720 (Q50 V38) - Bad night before the exam

Hi,

Just done with GMAT yesterday. I scored 720 - Q50 and V38. Not so happy with the score but will take it as it is above 700

This is my first detailed post on this forum. First, I owe a lot to GMATCLUB forum for helping me with my preparation. Going forward, I will try to be active part of the forum if I can help to make it better anyway.

WHY GMAT - Ok. Here it goes. My background is in Engineering and currently I am working in finance company. I have about 7 years of experience in finance sector. I wish to go for an Executive MBA program, especially for one year full time one. My GMAT story started last year in Fall. I prepared for about 2 months and wished to give the exam in December 2009. Due to personal reasons, I had change of heart and decided not to go to MBA School. I was doing well in my professional life and thought continue to leverage that. I decided not take GMAT. So, I did not touch any GMAT books for next 6-7 months. Until recently, couple of months back I was talking to one of my friend and he really pumped me up for MBA. I said what a big deal, it is only for One year out of my 30-40 years of professional life. So I swung back to action.

Little About Personal Life: Again i was working on some important project, which demanded 50-60 hours of week. I changed my schedule a bit. I would come back home at about 6.30-7 and have dinner. Then, I would take nap for 1hour followed by a 30 minutes running. 1 hour nap did wonder for me. I will feel fresh at even till 2am. After putting my daughter to bed, I will typically start studying at about 10-10.30. First I will go through Nytimes, WSJ and science news articles for 1 hour. Then I would work on my Math and verbal skills. typically, i would get 5 hour night sleep every day as I had 8.30am meeting everyday. Initially for few days at work I felt really dizzy because of this new schedule. Then I got used to this dizziness and learnt to live with it. One thing, I realized this did impact my concentration at work but not to an extent noticeable by anyone After all it was only a matter of couple of months. And with my 2 year old, week days and weekend were same for me. Only time, I would get to study was when she was asleep.

GMAT Preparation: Given my engineering background, Math was not an issue for me. Mostly, I needed to prepare for verbal portion. Going into verbal CR was my strength and had no clue about SC and RC. I will try to outline as much material I can recollect but would continue to edit to reflect this post to put everything i used.

Math:-

Since start I felt very comfortable with Math. I did the OG 11 math and felt it was not at all difficult. But then after being part of GMATCLUB i realized that math is not that easy. Based upon the recommendations from GMATClub members, I decided to take math tests from GMAT club. These tests were definitely difficult than OG's but also it required different approach and mind set as well. Also, these test helped me greatly with time management on Math. One important thing, i realized while doing tests was you always cannot solve all the questions. Some time, it is better strategy to make a guess (keeping your math ego in pocket) and move to next question. GMATCLUB tests were 90% of the material i used for math practice. Just to help you below are my score during these tests.

Test Correct Total % Correct Mean time msec Percentile
Coordinate 11 16 69% 279.5789 sec 1250 77%
I 7 10 70% 159.2760 sec 1250 77%
m01 37 37 100% 120.0799 sec 1250 99%
m02 37 37 100% 117.0026 sec 1250 99%
m03 33 37 89% 120.3468 sec 1250 92%
m04 32 37 86% 118.7153 sec 1250 85%
m05 37 37 100% 121.7488 sec 1250 99%
m06 30 37 81% 121.5810 sec 1250 84%
m07 35 37 95% 121.6230 sec 1250 95%
m08 34 37 92% 120.9212 sec 1250 95%
m09 34 37 92% 120.7149 sec 1250 95%
m10 32 37 86% 119.9942 sec 1250 89%
m11 34 37 92% 120.7046 sec 1250 93%
m17 34 37 92% 121.4626 sec 1250 92%
m18 29 37 78% 120.9057 sec 1250 67%
m19 35 37 95% 114.8837 sec 1250 93%
m20 34 37 92% 120.8998 sec 1250 83%
m21 33 37 89% 121.6346 sec 1250 90%
m22 30 37 81% 102.0921 sec 1250 63%
m23 32 37 86% 120.0808 sec 1250 76%
m24 33 37 89% 120.8530 sec 1250 88%
m25 36 37 97% 110.7606 sec 1250 97%

Some of the 100% correct, while doing review i corrected those. I never got 100% correct on any exam I took tests 1-11,25 last year. Test 17-24 (in reverse order from 24 to 17), I took in last 6 weeks. Again, in math what helped me was to keep a track of the questions I got wrong and what mistakes I made. Most of the time, they were silly on my part for not reading the question correctly. Mistakes were - integer vs fraction, angle ACB vs ABC, area of wrong triangle etc. I made a two page list of all the common mistake I made. I would go through this list before every exam I would take. This helped me immensely to cut down my errors.

