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29 Apr 2022, 12:01
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Hi guys,
I wanted to provide a debrief of my experience taking the GMAT.
Background:
I currently operate a real estate private equity startup and I was a math major in college, but I have also worked as a high school math teacher so that experience definitely helped with math content. Going into it, I looked at the scoring charts and thought that a big score in verbal would kind of go a long way in separating myself from the pack, and I figured that efforts in verbal were the most bang for my buck in terms of studying time. I teach Algebra 1 so a lot of the concepts come up again, although the things I teach are more elementary than what is tested. However, there was an inverse function question on the GMAT that I was able to breeze through because I had been used to teaching it. I knew that with enough practice the math would come, so I was more focused on boosting my verbal score and SC in particular.
First Take:
The first time that I took the exam I did a bit of preparation and took the exam just to establish a baseline (which I later found out you really shouldn't do) and scored a 650, knowing that I wasn't fully prepared. I believe the breakdown was a 43Q and 35V, which are fine scores for lots of schools, but since I had been scoring in 690-710 on OG practice tests I was a little disappointed.
That day, using the whiteboard definitely bothered me a bit. People say that if you study while listening to music you should take the test while listening to music as well, and I think the same can be said for writing. The fact that I hadn't been accustomed to solving math problems with that whiteboard and pen kind of bothered me. Although, my wife also took the GMAT and she said it didn't bother her at all, so take that with a grain of salt.
I used the noise canceling headphones as well which were really tight and actually hurt a bit; they were pressing into my ears and I kept having to adjust them. Eventually I just gave up and put them to the side.
The keyboard at the test center also was getting in my way. I was ready to rip it out. Eventually I just picked it up and moved it to the side of the computer, although the wires were still kind of infringing on my space.
Further preparation:
After the 650, I was trying to come with a gameplan, and after reading reviews online I settled on Target Test Prep. TTP is super organized and I would recommend it to anybody. If I could fault TTP it would probably be that it over prepares its students, so it wouldn't be the best choice for somebody with a limited amount of time. By the time I had finished target test prep I had only finished 19% of the overall math course because as I got closer to the test day I started to skip around to focus on weaknesses. If I had time to finish the program I know completing a lot of these problems would have become second nature.
For CR, I practiced solving the OG and I worked on timing. I went through every question in the OG twice, and I specifically targeted the more challenging questions. Knowing that I had answered a 700-750 level question correctly gave me confidence. I identified 10 questions at a time, calculated how much time I would have to solve them, and set a timer. I found an error tracker online with specific information about each question that I found helpful. I just used the 2016 and 2019 OG versions because I was able to find those for free online, but I did notice that there was updated content in the 2019 version. Eventually, I realized that taking quick notes for CR was sometimes helpful, even if it slowed me down a bit.
For RC, I also answered all the questions in the OG twice and used an error tracker to track my results. I also read articles in The Economist and found them to be a good representation of the types of passages you would find on the RC. Often times, the articles in The Economist are more challenging. If you can work your way through The Economist slowly and understand all of the points and rebuttals and transitions then you will start to become accustomed to the types of details that RC questions pick up on and ask about. Reading The Economist was definitely helpful for RC. Also, I'm not sure if I would recommend this to everyone, but I found it helpful to take notes while reading the passage because it helped me to read actively and create a mental map of the passage.
SC was probably the area that I focused on the most. I went diligently through all of the chapters in the TTP course and took notes on every chapter using the guided notes that TTP gives you. Sometimes it might take a few days just to get through one chapter. I also made notecards for all of the details that I knew I would have to memorize. I'm the type of guy that does SC, and math for that matter, by feel at times, so having notecards helped me a lot to memorize important details. I did the OG as well. I also read the Manhattan Prep book on SC which helped a little bit, but definitely not as much as TTP. All in all, studying for sentence correction alone probably accounted for 40-50% of my total studying time.
In Math, once I completed the OG I transitioned to TTP and started with the modules. I approached Math similar to the way that I approached SC in that I took notes in the guided worksheets that TTP provides and I also made notecards for specific examples and tricks that I wanted to remember and memorize. They take a really long time. With three weeks left until the test date I had only completed about 15% of the overall math content in TTP. At that point, I focused on areas of weaknesses that at that point I had figured out based on results from practice tests.
I also made an effort to complete one practice test just about every two weeks or so. I used various sources like Experts Global, Veritas Prep, and Manhattan Prep. When I was finished I tracked my results in a spreadsheet and I took notes on concepts that I didn't recognize. I saved most of the OG tests for the week before the real thing. One thing I noticed about the different test prep practice tests is that they are all so different. Manhattan Prep are definitely challenging in Math, and Veritas was challenging but scored generously. I don't remember exactly now, but in some of the Veritas Tests I got like 50% of the questions wrong and ended up with a 49. Not sure how reliable their scoring methods are. Experts Global was kind of a mixed bag.
