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Schools:harvard, columbia, wharton
got 4.0 in AWA, 730 in GMAT
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01 Jan 2009, 14:35
I got my AWA score today - I got 4.0 (21%). I can not believe it. I know I am no writing wizard, but 4.0, a 21%, does not look too good.
I know that in my case, when i did the first question (which was analysis of an argument), I did not explicitly click "next" once finished. When it ran out of 30 min time for the question, it automatically popped out of that screen, with a pop-up saying something like - your time for the question has expired. I am wondering if that means it did not record the answer that was typed on the screen. Does anyone know?
The second question, which was analysis of an issue, went ok.
I probably was not expecting a 6 in awa but a 4 with 21% sounds terrible.
What is your opinion about a AWA score of 4? Are adcoms going to judge my admin essays against my AWA score..
I had got 730 (v40, q49) a few days ago in actual GMAT (my first time). I had prepared off and on for about 30 days - average time per day will probably turn out to be 1 hr per day. I did not follow any specific strategy for GMAT(in retrospect I should have), as I have always performed well in standardized tests. I actually came to know about sites like this for GMAT discussions only a day or two before the gmat and therefore did not have much consultation from these sites. I have a full-time job, so I prepared in whatever spare time I got.
I was getting 750-760 range in GMATPrep before the actual test. In the actual test, I ran out of time in both quant and verbal. I guessed in the last 3-4 questions in each section totally randomly. In the middle of quant I got this totally crazy quant question (and I am an comp sci engineer), that drained 5 minutes of my time, and I still did not get it. From what I remember of the question, I am still not sure about answer to it. I know it sounds weird considering I am an engineer. The last question in quant that I fully read (but totally randomly guessed0 was 35th out of a total 37 and the questin looked doable if I had 20-30 secs for it. It is just that I was 20 secs shy of the end of section, so I did not have any second to think about the answer. I guessed last 3 in quant randomly.
In verbal, the same story. Somewhere in one of the SC, i got somehow engrossed in solving the question correctly (cuz I thought I could) and let 3-4 mins fly by. Result - I ended up guessing last 4 questions in verbal randomly.
Anyway, I think I could have gotten much better score if I were slightly more conscious of time, and had not made "pride" in getting the right answer an issue in solving a question.
I was initially (when i did not have my awa score) thinking that I should retake gmat.. but everybody on this forum said, even a 780 will not be worth the retake. Now I have AWA score of 4 (21%) - does that change anything?