I took the GMAT today (my second attempt) and got 690 (V40Q44). I didnt make it to the 700s list but neither I intended to I am very happy with my score. I warmed up for the GMAT with Princeton review which is good to begin the journy and ended up with OG 11, 10, GMATpreps and GMATCLUB ofcourse. I am not native english speaker so i had a very difficult time with Verbal but also with Quant. I have always disliked math in school and my greatest problem are basic math calculations that can be done with any simple calculator. However, I havent manually added or divided numbers since 1989 (I was 9 at the time lol) and therefore it was a tremendous pain to re-learn all this basic crap over and over again. I kept making many silly mistakes during my practice exams. My first quant question on today's GMAT happened to be related to a division of a huge number which I had to factor and manipulate so I just skipped it and moved on. Un-freakin-belivable! NExt, the second problem I didnt understand at all so i skipped it again. My third question was some lousy fraction so I knew I am not doing very well (not a surprise). At that point I felt devastated and thought I am gonna score miserably like on my first attempt. I only had about an hour of sleep last night due to excess nervousness before the test. However, I ended up with 690. In october I had my first attempt and scored miserably 540. I was very well prepared and ready for the test (since I scored 700 and 710 on GMATpreps), so I really dont have an explanation where from this huge difference between the test and Gmatpreps as well as from the second attempt is coming. I studied a lot before my first exam, my social life become miserable and then non-existent. My girlfriend dumped me because all my attention happened to be focused on the GMAT... 540 on the test felt like a really really cold shower. Still, I didnt even study that much since the first attempt because it looked that I had a bad day or something. 50% of your test score is your concetration and ability to focus on the test day. Now, I will gladly get rid off all this books and papers which kept me company for last 3 months. Thank you all for participating and contributing to the GMATclub - this place was very valuable source of inspiration and knowledge.

Well,... I just kinda skimmed over the same material that I was using for attempt 1 but with all the answers underlined. So, I didnt try to figure out the correct answer. What I did is to grasp the concept and the logic, so I was reading a number of questions with answers (from OG 10 and 11) and guess that helped. Whenever u practice verbal from another unofficial sources its hard to say is this approach going to help... Also got 6.0 AWA - if that score matters at all

congrats to you. best of luck in your application process.

Your story is very inspiring to me as we have very similar background (VERY rusty brain on calculations!). I just started preparing for my first attempt to the GMAT (and already started lurking this forum...) and I really hope to be able to improve my score as you did! Thanks for sharing.

GMAT eliminated - a jump from 540 to 690 : Share GMAT Experience

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GMAT eliminated - a jump from 540 to 690

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