Days Leading up the Test:
With two weeks to go until the test I started to review all of my guided notes from TTP and all of my flashcards. I took two practice tests that week and didn't pay very close attention to wrong answers.
The week before the test I went on vacation with my family, so I was a little distracted, but I wasn't about to miss out on that. I was actually studying and doing practice tests in the hotel room. In the 5 days before the test I exclusively did practice tests with a whiteboard in testing conditions. I did two practice tests a day from various sources and I worked my way up to the official content from OG. I didn't go over any of the practice questions that I did, I just took them and didn't concern myself with wrong answers. At that point I just wanted to get a feel for timing and get into the right mindset.
With about 4 days left until the test I took an OG practice test an got a 660, and I remember being so deflated. How could I put in all that time and only improve by 10 measly points?? I was pretty bummed for about a hour or so, but then I had a point of clarity. I reflected on the test and realized I had been way too much of a perfectionist on verbal and had wasted time deliberating between answer choices on too many questions when I should have just moved on. I took another OG test the next day, sped up my verbal, and got a 720. My practice tests in OG leading up to test day were 660, 720, 720, 710, 710 in that order.
Test Day:
I remember being super nervous as usual for these types of things. Before I went in the test proctor was an elderly gentlemen and was super nice. Before I went into the testing room he was like "now before you go in there, take a deep breath, OK?" and that made me smile.
Verbal had always been a time crunch and super stressful because of that, so my preference has always been to get that out of the way first. I tried to be pretty speedy in the first 10 questions.
I remember the font on the screen was definitely a little smaller than what I was comfortable with, and I have 20-20 vision. The desktop screen was pretty far away from my face and I struggled at times to read the words, and when you are doing something like SC, the difference between a comma and a semi-colon matters. That kind of bugged me.
At about question 26 in verbal I remember being stumped on a question when I deliberately thought to myself, "well, are you going to blow the whole test by deliberating on this for another 4 minutes or are you going to pick one and move on" and I was able to just move on. I'll be honest - in CR I felt pretty lost at times. I remember getting several difficult questions and having no idea whether or not I had answered correctly. Questions 32-36 of verbal for me are always pretty sweaty and I remember skipping one or two of those in favor of targeting an easy sentence correction question. When the time finally tuns out on verbal its kind of a relief, but my mind was still spinning. I took a quick break in the bathroom and splashed water on my face.
Math was kind of standard. There were problems that I didn't know how to do in which I took an educated guess, and problems that I did know how to do and that I was confident about. There were data sufficiency questions that I was 80% sure of, and that was enough for me. I remember getting an area of a circle question and thinking that I had lucked out, only to complete my long calculations to discover that I had made an error early on in the problem. I took another two minutes to do the problem again. I remember also getting an inverse function question, and since I teach Algebra 1 I was able to quickly identify it and breeze through it, so that felt good. Out of the last 4 problems or so, three were hard, but the very last question was an easy exponent question. Unfortunately the time ran out before I was able to finish it, so that pissed me off. I thought that if I hadn't wasted time on the circle problem that I would have been able to finish that one.
IR was similar to what I had come to expect from doing the OG practice tests, and the AWA was slightly more convoluted than what I was expecting, but very open-ended. I made an outline on my whiteboard for the essay.
As soon as I finished the test, my score immediately popped up, sort of without warning, and I saw a 710 with a 48 Q 39V. I agreed to accept my score so that I could get the printout. After the whole ordeal and the practice tests the week before, I was expecting something in the 710 range, so I wasn't overly excited, but I was relieved that it was done.
Reflection:
I'm glad that there weren't any major flukes on test day like the first time, and that my test on the real day was in line with my practice tests.
I think though, if I did want to take the test again there is room for improvement. My experience taking the GMAT taught me that the test is beatable with the right training and that there are so many things you can do to continue to boost your score, whatever your baseline might be. If I do it again, I will return to target test prep and finish the quant modules that I was not able to complete, and also do more focused practice on CR. I would also commit more time to reading The Economist. I think familiarity with the math on GMAT takes time but the more practice you have with it obviously the better you are going to do.
If you are studying, good luck! Day by day is how its done, and don't let your emotions on test day get the best of you!
I wanted to provide a debrief of my experience taking the GMAT.
Background:
I currently operate a real estate private equity startup and I was a math major in college, but I have also worked as a high school math teacher so that experience definitely helped with math content. Going into it, I looked at the scoring charts and thought that a big score in verbal would kind of go a long way in separating myself from the pack, and I figured that efforts in verbal were the most bang for my buck in terms of studying time. I teach Algebra 1 so a lot of the concepts come up again, although the things I teach are more elementary than what is tested. However, there was an inverse function question on the GMAT that I was able to breeze through because I had been used to teaching it. I knew that with enough practice the math would come, so I was more focused on boosting my verbal score and SC in particular.
