Hello there,
Have been a member quite a long time and was planning to share my success story here today. But here I am, in utter shock and disappoinment.
Coming from Turkey, I'm from a different pool compared to most of the contributors to the forum. Here's the story, may take long but you may learn something and, most of all, you may show me the way:
My first time was May '14. I took it because I was planning to enter to a Master's program in Finance in a local college. Due to the limited time for the application, I was in a hurry a little. There was no 700+ target at that time but I was considering my MBA application for '16 entrance, hence it would have been perfect if I could have managed to get 700+ in my first attempt.
Anyhow, before I start any studying, I took the first free official exam and took 690 (49Q, 34V). I had no idea about GMAT at all. I saw that I was strong in Quant and I needed to push my Verbal skills further. Veritas Prep was available to me at the time, so I started studying. It was about 1.5 month long studying mainly focused on Verbal, took Exam Pack 1. My scores were as follows:
MGMAT (Date: 20/04) : 660 (46Q, 34V)
Official (Date: 27/04) : 710 (50Q, 35V) 8 IR
Official (Date: 01/05) : 740 (50Q, 40V) 8 IR
Yeah I see an improvement don't you? I was not much concerned about
MGMAT because I knew Quant was hard there. Now I know that I was lacking in the variety of the sources I had studied,
OG or
MGMAT would be more helpful but during that limited time I was not going to be able to exploit them. And then the exam...
04/05 : 680 (50Q, 31V), 7 IR
OK, I knew I was not as confident in Verbal as I was in Quant. I'll give you that. I was very poor in time-management in Verbal section. But how on earth I did this poorly on Verbal, when my lowest practice test verbal score showed 34? For the guys thinking about the test day experience, I had no problem on sleep, I was cautious about doing the practice tests about the same time in the day, etc. That was OK anyway, I was going to take it again for the MBA applications following year...
And yeah here we are, on that following year: 2015... Due to the workload at work and courseload at school, I could start studying about June. Again about a 1.5 month long study plan but I was self-assured that it would be much better as I knew much more this time compared to the last one. This time I studied
MGMAT Verbal, solved half of the OG12 verbal questions, took extra
MGMAT practice tests and took official ones again. Long story short, I was more confident on Verbal but I still felt that I was not in full control. Despite that, my scores were improving on Verbal. Took almost all with IR. Took each and every of them +- 1 hr about my real exam time. I did not care about
MGMAT again, Quant was quite hard and time consuming, I don't think it reflects the real quant section of GMAT. 50Q was enough for me and I was confident that I would get it. With support enough from Verbal (35+), I was going to get over 700 barrier. The scores were supporting my theory as well:
MGMAT (date: 21/7) : 690 (45Q, 38V)
MGMAT (date: 25/7) : 680 (47Q, 36V)
MGMAT (date: 27/7) : 710 (48Q, 38V)
MGMAT (date: 29/7) : 680 (48Q, 35V)
MGMAT (date: 30/7) : 690 (48Q, 36V)
Official (date: --) : 710 (50Q, 36V)
Official (date: 1/8) : 720 (50Q, 38V)
Official (date: 2/8) : 740 (50Q, 40V)
And the real one: 660 (50Q, 28V!!) 8 IR
I can not put into words my disappointment and loss of self-confidence. Everything was perfect on the test day, I took my sleep well, no problem on test center. My performance was top notch from AWA to the end of Quant. I was a bit more stressed before starting Verbal but I was totally concentrated after the clock started ticking. I think I missed some of the first questions on Verbal but I did not realize the level of epicness of the fail until I saw my score on the screen...
Ok, I am trying to stay calm, one last take is on the horizon. I don't know maybe it will be better because I was going to struggle with finalizing the essays for the 1st round and I will be able to polish them until 2nd round.
I am sure of some of the weaknesses: 1) no error logs and 2) maybe one more source for verbal to be able to feel the full control. But can one of you identify WHY WHY WHY on earth I was performing well on practice exams but seeing my loooooowest point on the real exam???
Thank you for bearing this long, coz I cannot bear the failure... Hope this post helps someone and someone can help me...
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05 Aug 2015, 02:30
