I surprised myself this past Friday. I honestly thought I was ready for this test. I hope my story is helpful. (I am not trying to make excuses.) I just want to give back to a forum I found helpful aside from my own personal experience. Here's my story.
Background info: - I studied for over 4 months following both
Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan study plans to the letter, along with practice questions from the official guides versions 10-12.
- 2 weeks prior to the exam I took the 6 CAT exams on
Manhattan GMAT and the 2 CAT exams from KAPLAN's CD.
- 1 week before I took the 2 GMAT Prep CAT exams.
- My scores ranged from 650 on my first CAT to 680 all the way up to 740.
About myself:- B.Sc. & M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Graduated Magna Cum Laude from a top tier engineering school.
- I work at a Fortune 500 company in a business development / strategic planning role.
Story:I arrived at the test on Friday morning fully rested. I actually scheduled a one week vacation prior to the exam to get work out of my system. I felt ready as can be to tackle the exam and confident that I would do well.
After the test center had repeated issues with getting the palm reader to work I was finally allowed to take the exam a full 45 minutes later then my actual scheduled appointment. At this point I wasn't sweaty, I wasn't tired, I wasn't nervous and I was ready to rock!
Essay 1: Nailed it.
Essay 2: Nailed it.
Break: I feel great. Confident, ready to move on to the next section. Again the test center had issues with the palm reader.
Quant. Section: I started out ok. I felt I got the first few questions right, but then it hits me the test goes from the expected to the unexpected. My experience boils down to this one trend.
It seemed as though I could get to the answer of each problem, but the answer choices were no longer in the same form as they were during my studies. I get the feeling that the GMAT has started to introduce answer forms as a new way to trick the test taker; one more step between answer to answer choice. (i.e. I had one of those sum of consecutive odd numbers from 29 to 100 type questions, where normally you would take the median and multiply it by the number of terms, but the answer choices were in some crazy format) Still I thought I did ok. I assumed that those tricky questions where part of the CAT feature. ("lose a few battles to win the war") Boy was I wrong. Call it "too many careless mistakes", but I went from an average of 49 on the quant. section during my study period to a 39 on the real deal.
Break: I feel ok. Ready to move on to the next section. Again the test center had issues with the palm reader.
Verbal: Well I just did poorly. Its as if I picked every wrong answer on purpose. I ended up with a 30 on the verbal section. My average prior was a 40.
Conclusion: I don't think nerves got the best of me, and I don't think I could've prepared any better, but I definitely want to hear what this forum has to say. I can tell you that professional background and academic background are irrelevant for taking the GMAT and one should focus more on strategy then theory.
I will admit to one MAJOR mistake. I took the exam too late! Because even if I wanted to retake the exam I can't enroll for the upcoming semester. Deadlines are May 15th.