First Take:
The first time that I took the exam I did a bit of preparation and took the exam just to establish a baseline (which I later found out you really shouldn't do) and scored a 650, knowing that I wasn't fully prepared. I believe the breakdown was a 43Q and 35V, which are fine scores for lots of schools, but since I had been scoring in 690-710 on OG practice tests I was a little disappointed.
That day, using the whiteboard definitely bothered me a bit. People say that if you study while listening to music you should take the test while listening to music as well, and I think the same can be said for writing. The fact that I hadn't been accustomed to solving math problems with that whiteboard and pen kind of bothered me. Although, my wife also took the GMAT and she said it didn't bother her at all, so take that with a grain of salt.
I used the noise canceling headphones as well which were really tight and actually hurt a bit; they were pressing into my ears and I kept having to adjust them. Eventually I just gave up and put them to the side.
The keyboard at the test center also was getting in my way. I was ready to rip it out. Eventually I just picked it up and moved it to the side of the computer, although the wires were still kind of infringing on my space.
Further preparation:
After the 650, I was trying to come with a gameplan, and after reading reviews online I settled on Target Test Prep. TTP is super organized and I would recommend it to anybody. If I could fault TTP it would probably be that it over prepares its students, so it wouldn't be the best choice for somebody with a limited amount of time. By the time I had finished target test prep I had only finished 19% of the overall math course because as I got closer to the test day I started to skip around to focus on weaknesses. If I had time to finish the program I know completing a lot of these problems would have become second nature.
For CR, I practiced solving the OG and I worked on timing. I went through every question in the OG twice, and I specifically targeted the more challenging questions. Knowing that I had answered a 700-750 level question correctly gave me confidence. I identified 10 questions at a time, calculated how much time I would have to solve them, and set a timer. I found an error tracker online with specific information about each question that I found helpful. I just used the 2016 and 2019 OG versions because I was able to find those for free online, but I did notice that there was updated content in the 2019 version. Eventually, I realized that taking quick notes for CR was sometimes helpful, even if it slowed me down a bit.
For RC, I also answered all the questions in the OG twice and used an error tracker to track my results. I also read articles in The Economist and found them to be a good representation of the types of passages you would find on the RC. Often times, the articles in The Economist are more challenging. If you can work your way through The Economist slowly and understand all of the points and rebuttals and transitions then you will start to become accustomed to the types of details that RC questions pick up on and ask about. Reading The Economist was definitely helpful for RC. Also, I'm not sure if I would recommend this to everyone, but I found it helpful to take notes while reading the passage because it helped me to read actively and create a mental map of the passage.
SC was probably the area that I focused on the most. I went diligently through all of the chapters in the TTP course and took notes on every chapter using the guided notes that TTP gives you. Sometimes it might take a few days just to get through one chapter. I also made notecards for all of the details that I knew I would have to memorize. I'm the type of guy that does SC, and math for that matter, by feel at times, so having notecards helped me a lot to memorize important details. I did the OG as well. I also read the Manhattan Prep book on SC which helped a little bit, but definitely not as much as TTP. All in all, studying for sentence correction alone probably accounted for 40-50% of my total studying time.
In Math, once I completed the OG I transitioned to TTP and started with the modules. I approached Math similar to the way that I approached SC in that I took notes in the guided worksheets that TTP provides and I also made notecards for specific examples and tricks that I wanted to remember and memorize. They take a really long time. With three weeks left until the test date I had only completed about 15% of the overall math content in TTP. At that point, I focused on areas of weaknesses that at that point I had figured out based on results from practice tests.
I also made an effort to complete one practice test just about every two weeks or so. I used various sources like Experts Global, Veritas Prep, and Manhattan Prep. When I was finished I tracked my results in a spreadsheet and I took notes on concepts that I didn't recognize. I saved most of the OG tests for the week before the real thing. One thing I noticed about the different test prep practice tests is that they are all so different. Manhattan Prep are definitely challenging in Math, and Veritas was challenging but scored generously. I don't remember exactly now, but in some of the Veritas Tests I got like 50% of the questions wrong and ended up with a 49. Not sure how reliable their scoring methods are. Experts Global was kind of a mixed bag.
Days Leading up the Test:
With two weeks to go until the test I started to review all of my guided notes from TTP and all of my flashcards. I took two practice tests that week and didn't pay very close attention to wrong answers.
