Folks – I have been following GMATClub for some time now and thought of sharing my dilemma with all of your guys – I am sure I can benefit with the combined wisdom of the folks here.
I belong to the dreaded category of Indian IT Male and hence target score for me is 730+ for good schools in Asia/Europe/US.
I first wrote my GMAT in October 2010 with reasonable preparation – largely focused on
OG 11 and
OG 12,
MGMAT SC and few full tests from Kaplan and GMATPrep. The lowest score I got was 640 and closer to test date; I was hitting close to 680 in Kaplan tests and thought that I was ready to score in the vicinity of 700 at the real thing. I wrote the test only to end up with a disappointing 640 (Q48, V29). I thought that my preparation was severely lacking and I need to do a lot more to really reach my target score.
In February this year, I started thinking about the second attempt and finished following material over 3 months or so:
Quant –
OG 11 and 12, GMATClub forum questions (and there are lots of them and really good quality too)
Verbal:
Apart from
OG 11 and 12, I also finished following material for specific sections
SC –
MGMAT SC, Aristotle SC grail
CR – Powerscore bible
RC – RC99
I also took lot of full CATs once my material was over. Following are my scores for those CATS
MGMAT1: 710
2: 700
3: 750
4: 730
5:770
Kaplan
1:690
2:700
3:690
GMATPrep
1:710
2: 740
1 (Reinstall): 660 – I did this immediately after I finished
MGMAT 5 (complete four hours) and realized that it is futile to write a test when one is extremely tired and drained out
2 (Reinstall): 760
My lowest Quant score was 49 and verbal score range was 36-45. Only once (in the GMATPrep 660 one, I got 32 in verbal).
Finishing all the material and armed with consistent CAT scores across tests (GMATclub score predictor was predicting a 730 score), I was feeling confident of getting around 730 at the real thing.
On the day of the exam, this is how it all went:
AWA – went pretty OK – I used chineseburned’s template and thought I did pretty OK on the section.
QA
The section started as a breeze – at least till 15th question, I felt completely in command of the section and thought I was managing pretty well and kept solving every question that came my way. Next thing I remember is having about 15 minutes left for last ten questions – I felt myself rushing through last ten questions and got a feeling that I had to make 2-3 wild guesses. Overall, I thought I lost my way a little in the end.
VA
The section was going OK – was not sure of my accuracy for some CR questions. RC is generally my weak area and hence I was not sure if I was doing well there or not. But, I had felt such uncertainty every time in practice CATs and broadly did OK there, so I kept going. Here again, I realized that I had 9 more questions to go with only 15 minutes left and then I got a long RC passage, completely messing up my time management. Like Quant, again I felt I rushed through in the last 8-9 questions and felt a little let down with that aspect of my performance.
In the end, I managed a poor score of 660 (Q47, V34). I had managed 5 points improvement in Verbal but lost a point in Quant and overall managed to pull up my score by just 20 points - nowhere close to my practice scores or the scores that I need to make my application competitive.
Questions I am grappling with now are:
1. Should I retake the test? If yes, what more can I do and how do I check if I have really made progress in my preparation?
2. Should I blame my overall low score on just the time amanagement issue in last 10 problems in both sections or does this score indiscate that I am being naïve in believing that my preparation levels are at 730+ right now.
3. I never felt timing stress in any of the practice CATs I took. The questions I saw in test were very similar to
OG and GMATPrep kind of questions, so what could have led to timing issues on the real test.
4. If I sould retake, should I do this at the earliest opportunity 931 days) or should I wait for 2-3 months or so.
Comments/suggestions/help welcome.
close
06 Jul 2011, 08:23
