GMAT debrief 610 (q47 V28)

Good Day,

I have written my GMAT last week and walked out with a score of 610 (Q47, V28). I am neither happy nor sad as I was expecting a score between 600-640.

A bit of background about myself. I am 33 years old, with 10 years experience, Indian Engineer. I moved to Canada 13 years before hence all my work experience has been in Canada. I started my GMAT prep in Feb 2016 by signing up for Magoosh. I bought all Manhattan books second hand. I am very bad in English grammar and I decided that I need a lot of time to prepare for GMAT. I did my baseline Manhattan CAT and got a score of 530.

In one month, I went through all the Magoosh videos, and then started reviewing the Manhattan materials. I studied for about 15 hours a week for about 6 months. I signed up for Veritas test and Manhattan CAT. I have taken 14 CAT exam until last week. I found that my score always hovered around from 590 to 640. 80% of the time I have spent over the last 6 months is on verbal and I could not get consistency in Verbal.

I went to the exam today and told myself that no matter what happens make sure i will do your best. The exam center was pretty quiet and the reception lady got my palm scanned and gave me the instructions and off to my exam. I started with a tricky AWA and eventually finished in time and then moved on to IR. I was never confident of my IR as I practised only few questions. I read in the gmat club forum that if you improve your quant, your IR will improve. I found that there is some truth to it. I finished my IR and got ready for Quant. I have used few pages so I went out during the break to request for fresh set of pages.

Quant is my strong point, so started well and I was kind of worried that I never got any probability questions or number properties. Nevertheless , I was moving on adhering to my time. Finished my quant in perfect time, then took another break and started the verbal.

I know verbal is the determining factor for a better score. I was doing ok in the first few questions and got a few questions in CR with except in the question stimulus. I usually struggle with those and was not confident about the answers and then a few SC questions where i did not have a 3 & 2 split, again i usually struggle with those... After that, the questions were easier.

Things that really help me with the GMAT exam are
1) Having an online buddy through GMAT club who was writing GMAT at the same time. We pick few questions to solve and discuss questions via video conference using Google Hangout which was free and very useful
2) Focusing on meaning on Sentence Correction.
3) I get nervous and not perform to my potential in exams... The book "Inner game of tennis" helped me a lot. I know you must be thinking what the hell the tennis book has do with GMAT exam. Trust me, you read the book, it helps you in all aspect of your life. I still get nervous during exam but not as bad as I used to..

I got my official score after 4 days . I got an Essay score of 5/6.

I tried so many strategies for writing CAT, the best startergy that worked is

Write the following numbers for timing.. 10-55, 20-35, 30-15 for quant.. first is the number of questions- second is time remaining...
verbal is 11-55, 22-35, 33-15. GMAT measures the number of questions that you can get it right in 2 minutes. Dont get too carried away with getting the first 10 question correct. My best results came in verbal when i consistently answered all the 400-450 level questions correct.

Thinking about writing GMAT again. I am not in a hurry though... Going to contribute more to the forum and see what happens.

Regards

mba33.