I make mistakes and am slow. 760 49Q 45V 8IR

This is a story about making mistakes and having time problems and still drudging your way through.

I've always made mistakes. When my parents took me to math preparatory classes when I was young, I would always make a ton of mistakes. I'd make mistakes adding two four digit numbers together. My parents - who compared me with other Chinese American kids - thought I was stupid for a while because of these careless errors. When reading, I might skip over words or read the words wrong; when writing, I almost always make typos, and it takes me 5, 6, 7 readings of my writing aloud to find all the typos on a long writing assignment. Even knowing that I misread words, I cannot help but misread words on the GMAT from time to time.

I am also slow. In school, I noticed that I finish tests slower than other people. I am slow on everyday decision=making. At least from my own perspective, timing has always been a challenge.

These weaknesses can be overcome, but these are weaknesses I've always perceived I have. And I was utterly unable to overcome them with respect to the GMAT; I just accepted them and let them be.

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Pre-Exam Prep

At the start of GMAT prep, doing the problems on the official guides, I found that I made a ton of careless mistakes; thus, I swore to be extremely careful.

But, to be honest, under time pressure, I still misread questions, and I still made careless math mistakes.

I found it was impossible to finish 80% hard math problems in under 2 minutes. Sometimes I took 5 minutes. For 50% of the medium questions, I finished in 2 minutes.

I just read that profile of an Indian person who got 51 in math and got everything in the math section correct and does that regularly; that's amazing and not something I am usually close to reaching.

And on the verbal sections, I'd get ~= 5 wrong. Sometimes I'd misread. Sometimes, there are esoteric grammar rules. I've never completely understood GMAT, LSAT logic. For some of the official GMAT questions, I swear GMAT just got it wrong.

For example,


The argument concludes that Vidnet would earn greater profits overall if it replaced Starlight with a show of average popularity and production costs. It doesn't conclude that Vidnet would earn greater profits overall if it replaced Starlight with a show of average popularity and production costs for a Vidnet show, but rather a show of average popularity and production costs (generally). GMAT thinks the right answer is B (which is a good answer but one that doesn't mean that retaining Starlight would necessarily be more profitable), but E gives you a much more clear and direct answer. If Starlight is more profitable than your ordinary network show, replacing it with an show of ordinary popularity and production costs (not just in reference to Vidnet) would not make you more profit. Thus, Starlight shouldn't be replaced with an ordinary show.

There are several of these questions where I think GMAT's reasoning is just clearly wrong.

I am not sure doing practice problems necessarily helped. I swore I got much more familiar with math problems and could do a lot of them faster. And I understood that GMAT had an almost irresistible love for parallelism and for having antecedents immediately before the clause that refers back to the antecedent. But experimentally, I'd still get around 4-5 wrong every 40 medium mixed with hard verbal problems and finish hard math problems in 3-5 minutes.

Took 6 official GMAT practice tests. I didn't think I did well on any of them other than one I got a 770 on, where I got 5 math problems wrong, almost finished the math section (guessing only on two), and 2 verbal questions wrong. I thought I just had easy questions on that test. I got 720 on the last one because I got a poor verbal score (41); that gave me a scare because I only got 4 incorrect on verbal (but the 4th question wrong). On all the rest, I received 760s and 750s.

First Exam

17 days ago, I took the GMAT. The computers had extremely wide screens and the words were extremely large. I had practiced only on my 15" laptop in 1080p font. I had to move my chair away from the screen to clearly read the words on the screen. And the chair was low, making me stretch my head upwards to read the screen. I was unfamiliar with the slippery notepad I was given. I didn't get enough sleep off of nerves. I performed badly. I thought I had the hardest math section ever. I think I got the first math problem wrong because I read the question wrong, and I had spent 5 minutes on the question, after which I guessed. I had told myself that I had to get the early questions right after that scare with the 720 on my last PT. I didn't finish the verbal section. I got a 700 and immediately canceled my score.

Inter-Exam Preparation


I did the extra practice questions that MBA.com offered. I found out that I still got 4-5 questions out 40 questions wrong in verbal and still took a lot of time on math questions, making careless mistakes even when I told myself to be more careful. But I also realized that still meant I got most of the questions right, that my judgment was not entirely askew. I just needed to finish the exam, and I would likely perform well.

One thing I did do was investigate the test centers near me. I found one where the computers were set to 5-4 aspect ratio for testing, even though the screens were wide. I signed up immediately for testing at that center.

Retake


I still didn't sleep 8 hours the day of. But I had slept 10 hours each of the previous days.

I still was nervous which affected my performance minutely on the first questions of quant section which I took first. I told myself to be careful and to drudge on, that I would get most of the questions right. I told myself not to worry about getting the first 10 questions all right, to skip hard math problems that took more than 5 minutes, to get easy problems which I would have a better chance of getting right and get right faster, and to not worry about esoteric mistakes I made on the verbal section. I can't control the fact that GMAT tries to trick you and has really sketchy verbal questions where its not always clear if you should use common sense or pure logic, that I don't know every English idiomatic expression, and that I make careless mistakes and have time issues, but other people face the same challenges.

I was nervous. It was not a pleasant experience. I didn't get the 50Q, 47V, and a 770 that I had on that super easy official practice test, but with a 49Q, and 45V, and a 760, I had satisfied my minimum expectations.