well, what should I say? topic reveals my feelings at this moment.....
I am though a little suprised, how badly I performed.... gonna make this as short as possible because I kinda feel depressed now.
took my first gmat end of september and score 640.
Study materials prior to first try:
-kaplan
-kaplan800
The kaplan CATS always gave me results between 600 and 700
Then I found this forum and regained hope. Browsing this forum I found out that the
OG is essential and lots of other helpful things. I continued to study hard (full-time) to make sure I do a lot better this time. All these 700 posts really motivated me till a few hours ago.
Anways, for my second try I additionally used:
-
OG 11th
- 1000 SC (completed 650 questions)
- LSAT CR
- and of course GMAT club!
My performance improvement actually looked quite promising. I found out my weaknesses (RC and CR at first) and worked on them hard. LSAT CR is in my opinion the best training. After you do several hundred questions, you simply know what kinda style the questions are.
One week before my second attempt I took a full length practice test every day (PP and Gmatprep).
In my first try, I got only one mistake in each CR and RC and 8 in SC. I focused in SC in the last days and as it turned out, in my last practise exam I reduced my SC error rate to 3.
Test results in order of occurence:
PP: 740
Gprep: 730
Gprep: 710
PP: 700
Today: 620
This really hits me hard, because I knew I had a realistic chance to cross the 700 barrier. Furthermore, it throws my career planning completely out of line and I need to go plan B (which btw does not really exist yet).
Yet I'd never have pegged that I perform even WORSE than on my first try after studying only kaplan.
I do not have the will to take the GMAT a 3rd time, just cant do it.
oh btw, for AWA I used this pdf file going around, which containts a template for each essay. They are really good and applicable to almost any topic!
Lastly, I would like to thank everyone here in this forum. I really learned a lot here and it was heaps of fun puzzling over some quants or discussing verbal questions. Keep up the good work!