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Hey guys,
I did the Gmat in December, and well i was really dissapointed, on the two GMatpreps i did the week before the actual test, i got a 700, and a 710 consecutively. so i thought that i was set for the gmat. i went to the test, in a better metal state than i was expecting, and i thought that i did well overall, except that i didn't answer the last quantitaive question.
i got a 600, it really made me doubt my capabilities. i'm retaking the test on the 10th of feb, but i just can't study like i was beofre. does anyone have any tips, ideas, anything, that can help me maybe get the 700 this time, my actual capability.

Thanks

hobbit · Answer

i'd say that your main effort should be to restore your self confidence in your capabilities... even make some effort to make it higher than it was before.... it should be high enough that even if (hypothetically) you get 500 on test day... your confidence won't be harmed... once you get to that level... i'm sure you do good and perform well on test day to achieve a level similar to that of the prep test.

johnnyx9 · Answer

Take as many practice tests as possible, if you can do a couple per week that would be great. I'm sure you just had a fluke experience on test day, if you got a 700 and 710 on the GMAT Prep, I wouldn't be surprised if you landed a 680-740 when you retake. Just make sure you get in as many practice tests as possible so you get the pacing and the nerves calmed down a bit.

fkerbaj · Answer

Thanks a lot for the support guys, 
I'm still studying on a daily basis, and doing around 3,4 full tests a week the rest of the days i'm doing seperate sections of problem solving, data sufficiency, and scentence correction, the three mian topics that i don't fell confident enough with.

does anyone know what the penalty is for leaving a question blank? i'm really afraid that that might have affected my score significantly, and when i realised that i left it, it made me panic and mess up slightly on the english section.

again thanks to everyone contributing, and i'll keep you posted on my progress.

yogeshsheth · Answer

You can consider yourself ready for GMAT when you start consistently on any software you use. The range for consecutive must not differ by 30 pts.

johnnyx9 · Answer

I didn't know that it was possible to leave one blank. You should definitely guess if you're not sure and move on.

My biggest break-through in preparing for the GMAT was the realization that sometimes guessing is a good strategy. Let's say you have a difficult question in front of you, you spend ten second reading it and you think to yourself, "This is really hard, it might take me three or four minutes to figure this out, but even then I might not figure it out." If you know you have a really hard one in front of you, you can either take a gamble and spend a lot of time to MAYBE figure it out, or you can just guess and move on. I did this a lot on the test and I got a 750. By doing this, you skip a hard question and save yourself like three or four minutes that you would have wasted, and if the guess turns out to be wrong, the next question you get will be a little bit easier. So then as you continue and as you get questions right you will work your way back up to hard questions, and the next time you get a hard one, you can think, "Hm, this could take a while, BUT, I have plenty of time to work with." or you can think, "Hm, i should skip this, it will just take too much time."

So that was my approach to time management, if I had a really difficult math problem in front of me, or a sentence correction that just didn't make any sense, I would just guess and move on. I probably did this three times on each section of the test. The way I view it, even if you get a 700 on the GMAT, that still means you're missing a lot of questions. So by guessing on questions that you judge you have a low probability of solving, you at least get the questions wrong "on your own terms".

fkerbaj · Answer

I didn't leave one blank, my time had expired before i had time to answer the last question. 
I know there's some penalty to not finishing the exam, i was just wondering if anyone had a close estimate to what the penalty might amout to.
regarding your strategy johnnyx9, i'm really working on trying to do that in math, because i tend to hold on to a question and try solving it from all the different angels wasting too much time, even though i'm quite sure that i'm gonna get it wrong.

SimaQ · Answer

I remember one of our best members here Kevincan has intentionally left one blank question in Quantitative section and received a final score of 780...

fkerbaj · Answer

i'm scheduled for the Gmat on the 10th of FEB, exactly 6 days from now.
and to my luck, i came down with a pretty bad cold on friday, i'm trying to do everything i can to get better in time, and i'm seriously afraid that i won't get better fast enough. and well, after a 10 hour working day, and with my cold i'm really in no situation to go home and study for my usual 3-4 hours.
i really can't afford to mess up this time, in terms of time, morale, and well self esteem.
any last minute pointers that might help me on the big day? or in my last few days of preparation?

fkerbaj · Answer

Hey All,
Did the GMAT, and got more than i had expected.
720 45Q 44V.
96 percentile 
just thought i'd let you all know

candylynn83 · Answer

Wow! Congrats on an awesome score!!

Sumithra · Answer

You did it! Congrats!

SimaQ · Answer

Perfect!

It just shows that in December it was simply not your day.... Super cool score

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