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APY89
Joined: 03 Jun 2014
Last visit: 15 May 2016
Posts: 54
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 4
Location: United States
Concentration: Entrepreneurship, General Management
Schools: Tepper '17 (M$) McDonough '17 (A)
GMAT 1: 640 Q42 V36
GMAT 2: 710 Q48 V40
GPA: 3.38
WE:Operations (Consulting)
Products:
I'm still trying to figure out what happened yesterday....I went in fully expecting to score around the upper 600 to lower 700 range and left with a 590. I was so upset, I didn't even look at the screen long enough to get my break down. Instead, I cancelled my score and walked out of the testing center as quickly as possible. I should mention that this was my second GMAT attempt. I scored a 640 on my first try even though I was rather underprepared.
So I guess my question here is has this happened to anyone else and, if so, what did you do? I'm a sucker for pain, so the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was sign up for the GMAT...again.
Here's my prep background:
-I've been studying for a total of around 5 months now. I took both the Manhattan GMAT prep class and Magoosh and felt comfortable answering the majority of the practice questions I came across. In fact, I would do 10 question timed sets and regularly score no worse than 80%. These weren't memorized questions and they were mostly of a "Hard" difficulty.
-One week before the exam, I took the official GMAT practice exam and scored a 680. One week prior to that, I scored a 680 on the MGMAT Test 6. I don't remember the breakdowns, but they were relatively balanced (with a slight Verbal bias). Both were taken under exam-like conditions.
-I had plenty of sleep the week leading up to the exam and ate regular, healthy meals.
-I was a little anxious when I got to the testing center, but no more than you would expect.
Some additional background:
-I was pretty certain going into the exam that the GMAT was the only missing piece of my application. Everything else was in great shape so I think I convinced myself that this was all I needed to get in. That added some pressure.
-My girlfriend just began law school and the school I want to attend is right down the street from her....4 hours from where I currently am. This added pressure to get into that school.
Here's what happened:
I had no issues at all with the Essay or IR sections. In fact, I remember feeling sort of relaxed that I was finally sitting in the testing center doing what I assumed would be my last GMAT. After that, it's honestly kind of a blur. I remember knocking the first 3-5 questions out in quant and feeling really good. Then the wheels fell off. I began to see questions that I had an extremely difficult time solving. But that's no big deal right? That's what the test is designed to do. Use one of your guesses and move on to get back to questions that you know how to solve. That was my thinking at least. The only problem was I stopped seeing questions that I knew how to solve. I missed a few questions in a row and began to panic. I remember feeling like it was fight or flight. I was literally shaking. I think I selected C for Data Sufficiency about 90% of the time because I wasn't able to think straight. I got to the end of the quant section and used my break to splash some cold water on my face and try to regroup. I knew I had botched the quant section, but I also knew I had to do my best to not let it affect my verbal. Clearly, that didn't work. The verbal section, though it felt tremendously better than my quant, also ended in disaster. I think the only reason it felt better was I'm naturally more comfortable with that section. In any case, the final score of 590 appeared on my screen and I felt my stomach drop. That is the second lowest score I have ever received on any GMAT or practice GMAT since I began. My lowest score was my diagnostic.
So clearly nerves got the better of me, but was there something I could have done to mitigate this? My biggest fear now is going back to take the GMAT again and having a repeat scenario. I already cancelled one score (which I now know I probably shouldn't have done) and I can't afford to cancel another. I'm just so surprised that after 5 months of studying and practicing good GMAT test taking theory I can still be this affected by stress. I went in thinking it was going to be a breeze...
Honestly any advice or anecdotes would be extremely welcomed. This was quite a blow to my confidence.
So I guess my question here is has this happened to anyone else and, if so, what did you do? I'm a sucker for pain, so the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was sign up for the GMAT...again.
Here's my prep background:
-I've been studying for a total of around 5 months now. I took both the Manhattan GMAT prep class and Magoosh and felt comfortable answering the majority of the practice questions I came across. In fact, I would do 10 question timed sets and regularly score no worse than 80%. These weren't memorized questions and they were mostly of a "Hard" difficulty.
-One week before the exam, I took the official GMAT practice exam and scored a 680. One week prior to that, I scored a 680 on the MGMAT Test 6. I don't remember the breakdowns, but they were relatively balanced (with a slight Verbal bias). Both were taken under exam-like conditions.
-I had plenty of sleep the week leading up to the exam and ate regular, healthy meals.
-I was a little anxious when I got to the testing center, but no more than you would expect.
Some additional background:
-I was pretty certain going into the exam that the GMAT was the only missing piece of my application. Everything else was in great shape so I think I convinced myself that this was all I needed to get in. That added some pressure.
-My girlfriend just began law school and the school I want to attend is right down the street from her....4 hours from where I currently am. This added pressure to get into that school.
Here's what happened:
I had no issues at all with the Essay or IR sections. In fact, I remember feeling sort of relaxed that I was finally sitting in the testing center doing what I assumed would be my last GMAT. After that, it's honestly kind of a blur. I remember knocking the first 3-5 questions out in quant and feeling really good. Then the wheels fell off. I began to see questions that I had an extremely difficult time solving. But that's no big deal right? That's what the test is designed to do. Use one of your guesses and move on to get back to questions that you know how to solve. That was my thinking at least. The only problem was I stopped seeing questions that I knew how to solve. I missed a few questions in a row and began to panic. I remember feeling like it was fight or flight. I was literally shaking. I think I selected C for Data Sufficiency about 90% of the time because I wasn't able to think straight. I got to the end of the quant section and used my break to splash some cold water on my face and try to regroup. I knew I had botched the quant section, but I also knew I had to do my best to not let it affect my verbal. Clearly, that didn't work. The verbal section, though it felt tremendously better than my quant, also ended in disaster. I think the only reason it felt better was I'm naturally more comfortable with that section. In any case, the final score of 590 appeared on my screen and I felt my stomach drop. That is the second lowest score I have ever received on any GMAT or practice GMAT since I began. My lowest score was my diagnostic.
So clearly nerves got the better of me, but was there something I could have done to mitigate this? My biggest fear now is going back to take the GMAT again and having a repeat scenario. I already cancelled one score (which I now know I probably shouldn't have done) and I can't afford to cancel another. I'm just so surprised that after 5 months of studying and practicing good GMAT test taking theory I can still be this affected by stress. I went in thinking it was going to be a breeze...
Honestly any advice or anecdotes would be extremely welcomed. This was quite a blow to my confidence.
10 Sep 2014, 15:11
Kudos
Bookmarks
Got 700 in April. I was greedy and tried to improve my score in August, after preparing much better the quant section (verbal is easy for me).
My score fell to 570. The score at my first attempt with a Gmat Prep exam, in February, was 640 (first time timed and little preparation).
I spent one whole month just focused on the quant section to end up with a 27th percentile. Thats screwing up a score. i don´t have a full explanation for what happened, but I know I felt more pressed because I knew I had to improve my 700. Maybe you suffered something similar but for a different reason.
If you feel prepared, don´t give up and think about giving it another chance.
My score fell to 570. The score at my first attempt with a Gmat Prep exam, in February, was 640 (first time timed and little preparation).
I spent one whole month just focused on the quant section to end up with a 27th percentile. Thats screwing up a score. i don´t have a full explanation for what happened, but I know I felt more pressed because I knew I had to improve my 700. Maybe you suffered something similar but for a different reason.
If you feel prepared, don´t give up and think about giving it another chance.
11 Sep 2014, 12:32
Kudos
Bookmarks
What type of quant questions did you see that were tripping you up? Was there a higher proportion of a certain topic you noticed?
