710 (44/44) - retake?
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02 Sep 2011, 00:45
Dear gmat club community
This is my first post in this forum after a long time of reading up on problems and strategies during my GMAT preparation. What a great site; probably the most helpful of all that I have come across in the web. I have taken the GMAT last week after a month of very focused practice and scored a 710 (44/44). This is probably an ok score but I am now considering a retake for the following reasons:
1. I am planning to apply for top US schools (HSW) and realise that I am below the average of the population applying to these schools. Otherwise I should be competitive (good work exp, good GPA, good EC) but I had hoped to add a strong GMAT score to this.
2. I took the GMAT with a cold (headache and feeling a bit dizzy at times) and really struggled fully focusing during quant -- in fact I ran out of time with just 20sec for the last two questions, which is a mistake I lately never made during my practice sessions. I realise that this bad timing issue alone had a substantial impact on my score and am not happy with 44q, having effectively always scored 47-49q in gmatprep/powerprep. I am sure that I could keep verbal at around 44 and move q from 44 to 48+ when retaking with a clear head, which would probably move my overall score from 710 to ~740.
3. I have read about the 80/80 split that business schools look for and my current q percentile is only around 67. It is my intention to demonstrate to adcom that I can deal with ‘quanty’ stuff, especially considering that I studied business administration during undergrad, which already was quite light in quant compared to engineering or hard science, for example.
While I think that these points are strong arguments in favour of a retake, I wonder whether a retake to ‘barely’ improve by 20, 30 or 40 points is worth the effort or whether it would position me, as discussed many times here before, as someone getting the priorities not quite right. I don’t think I can get to 750+ without significantly more prep, so am wondering what you guys think. I am just really disappointed about screwing up q....
Barnstomer