First GMAT Experience: Hot, Confused, and Fast (680: Q42 V41)

While I'm very satisfied with my IR and Verbal scores, I plan to retake as I don't think this accurately represents my Quant performance. The test room was really warm; I think the heater was set to 75 degrees. I was thrown by the proctor starting the quant section immediately as I sat back down.

Essay – I used the pad to make an outline, then started typing. Intro, three paragraphs and a conclusion. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to write a lot and put a lot of detail in it. I think I can conserve more energy by focusing on doing an ‘adequate’ job.

IR – Surprise! Two MSR 3-part questions. When I got the first question of the first MSR, I skipped it (I don’t think any of my Veritas practice tests had any). Then I randomly guessed on the next two. I took my sweet time with the last two (I think I had 15 minutes) and I thought I had bombed it because I skipped to many. I was expecting 3 – 5…. I got a 7!?

QUANT – After finishing IR I took my break. I ate my JIF bar and had some unsweetened ice tea I brought. I went to the bathroom, trying to hurry so I could spend the rest of my break time relaxing. I went into the test room planning to set up my scratchpad with timing benchmarks and quadrants, but the proctor started the section immediately, something I wasn’t expecting. I don’t really remember too much from the section other than it felt like I was getting easier questions then I should. I don’t remember any probability/combinatorics/3D GEO, which usually indicate you are on an advanced track. I told myself not to worry about it at the time, but it did concern me. I'm aware of how important the first questions are but I think I ended up moving through them faster than I should have. In general, not having my scratch pad set up as I did with every other practice test I took threw my timing off by some degree. I plan to re-take on Dec 19th, and I will be better prepared. I was thinking about using the extra time at the end of the IR section to map out my Quant scratch pad, but I’m not sure if this is allowed. I think i did well on the questions in the middle of the quant section, but obviously not well enough to move me into the 45-47 range I was expecting. For whatever its worth, I'm in the minority as an engineer whose Quant percentiles have always been lower than Verbal.

VERBAL – This felt more normal, more how I felt on my practice CATs. My timing on quant was always my weakness (especially spending too much time on word problems) so, while I had a very specific plan in place for quant (Four time checks spaced appropriate to question number), I always just wrote down the timing checks in a little chart for verbal. This matched my GMAT experience exactly, so the verbal felt comfortable. I realized I was getting harder questions, and I felt I must have been getting some wrong. This didn’t bother me though. The only speedbump, if you could call it that, was that a little over halfway through I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to preserve and hold my bladder through the end of the test (and the survey) and finished the exam.