturday with my wife, to relax. Its about a 1.5 hour drive from where I am. Got very good sleep and had lots of fun but did nothing crazy went to bed early and did not drink a drop, definitely calmed my nerves. I had been very stressed with work and with very little sleep the last couple of week (Averaging about 6 hours), and made it difficult to focused. On Sunday I took it easy, did a few IR to not come to a shock during the test. Also did the quant practice section on GMAT prep in which I had all the Medium and Difficult ones correct but all the easy ones wrong! I shook it off though and didn't think much about it. Went to bed at about 9.30pm, woke up once at about 1.30am but was able to go back to sleep.
The day of the Test I woke up at 6am, had two eggs and ham with whole wheat bread a cup of orange juice and a cup of coffee. This has been my go to breakfast for everytim something important is happening and never had a problem. Drove to the site at about 7.15 and arrived at about 7.40, everything went smoothly there, people were very friendly. They did not allow me to bring in my own ear plugs which threw me off, insted they gave me some themselves which were not as comfortable, and bothered me a bit during the test. Also they did not have a clock were one could see the time during the breaks,so I played it safetly and did not take as long a break as I may have otherwise.
AWA and IR went fine, nothing new I was rushed in the last question of IR. But thought it went OK. First brake then quant. In quant I found second guessing myself a bit, but in general thought I was doing ok, but found that I would get thrown some pretty easy questions and that got a little to my nerves. But thought it was OK, i was not rushed to finish the test. The verbal I thought it was very challenging, and by the end I found that I was answering a lots of A and E's which also threw me off... but tried to not put much attention to it.
When I got my results I was very impressed by my IR score, and verbal. But very dissapointed with my quant.
I am aiming for Haas and MIT Sloan as first choices and Wisconsin, John Hopkins, and McCombs (UT-Austin) as backup. I will apply to Haas, Wisconsin and McCombs through The consortium.
Now I am considering retaking the test, specially since I have a week in March that I'll be on vacation and could use that to study a bit. But there is always that possibility that my verbal score will go down and my Q won't be able to compensate for it.
I hope this is helpful for the people that are taking it soon, and if any of you guys have any suggestions or comments.
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16 Feb 2015, 13:30
