Hi - I took my first GMAT exam today and received 620 (Q42, V34, IR 7). Unfortunately, this is not a sufficient score for the top MBA programs (e.g. Stanford, Kellogg, Wharton, etc) that I'm interested in. I'll need to bring my score up by at 80+ points and break the 700 mark. I've scoured the gmatclub forum for stories similar to mine, and after hours of reading through other's questions and recommendations, I'm still unsure about my next steps; therefore, I thought it would be best to directly ask the gmatclub community for advice.
I know I can do better on both Q & V, and I feel I haven't been studying smart.. I've repeated the same errors in my practice CATs and haven't addressed them properly. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. I'm adding here my questions as well as my 3 month study plan and my exam day experience.
My questions about exam score, application, and study plan are:1) Should I cancel my score?
2) When would you recommend I retake the exam if I'm planning to apply in Round 1 for MBA, but also being sensitive to the fact that I'll need to increase my score by at 80+ points? (I'm considering end of June or sometime July)
My questions about the exam to the community are: 1) What are the best resources to address my significant
pacing issue in Quant?
2) What are the best resources to improve SC/CR? (I'm currently more deficient with SC)
3) Given I've used all
OG offerings (Q&V extended review included), what's the next best resource to use? (I'm currently considering Manhattan or Kaplan as I've seen some positive reviews for these resources)
4) Do you recommend using material from
GMAT Club Test Center to prep?
Before Exam Day•Study material used: EmpowerGMAT 3 month study plan (completed) & Official Guides from GMAC.
•Study length: 3 months
•Study cadence: ~12-14 hours every weekend and 2hrs M-W on weekdays for ~12 weeks, and a power week last week where I studied M-F 8hrs a day. My primary goal was to ensure I completed all the GMAC CATs and
Official Guide questions, including the additional Quant and Verbal review guides (~1,400 questions).
•
OG CAT scores: 610 (Q42, V32), 530 (Q33, V30), 690 (Q45, V40), 670 (Q47, V35), 650 (Q44, V36), 650 (Q44, V35)
•CAT settings: At home, at various times in the day. I always ran out of time for the Quant section by 10-15 minutes (so I had to pause the CAT to complete all the answers). In retrospect, these decisions clearly affected me on test day - I assumed that my adrenaline would kick in on test day and help me solve questions faster (sadly, I was mistaken).
On Exam Day•Exam day of week: Monday
•Exam time: 8:00AM
•Exam order: Quant, Verbal, IR, AWA
•Optional breaks: Took both optional breaks to recharge
•Things that caught me off guard: At first, I put on the noise cancelling headphones thinking it was a good idea and realized I could hear my own heartbeat, which made me even more anxious; I took them off 1/4 of the way into the Quant section.
•Quant section: The second question caught me completely off guard, it was a problem solving question where I didn't think the words actually matched the table, I spent about 4+ minutes trying to solve it. After this question, I couldn't properly read the questions following, as I had a mind block that carried throughout -slowing down my speed beyond optimal. After answering the 13th question I had 20 minutes or so left, which is significantly behind schedule, further adding to my exam jitters for Quant (yellow flashing countdown clock also did not help). I'd estimate that I ended up guessing on 50% of the questions.
•Verbal section: This section was much easier, and I started to feel much calmer as I moved through the questions. I've always done well with RC questions so that was a breeze (1-2 questions wrong for each practice CAT). I didn't feel this section was difficult even for CR and SC.. but my scaled score has mostly lingered at ~30-35 (highest 40), which is not a great score, and I attribute the lower score to CR/SC.
•IR section: I didn't study for this section at all, aside from the practice CATs, and still managed to be in the 82nd percentile.
•AWA Essay: Easy, did not run out of time and wrote 5 well thought out paragraphs. I even had time to re-read my entire essay for any grammatical or spelling errors.
Thanks all, I genuinely appreciate your help in advance. I'm happy to share more details if needed