730 - Very Unusual experience - Seek advice from GMAT Gods

Question

Hi there, I scored 730 Q50 V40 on 13 dec (CAT). This was my 2nd attempt. First attempt was 720 Q49 V40 (paper based). Seek Advise What is the secret of getting 750+ scores? What am i doing wrong. Desperately need advise from all you great folks at gmatclub. Any suggestions for more practice or fine tuning? cheers

FYI: I'm non native speaker. Studied for 3.5 months. Did OG. Redid all incorrectly answered q's. did all 3 kaplan books. 4 kaplan tests. one pp after og just for practice. many gmat+ verbal questions Why UNUSUAL Verbal went great but scored ONLY 40 ! Verbal section seemed really straightforward. Time management was satisfactory (much better than in any of my practice exams). Started off with 2-3 easy SCs. Then came an RC (my weakness...take more time). For the first time ever, I actually enjoyed the passage. Confident that I must've got all the answers right. Immediately bombarded with another RC.....thought this would take my timing apart but no so....it went even better.....and i was in time...i was following the "1/3 of test every 25 mins" strategy i picked up here. then came some CR/SC and 2 more RC. Except for 1 SC with "not only..." in the stem but no "but...also" in any of the answer choices and perhaps 1 CR, all the other questions (SC, RC, CR) seemed typical kind of ETS questions and i did'nt really hesitate while answering them. When i finished the verbal section, i was very positive about beating my 40 in the previous attempt. therefore was very disappointed with the whole score! has this happened to anyone? I mean when i compare this attempt with my prvious paper-based attempt 2 mths ago, i had much more time per question on cAT,. I did not rush through any question...and finished with abt 1.5 mins to go.... I dont think i rushed through the initial (supposedly more important) questions.....They seemed easy so i went through them in a timely manner.

AnasaziTzu · Answer

Congrats KeyV....I hope I do just as well during my CAT later this month. Do u mind sharing your test day experience in more detail?

--AT

kayser1soze · Answer

hey key V congrats on the great score mate. i don't know if there is a secret about scoreing 750 + , if there is one i will like to know bout it since i will take the test in april ;]] u may need some more tuning on verbal . evaluate your weakest area in verbal and work on it. practice with extra materials such as LSAT for CR, get some more verbal workout books, especially some grammar books stressing the basics - those can be found easily in any local lirbary. there are thousands of online resources for grammar as well. this will be very helpful for SC; as far as RC goes, practice on your reading speed. read some more books, run a seach for posts by bb, the founder - he has some really good books in the review section for practicing verbal skills. hope that helps good luck with the apps . cheerz :beer

kosyura · Answer

Hey, 730 is an awesome score which is good enough to be considered at at the top schools and actually high enough to qualify financial awards from many of them. 

From what everyone in MBA admission offices told me, once you hit 700, the score doesn't really matter that much - it's more the rest of the package. 

Or is this "I need to get 750!" some obsessive self-assertion thing that so many of us on this forum tend to share?

Praetorian · Answer

I agree, but koysura, its a personal thing. I would not take my GMAT again with a score of 700, but then there are thousands who would. Its just an individuals perception of what they want their scores to be. There are some schools where awards may be given out based on the GMAT scores, so thats another reason. Our goal should be to encourage and provide help to anyone who seeks advice.

KeyV, there is absolutely no secret to getting a 750. Just good ol' fashioned hard work coupled with a strong feedback mechanism. I think you are doing things right. 

In verbal, sometimes its hard to tell if you got a SC/CR/RC right. And its possible that you answered some questions wrong in the beginning and started seeing easier questions. You did say RC is not your strongest area, so why not try some good LSAT material for RC practise. I would also look at CR questions from LSAT. Those are great too. Keep your focus on practising with quality materials. The official LSAT superprep is a good place to start. 

Hope this helps
Praetorian

keyV · Answer

thanks Praetorian

I will certainly practice from LSAT material since I am seriously running out of study material.

Yes i guess you are right in that i may have goofed up some early q's and hence seen easy q's thereafter and hencce the unexpected score.

But can you pls indicate, HOW MANY OF THE EARLY QUESTIONS determine the score....I mean rougly speaking is it the first 10 or 15 out of the 41?

Cheers for your advise

Praetorian · Answer

I would not even dare to speculate about your question. KeyV, train yourself to go 1 question at a time. That is the best way to deal with GMAT and its especially important in your case. Remember that the last few questions determine what your final score looks like. 

Every question is important. Easy questions will cost you big time if you get them wrong. Hard questions wont. Any guesses where your emphasis should be? thats right, to eliminate those silly errors and to never make the same mistake twice. its idealistic, but you try to get close , it will help a lot. If you think that you are having problems with mis-reading problems, stop right there. think about it, talk to people and develop a strategy to solve that problem. Dont move on. Because repeating the same mistakes over and over doesnt help. 

Again, you are doing great. but that should not stop you from improving yourself. find your weaknesses and develop a way to minimize your mistakes.

keyV · Answer

Test Experience....Sure....Here you go...

 Brief Background

I work in new zealand. Here there are no CAT centres only paper based 2 times a year. SO for CAT, I had to travel to Melbourne, Aussie.

Night before Test

i landed in Melbourne (for the first time) at 5-30 pm and took a shuttle to the YHA hostel that I had booked earlier over the net. I checked into hostel and took out map and started walking towards the centre. Exam was next morning at 8-30 am and i wanted to have no unnecessary worries on G-day. it took me 40 mins but i worked out a shorter route and it then took me 20 mins to walk back to hostel.

I had Subway sandwiches, OJ etc for dinner and slept at 10 pm

I had Subway sandwiches, OJ etc for dinner and slept at 10 pm

test day

I woke up at 6 am and was ready to leave by 7 am. Started walking down the familiar route and reached centre at 7-30 ish. The test admin staff arrived late and so by the time i went in it was 8-40ish. the wait gave me time to just relax...

started gmat at 8-45 am.

started gmat at 8-45 am.

the test

the test was in a little WARM room with 5 comps. I started off with AWA and got friendly topics. THANK GOD. Then i went to maths. IT started off well but then i got one question about the 12th one i think which was not tricky but just tedious...i was getting quadratic equations which were not getting solved easily. i was worried and after about 6-7 mins just guessed.

THis was a blunder because i could have plugged in numbers and tried each of the answers and seen the one that gave the expected number.....THis would be like cheating to a pure maths geek but in the gmat the idea is to choose the right ans and get going. so anyway this was followed by an easy ds where i choose the wrong answer and realized it as soon as i hit the next buttion. Now i was very worried and thought ok maths is going to be just mediocre, at least i will blast out verbal.

I;ve described verbal exoperience in the first post in this thread......Hence i was surprised to get 50 in Q but just 40 in V....

Hope this helps....

Cheers and all the best

Praetorian · Answer

keyV I replied to your question above. you posted a few mins after my post, just making sure you didnt miss it.

Praetorian

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