Verbal:

SC - This portion of the GMAT was my nemesis. Initially, I was getting relatively low percentage of accuracy on this. But through practice was able to get to 90% accuracy level and speed of under a minute. I truly believe, on the real GMAT SC was my savior and might have got only 1-2 incorrect. The book I used to prepare for SC was Manhattan SC. I read through this book about 5 times. I saw many people going for so many books. But I preferred reading 1 book 5 times to reading 5 books once. I think, this book helped me immensely. Another thing that helped me was going through GMATPrep SC questions you see on the forum. Due to my total 6-7 weeks of schdule for the exam I could only prepare GMATPrep SC for 2 days in the end. But if you have time, please spend some time to get used to the patterns etc.

CR - This was my forte. I mostly did the OG10-12 books for CR. I felt really comfortable doing the CR from these sources and did not use much else apart from it.

RC - I was really bad in RC when I started preparing especially in science and history passages. Based upon the advice in the forum, I started reading NY times, WSJ (opinion) and Science News. These 3 sources helped me greatly to boost my score. I made deliberate effort to read 1 hours (10 -20 articles) daily. I could clearly see the positive impact of this not only in practice GMAT scores but also in professional communication. I will recommend these websites if you are looking to improve your RC score.

Practice Tests:

I took about 11 tests to get used to timing, format and formulating pacing strategy.

GMATPrep:

Aug30 - GMATPrep1 - Take 1: Q51, V45 - 770
Sep06 - GMATPrep2 - Take 1: Q50, V40 - 730
Sep08 - GMATPrep1 - Take 2: Q51, V42 - 750
Sep 10 - GMATPrep2 - Take 2: Q51, V44 - 760
Sep 12 - GMATPrep1 (2005 version) - Take 1: Q51, V44 - 760
Sep 13 - GMATPrep2 (2005 Version) - Take 1: Q51, V46 - 780

With this kind of scores on GMATPrep, I was expecting 750+

Knewton -

test1 - 680 (in July)
test2 - 740
test3 - 740
test4 - 750
test5 (9/16) - 710 - Day before the exam... explanation to follow later

7 Days before the test - I took a week's vacation from the work. This was the only period when I could spend dedicated time to GMAT. Kindly, my wife agreed to spend lot more time with my daughter and take her out so that i can study. During this time, I did few more GMAT Prep (last 3 GMATPrep exams mentioned above) . These scores 760-780 boosted my confidence and I was ready to go.

3 Days before the test - I had read some time back on the forum about practicing the GMATPrep SC. So decided to spend last 2 days to practice with SC I was already getting all the CR and most of the RC questions right on GMARPrep. I will get 2-5 SC wrong questions on these exams. These GMATPrep questions helped me a lot to boost my confidence.

By the time, weather has been changing in east coast It was getting little chilly. On 15th (exam was on 17th) I had bad feeling because my throat did not sound better. I developed little fever by 16th morning.

Night before the test: My exam was on 1pm (17th), so I went to bed at 11pm on 16th (1hour for changing sides) hoping that would sleep by 12am and then wake up 8am, go for a run and go for exam.

12am.. 1 hour gone by no sleep..
1am.. Still no sleep was feeling sweaty due to fever.. Decided to take fever medicine..
3am.. No sleep and was feeling hungry.. Ate some cereals. And now, I was looking for a sleeping pill. I had none so reverted to Nyquil to help me with cold, fever and sleep.
6am.. No sleep.. Apparently, Nyquil did not work. I took one more dose of Nyquil.
7am.. Sun was out.. Solving questions while half asleep..
9am.. Wife came by to wake me up. Asked her to wake me up at 11am...

Finally up 11.15am and was feeling really dizzy. Apparently, started shaving with my toothbrush.. Asking my wife for socks, even those were in my hand.. With these incidences, I reached the testing center at 12.30, with virtually no sleep. (I did not feel anxiety about the testing center as I had already taken a trip last week there). Did NDA and picture in the center.

