Do you have to be a genius?

hats off for the great post. yes, i would also say that the extent to which a school will 'raise the bar' is ridiculous, but is also necessary, because of the world we live in. you put it very well, success on the gmat depends on how well you are prepared on TEST DAY, how calm you are, how organized and how well you manage your time. even if you prepared for 12 months and went through every possible prep book on the market, if you screw up your timing on the test day you'll be screwed.

Hi,

I'm not sure it's about calmness or anxiety. It's really about performance at a specific day. Since we all are still human, our performance varies from day to day. It is inevitable and is not necessarily related to anxiety. As I mentioned, my scores in prep tests ranged from 700 to 770 (740 in the real thing). I don't think there was any special factor influencing my performance besides the fact that I simply made more mistakes on one test than the other. Just a matter of luck. This is the reason why I feel that GMAT's are really not an exact science and two people, one with a 770 score one with a 700 might very well be equal in their abilities.

Competition over top schools has become absurd in the last few years. I sincerely believe that schools can easily double their quota and not compromise on quality one little bit. A lot of good people are left out by the current screening method. However, it does not appear like they're actually interested in doing that.

Then again, if I do get in to a top 10 school I guess I wouldn't mind that much...

hi,

first 0ff - congrats and hats off roy1000 for the massive score - 740 is to be admired and quite an achievement. i am targeting similar score and will be sitting on the exam in april.
second - as far as top b-schools go, i recently read an article in a magazine about how top schools were unwilling to expand their phd programs and thats the main reason they still accept so few of their applicants and thats why tey continue to raise the bar to almost 'unreachable'' height.

this is kinda off-topic - how many comb/permutation questions did you get in quant??? i read that most 700 + scorers see at least 2-3 perm/comb questions, which are not normally seen on <690 scores. can you attest that if one sees that amount of perm/comb questions, one can assume that he/she will get a 700+ before the test ends ??? [assuming of course a good score on verbal too since it comes after quant] thanx for you reply in advance.

Sorry, but I was previously unaware of this theory and I can't really recall the questions now (I took the test on July), so I won't be much help with this matter.

I did get "only" 50 on the quant, meaning that I made 1-2 mistakes out of the 37 questions, so I'm not sure regarding the components. I believe that a person who is mathematically inclined should achieve a score of 48-51 on the quant, so I do not think it would be wise to count on any specific "theories" regarding the test. Personally, I can not say that I have witnessed an inclining difficulty level during the quant section. As far as I could tell, all questions (besides the first 2-3) were all at the same difficulty level.

In any case, it does look the bar is rising every year and probably will continue to rise. I guess that if 740 is "average" now, it will be sub-par in the years to come….

hi ,

thanx for the reply. i read in kaplan that the quant and verbal sections were scored on a scale of 0-60. i am just curious if you made only 1-2 mistakes and got 50 on quant , if one is to make 0 mistakes how much would his quant score be?? would it be 60??

Sorry to disappoint, but quant scores range up to 51 actually. 51 is the highest possible score (perfect score - 0 mistakes). One or two mistakes brings you to 50.

thanx for explaining it roy, what about verbal is it the same thing 0-51 ???

No - Verbal goes up to 44 I believe.

thank you

I do hope we don't have to be genius to pass it and get into the schools we want to. I try to convince myself that everything is possible.If someone could do it, we can do it too. All we need is some effort and time. Wishing you all luck.