Greetings,
I would like to start off by thanking all the members, moderators, and admin of GMAT Club. This has been a great resource in my quest to master the GMAT.
Exam Day:
I took the exam Saturday July 23 at 1:00pm.
-AWA - Pretty uneventful. Used extra time to draw grids on my scrap paper. I will comment more on this when I receive my grades.
-Quant - Started off with some relatively easy PS, did not see a DS until the 5th or 6th question. The questions were similar in style to the ones in the
OG, but a bit harder. The questions I got wrong; I hit a hard one (#20) that stumped me and I had to guess because it was eating too much time, and the last question I had 5 minutes to do but for some reason I did not see the method until I was done and on my break.
-Verb - Started of with 3 SC, then got into the CR and RC. I had 4 RC passages, 3 were 35 -45 lines and one was 85 lines. I had one bold CR close to the end of the exam. All the CR, most of the RC, and most of the SC were
OG difficulty. I felt that the SC questions were testing concepts that were outside the scope of the
OG, and I am pretty sure this is where I lost the majority of my marks.
-Score - After going through a million post exam information screens I finally saw my score:
Total - 690(91%)
Q - 49(90%)
V - 34(72%)
I was relieved, but was hoping for better.
Studying Info:
I studied for a little less than two months. I read both Kaplan's GMAT guide and PR's, did all questions in the
OG, completed Kaplan and PR software, and did 4 old paper test. During my studying process I consistently nailed the quant section and had 90%+ correct rate on RC and CR, but the SC always held me back. In the
OG my SC correct rate was only 74%. Knowing this I focused on SC the week before the exam and thought that I had a grip on it. Usually I can narrow a SC question down to two answers, but it is that last choice that always kills me.
Here are my practice test grades:
PP1 - 710
PP2 - 720
PR1 - 710
PR2 - 720
PR3 - 690
PR4 - 690
K1 - 630
K2 - 640
K3 - 650
Questions:
-I am not sure whether I should retake the exam. I realize that a 690 is a good score, but I felt that I should have done better(~720-750). Also, I am not sure that this score is good enough to secure me a spot in a top ten school(Hoping for HBS). If anyone could give me some advise it would be greatly appreciated.
-What would be the best was to improve my SC skills? I try many of the questions in the GMAT Club verbal section, and get about 80% of them right. I have tried going through my study guides a second time, but I remember the questions to well to use them.
-I was wondering if the official score that GMAC sends does it contain a breakdown of how you did in each question type? For example, how many SC right/wrong, how many RC right/wrong, etc. This way I will know for sure if it was SC that slaughtered my score.
Thanks again for all your help, and best wish in your MBA experience. If anyone has questions about my GMAT experience please feel free to ask. I would be more than happy to help give back to this club.
Quench