The week before the test I went on vacation with my family, so I was a little distracted, but I wasn't about to miss out on that. I was actually studying and doing practice tests in the hotel room. In the 5 days before the test I exclusively did practice tests with a whiteboard in testing conditions. I did two practice tests a day from various sources and I worked my way up to the official content from OG. I didn't go over any of the practice questions that I did, I just took them and didn't concern myself with wrong answers. At that point I just wanted to get a feel for timing and get into the right mindset.
With about 4 days left until the test I took an OG practice test an got a 660, and I remember being so deflated. How could I put in all that time and only improve by 10 measly points?? I was pretty bummed for about a hour or so, but then I had a point of clarity. I reflected on the test and realized I had been way too much of a perfectionist on verbal and had wasted time deliberating between answer choices on too many questions when I should have just moved on. I took another OG test the next day, sped up my verbal, and got a 720. My practice tests in OG leading up to test day were 660, 720, 720, 710, 710 in that order.
Test Day:
I remember being super nervous as usual for these types of things. Before I went in the test proctor was an elderly gentlemen and was super nice. Before I went into the testing room he was like "now before you go in there, take a deep breath, OK?" and that made me smile.
Verbal had always been a time crunch and super stressful because of that, so my preference has always been to get that out of the way first. I tried to be pretty speedy in the first 10 questions.
I remember the font on the screen was definitely a little smaller than what I was comfortable with, and I have 20-20 vision. The desktop screen was pretty far away from my face and I struggled at times to read the words, and when you are doing something like SC, the difference between a comma and a semi-colon matters. That kind of bugged me.
At about question 26 in verbal I remember being stumped on a question when I deliberately thought to myself, "well, are you going to blow the whole test by deliberating on this for another 4 minutes or are you going to pick one and move on" and I was able to just move on. I'll be honest - in CR I felt pretty lost at times. I remember getting several difficult questions and having no idea whether or not I had answered correctly. Questions 32-36 of verbal for me are always pretty sweaty and I remember skipping one or two of those in favor of targeting an easy sentence correction question. When the time finally tuns out on verbal its kind of a relief, but my mind was still spinning. I took a quick break in the bathroom and splashed water on my face.
Math was kind of standard. There were problems that I didn't know how to do in which I took an educated guess, and problems that I did know how to do and that I was confident about. There were data sufficiency questions that I was 80% sure of, and that was enough for me. I remember getting an area of a circle question and thinking that I had lucked out, only to complete my long calculations to discover that I had made an error early on in the problem. I took another two minutes to do the problem again. I remember also getting an inverse function question, and since I teach Algebra 1 I was able to quickly identify it and breeze through it, so that felt good. Out of the last 4 problems or so, three were hard, but the very last question was an easy exponent question. Unfortunately the time ran out before I was able to finish it, so that pissed me off. I thought that if I hadn't wasted time on the circle problem that I would have been able to finish that one.
IR was similar to what I had come to expect from doing the OG practice tests, and the AWA was slightly more convoluted than what I was expecting, but very open-ended. I made an outline on my whiteboard for the essay.
As soon as I finished the test, my score immediately popped up, sort of without warning, and I saw a 710 with a 48 Q 39V. I agreed to accept my score so that I could get the printout. After the whole ordeal and the practice tests the week before, I was expecting something in the 710 range, so I wasn't overly excited, but I was relieved that it was done.
Reflection:
I'm glad that there weren't any major flukes on test day like the first time, and that my test on the real day was in line with my practice tests.
I think though, if I did want to take the test again there is room for improvement. My experience taking the GMAT taught me that the test is beatable with the right training and that there are so many things you can do to continue to boost your score, whatever your baseline might be. If I do it again, I will return to target test prep and finish the quant modules that I was not able to complete, and also do more focused practice on CR. I would also commit more time to reading The Economist. I think familiarity with the math on GMAT takes time but the more practice you have with it obviously the better you are going to do.
If you are studying, good luck! Day by day is how its done, and don't let your emotions on test day get the best of you!
29 Apr 2022, 12:25
Kudos
Bookmarks
48 Q 39V.
I think though, if I did want to take the test again there is room for improvement.
Probably fair to say a person with a V39 "gets" verbal. If you do decide to retake, consider seeing if you can improve your solving approach. Perhaps improving the way you absorb a passage or go through answer choices. Here's someone I recently helped who went from a V40 on an Official Mock to ultimately a V44. Might be some helpful insight you can take.
How to get a V40 or higher on the GMAT? What about a V51?
I think though, if I did want to take the test again there is room for improvement.
Probably fair to say a person with a V39 "gets" verbal. If you do decide to retake, consider seeing if you can improve your solving approach. Perhaps improving the way you absorb a passage or go through answer choices. Here's someone I recently helped who went from a V40 on an Official Mock to ultimately a V44. Might be some helpful insight you can take.
How to get a V40 or higher on the GMAT? What about a V51?
