Hi GMAT Club,
First of all, a huge thanks to everybody for what is done on the forum, this is just outstanding. All the content I have found on the forum helped me so much to reach the score I got - great already, I'm aware - and I guess I am owing you my GMAT story since I read so many of yours. Let me first introduce myself: Raphaël, 21 years-old, French-Born and Senior in Finance at NC State University.
I started with
Magoosh 13 months ago but continuously procrastinated. At the end of Spring 14, I had planned to take my GMAT during summer. I did not study at all and arrived on Fall semester with a lot to do. Giving priority to my GPA, I chose to postpone - again - my studies to January. In the meantime, I realized that I was not fond of
Magoosh, the videos were weirdly classified and honestly, it was boring to listen a gentleman talking for 5 minutes when the same info could be read in 2. Being already comfortable with the Verbal section, I ordered the whole
MGMAT quant pack. I found myself in January out of campus, back in Europe, living on my own in a calm studio, and going to my internship everyday for 6 months. It was hard to study at the beginning but I got used to the rythm and finally started as of April to seriously study every night. I went through most of the
MGMAT books, did few
Magoosh quant exercises, and a fair half of the
OG book. I just did 2/3rd of the
OG verbal part in order to keep the mojo, and I was doing good every time.
I therefore decided to take a Mock CAT exam and scored 740 at it (Q48, V44); exactly the same score that I would have a week later! After this mock test, I took a few days off from work and tried to work on my weaknesses, precisely in quant, since I was in the top 2% of verbal without any study. I used the GMAT Club Math Book, which is an amazing tool, actually more helpful than any other support I have used! For someone having already good fundations in Math, it may well be enough. I followed the exercises advised by Bunuel and struggled with many of them. I was actually on a rush in the end and skipped many useful exercises / lessons. Two days before my exam, I scored a 700 (Q50, V35ish).
I thought 'Damn, what happened??'. I was half amazed because I could reach this 50 I craved so much, but also worried because of my week verbal score while I was always good at it. I concluded it was just an accident and moved on, targeting my best scores in each (Q50, V44; would have been pretty awesome on a first shot).
Anyway, a week ago, I'm showing up at the center, ready to beat the GMAT. I did fairly on AWA (5), terribly on IR (5), and really good on what's left (and really matters): Q48, V44. My percentiles are Q 74%, V 98%, total 97%. I will not complain or claim that it is a bad score, it would be unfair and pretentious towards people starting from a way lower score. However, given how long and how hard I studied (which wasn't that long and hard), I feel like I could have done much better.
Claiming that 74% on Q is not outstanding is true. I don't know why and how I did bad compared to my last CAT, but I am really convinced that I should retake it. I still have plenty to go through (Bunuel exercises, half the
OG, and still the Math Book to review, 2 CAT exams, 4
MGMAT) and I feel like an additional little month of study will not kill me, especially given that I am not applying to anything before December. However, since I am targeting Phd in Finance or Msc in Financial Economics, I really feel like I must kill my quant part and I am now targeting 51. The additional study would not be worthy otherwise.
If you guys would be willing to give me your feedback on how an adcom would see 2 GMAT scores, and most of all if you have tips to improve my Q to 51, it would be more than welcome. I have seen many of you advise not to retake, however given the time I have ahead and the quant oriented programs I am targeting, I don't see any cons for it. Still, if you see some, please share! And do not hesitate if any of you have questions regarding my GMAT prep.