Thank you so much for coming back to my post! Btw, I really enjoyed the empowergmat course, really helped me in the Q section to diversify the approach and better understand how the exam works. However I did improve in the Q section, I'm still far from my target.
Please find bellow my answers to your questions.
Hi ZuKi,
I'm sorry to hear that Test Day didn't go as well as hoped. Between exams, your Quant DID improve from a Q35 to a Q40 though, so you were clearly making some progress there. Whatever problems you had in the Verbal section continued to occur though. When a Test Taker experiences the type of score drops that you're describing, the likely explanations fall into one of two categories:
1) Something you were doing during your studies was NOT realistic, so you weren't properly ready for the specifics of Test Day. --> From my first attempt I recon that I did some things that potentially had an impact.
2) Something about about Test Day itself threw you "off" and affected your performance. --> I've been working a lot and studying a lot as well, and the last 2 weeks from test day I was fully focused on practicing. I might have study 8h per day easily.
If you can answer a few questions, I can probably help you sort out why your study results aren't lining up with your Test Day results: --> that would be awesome!
1) When you took your CATs, did you take the ENTIRE CAT every time (including the Essay and IR sections)? --> I did yes, but for example, for my second attempt I did remember a number of the IR questions. Nevertheless I still had the extension pack exam nº4 pending to be done and I did it scoring 690.
2) Did you ever take your CATs more than once? I did.
3) What time of day did you take your CATs and what time of day were your Official GMATs? 2h difference between the test date and the exam. I don't feel this is a major issue
4) Did you ever do anything during a CAT that did NOT match how the Official GMAT is administered (skipping sections, pausing the Test, listening to music, eating/drinking during the Exam, using a laptop computer instead of a desktop computer with a mouse, etc.)? --> I did use my laptop, I don't have a desktop. Additionally for my first exam I was totally overloaded with work and I had to pause the exam sometimes to answer the phone. I obviously understood this was a issue.
5) How often do you visit these Forums to review practice questions? --> Every single question I come to the forum to see if there is a more efficient approach or just understand how to solve the question.
6) How long did you use each of the GMAT resources that you described? --> I've been using those for quite a while, I used as well the
OG.
7) How many CATs did you take in the week before your Official GMAT? --> In the week before the exam I took 2 CATs.
8) How did you sleep the night before each of your GMATs? --> Pretty well, around 7h. This is my normal schedule for the week.
9) How long is the ride to the Testing Center? --> Really close to my place.
10) Did you have a pacing problem on Test Day? Did you have to rush through a bunch of questions just to finish (and if so, then approximately how many?) Did you leave ANY questions unanswered? --> I answered every single question. In my first exam I had to guess around 10 question on Q and an entire RC passage on the verbal section. On this last one I didn't had to rush through 10 questions on Q and I had to guess an entire passage as well - in my understanding this is the key reason for the improvement in the Q section.
Thankfully, the GMAT is a standardized, predictable Exam, so you CAN train to CRUSH it. Also, since Business Schools don't care if you take the GMAT more than once, retaking the GMAT is not a problem. Before going back in and retesting though, we have to figure out what went wrong so that we can fix it. --> I'm really still trying to understand this. I'm afraid that I was too tired even if I slept well.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
close
05 Jan 2015, 10:56
