am i a complete idiot? why is this so hard? do i really deserve to be working my current job if i cant score well on this stupid test? could the computer have scored incorrectly? is this a joke? am i getting punked? these are just a few of the questions that ran through my mind yesterday after wasting 4 hours of my life on this painfully annoying standardized test...while i realize complaining will not get me where i need to be, i thought i may reach out to you all and see if you have any recommendations or words of wisdom that would benefit my low esteem..ive read the inspiration stories on this board and used them to fuel my outlook on this step towards bschool and am hoping there is more to come
my path:
I began the haul in Feb 2007...took a veritas class, dilligently studied all the course materials, attended all classes, reviewed topics, etc...then once i was comfortable i began solving problems i had yet to complete from the course materials, then came my first practice test (GMAT Prep - 530). The following couple of months involved heavy prep time (10-15 hrs/week on top of working 75+hrs)...i pushed through OG11 twice and carefully reviewed every problem and explanation to the point that I could basically recite the first 50 questions of each section without thinking twice...my concern over the course of my review was my quant skills, which i assumed would be fine, i work in IB and tend to think my analytical skills are fairly strong...but to my suprise my quant scores on my initial GMAT prep tests were a bit low (36-39s) so i began to review more quant and put verbal on the back burner...3 weeks leading up to the actual test i picked up
MGMAT SC book and reviewed the topics and covered all the problems, verbal seemed not to be an issue, i was consistently doing 85%+ on all problem in OG11 for verbal...i took two more GMAT Prep tests in the last two weeks (660 49Q, 31V and 680 48Q, 35V) and reviewed the OG11 and
MGMAT SC until my eyes got soar, over the last 3 days before the test i began doing problems from SC 1000 in sets of 100 and was about 75-80%...test day came and i thought i was ready but was worried as ive never been a good test taker when it counts...
test day....got up, went for jog, had good lunch, ate well, etc...reviewed some flash cards just to get my brain going...walked to test center 1hr early and they sat me early....the AWA section came, i breezed through this with no problem...took a break and a few deep gasps of air....quant section started and right off the bat the first question was something i had never seen (an exponent question that i just could not break) i tried back solving, etc....3 mins have gone by and im panicking at this point....i made the best guess and moved on...i knew i had to do well on the first 10-12 so i put alot of pressure on myself...the next 8-10 questions were similar in that i just had not seen questions like this before...i pushed through the quant and was sure i had blown this section, i almost left the center before finishing but i stuck it out and finished with 30 seconds left....i was sweating and disheveled....took another break, drank some water, power bar....back in...now i thought maybe i can offset the horrible quant section a bit to at least even some ground...i started well in the verbal, and had back to back bold face reasoning questions, then had a mimic and tough E/R CR questions, so i assumed that i was doing fairly well at this point...there were some SC that were difficult along the way and i made a few guess attempts but finished with about 5-6 mins remaining....test over...score screen.... i was shocked, pissed off and just flat out angry...who can i blame i thought???? i blame myself...i dont know what happened, but my scores were opposite what i assumed was happening during the test, my Q while not great by any means was a whole lot better than i asssumed considering i thought i missed 8 on the first 10...and the verbal was shocking..i may have been better off guessing...i must have made very careless mistakes and rushed through...
im planning on applying R1 to some schools and maybe EA to one if i can get this ridiculous test out of the way...but not sure how to rebound...im thinking of getting a private tutor but not sure how this would benefit...ive gone through more problems than i can imagine, all OG11, all
MGMAT SC, all 1000SC and am 3/4 done with 1000PS questions...in the end i think its just that i get overly nervous and cant perform come game day...so im not sure what the next step is
thanks in advance for the input...
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27 Jun 2007, 14:26