Thanks to my wife who packed my food box with red bull, almonds and some banana's. Still feeling dizzy due to sleep deprivation and all the stuff in my ear and throat. Anyway, decided to gallop red bull and went into the center.

AWA -

Argument : i got was easy. Ironically, in last week, I just looked at 5 of the AWA to get the framework in my head. First AWA was one of them. I had no issue quickly start writing on this.

Issue: this was also not that bad. But i was not that lucky this time But was manageable.

Decided to take a break. I drank one more red bull and ate some almonds.

Math - The first problem I encountered was really simple. On any given day it was 30-45 second problem. But with my head spinning, it took me about 2 -2.30 minutes. Got another one and trend continued. I had done only 8 or 9 questions and 50 minutes left. So decided to pace up as I did not want to leave unattempted question/s. I had no patience left to plug in different integers, decimals and started making educated guesses. After 15-16th question i started feeling comfortable (37minutes left). Most likely the second red bull was kicking-in. I made some guesses in between if it was time waster question or was really testing my patience. I was trending towards finishing the math about 6-7 minutes early, but decided to slow down on last couple of questions to get them perfectly right. I waited on the last question for 4 minutes to jot down my thoughts for verbal especially. SC. Clicked next with 28 second on the board. I decided to take a break.

I ate another banana, few more almonds (double the amount of last time) and unfortunately I had not red bull left. So drank some water to pour in oxygen to keep me awake.
Stretched a bit and went in.

Verbal - Good thing about verbal was, its pattern was just similar to GMATPrep. I got few SCs. Then a CR --> no clue what this argument's stem is, conclusion is etc.. I read it again, nothing so far.. So decided to narrow down the choices and made a guess and moved on.. I got easy RC with which i felt really comfortable with. Again on CR question i could not comprehend.. My dizziness has totally taken control of analytical part of my brain. I was very sure, I have done this type of CR before and any other day can crack it, but because of my inability to decipher that day I could not. I soon realized that I was totally mechanical at this time. If a question is requiring me to think through and need to push neurons lot more, I will need to focus more than normal. I was on question 7 or 8 still 34 more to go. I reminded myself of Rocky IV (which I saw that week to pump myself). I told myself to do your best whatever happen let it happen (went to Geeta and Karma mode). Also made a note that I need to spend lot more time on CR if i need to get these correct. I paced up my SC. I am pretty sure my average time for SC was 40-50 seconds. Next RC I got was not as great, still i was able to pick the detail question/s right and make some sense of the passage. But with CR this trend continued... I had 32-33 minutes left with 20 questions. I was in these situations before and was not too worried. Paced myself. 11 questions and 16 minutes on board One RC to go - Next RC I got, I could not make sense as my comprehension and reasoning skills were totally out of the door and RC just joined the CR club. Decide to give 4-5 minutes to this and then pace. Finally, I ended up taking 5 minutes, read the passage 2 times and decided to narrow down choices and move on. Solved the next few questions. 3 minutes left 3 questions to go. Solved 2 questions in next 2:30 minutes. But with 30 seconds left decided to make a wild guess on last one. Narrowed down the choice and clicked next on final question with 3 seconds on the board ...........Relieved that exam is over.... was not to optimistic about the score..

Filled out some information questions in the end.... mostly clicked next as i could not read anything on the screen anymore.... eventually, clicked next where it ask you make choice to cancel your score vs not as well.. it pinged me to make a choice.. For a moment I thought of canceling it... second thought... What the heck, just see the score... Worse come worse take it again.. Before the exam I mentally prepared myself to see the score whatever goes today. So made the selection and was little surprised to see the 720. I was happy to see the score given my condition that day. Another day, I would not have been so happy about it.

Finally, the red bull and my working with dizziness on work place for last 6-7 weeks worked for me I do not know which one helped more. But I am pretty sure both of these played their part.

I will post more in next few days with lesson learnt etc. on this post. One quick thing, I will say is; the actual exam is not that difficult and keep following the basic stuff from OGs and GMATPrep and GMATclub math tests. I may take the exam again, as I believe I would have cracked 760-780 on any other day. I am going to take chill for now. My wife feels way more relaxed than me and she is happy that I would be able to spend more time with her and our daughter. Let’s see if that could happen……