hello everyone. I am just done with my GMAT exam and got a score of 720.
background : non-native, MS in Computer Science Engineering. 5 yrs experience in IT.
Score : 720 (Q 46 71%, V 42 96%)
I am not sure if I should be happy with myself or curse myself. anyways, here is what happened. my exam is at 12:00 PM but went to centre 1 hour early. They let me in and allowed me to take the exam right away. AWA went fine and IR wasn't bad either. when I prepared for IR using GMATPrep, I used to struggle. so, I felt happy to see IR questions aren't that tough after all. took the 8 min break and following the advice of several GMATClubbers, had gatorade and chocolate to replenish my energy. Then the disaster, my quant sections questions seemed fine but my calculations are leading to answers that are not even present as a choice
. in other words, I am falling flat on my face in Quant but I told myself to keep fighting. I am pretty sure I would have got 3-5 questions wrong in first 10 questions. I just scraped through the quant section with 30 seconds are so remaining. Then took the break and during the break I told myself that there is still a chance to make a decent score. I was nervous but I soldiered on. verbal questions seemed to be straight forward. got a 2 paragraph RC at 10 which was easy enough. around 20th question or so, I got a 3 paragraph 60 sentence long RC and I told myself that I must have been doing good. I have to say that GMATPrep is very representative of the actual exam in terms of difficulty.
after I have completed the survey, I was hoping to see score around 690 and was surprised to see 720 and then I saw the quant score. I knew that I had struggled in quant but 71% was a disaster. anyways, my takeaway for the exam is that, keep fighting and don't think about the previous question/section. there is nothing you can do about it. preparation wise, I would have reviewed the
MGMAT quant a little more to get the concepts correct. Bunuel and daagh were two people that I have followed diligently here in GMATClub. Their explanations to various questions helped me a lot. a big Thank you to them.
Now, for people who have already written GMAT and in process of applying or for those who are about to start their MBA program, I have a few questions. it would be of great help if someone can answer those. my aim is to get into a finance program in a top 15 schools in US. As you can see, my score is heavily lopsided towards my verbal which is unusual for a person of my background. Will my score be even considered by top 15 schools? I don't know anyone who has done MBA in Finance and I am not familiar enough with admission process to assess the chances of my application making through initial stage. I would rate myself as average or just above average (if being optimistic). I can see a lot of people similar to my background here in the forum and who have scores around 740-750. so, I am expecting a tough competition ahead.
anyways, coming to the main point, I definitely feel that quant that I got is not reflective of my capabilities, however, verbal is the best I could achieve. so, my question is how important is GMAT score distribution or for that matter, how much weight does a GMAT score carry in application process. I hear that people with low scores such as 690 got into columbia or stern but those must be applicants with exceptional profile.
As every 700-720 GMATClubber would ask 'should I retake?'
Thanks in advance,
Aditya