My GMAT Experience (49Q 39V) 710 - TGIOver

Hey guys,

I’m in Singapore celebrating. There are not to many African Americans here in Singapore! But I didn’t want to forget about you all. I wanted to share my test experience with you. Well the 2nd time around the stress was a lot less, and I had I’m gonna crack the 700 barrier this time! I know I can do it. Hell I’ve done it 50% of the time on my practice tests, and 90% of the time on the ones toward the latter half of my preparation. I kept telling myself 750 baby, 750 - to stoke myself out. I flowed through the essays no problem. I never write down my essay stuff on the pad, I just make notes on the computer screen. And then type away. Luckily, I am fast at typing. BTW the argument essay is always first. I get an essay where an HR individual claimed that since a non-profit get a lot of increased productivity from its workers, their for-profit company should donate to humanitarian causes to increase productivity. I tore that sucker to shreds. Although one thing doesn’t sit well with me, I’m not sure after I finished my essay if I deleted my notes beneath my concluding paragraph! Lol. We will find out when the AWA score comes in won’t we? Lol. I will be doubly stoked if I get a 6.0 again – time will tell. I finish the essay with 8 minutes left, so I take an unscheduled break and hit the toilet. Anyway on to my essay issue: The topic was whether or not employees should be able to design there own workspaces to increase their productivity. Piece of cake, I roll right through it, but I take my time to make sure I delete my notes at the end this time . Ok, ok, I know you all could give a rats ass about my essays. Oh yeah I use some of my essay time to write my 41 A,B,C,D,E’s for my verbal part on the last page of my notepad.

One note, I found out you can hide the time by clicking the time. That proved a value asset to me. It prevents me from clock stressing. During both the Math and Verbal section I hid the time, and only checked it when I was half through the problems, and when I had 10 problems left. This allows me to do quick math to calculate whether I need to speed up, or if I have ample time. With ½ the problems done I like to see half the time left, and with 10 left I like to see around 20 minutes.

I take my first scheduled 10 minute break after my essays – I leave the room (which you must do, if you take the break). I go to my locker eat some almonds and dried mango’s for energy, and then hit the toilet again. Wash the hands, then splash some water on my face.

Math: I start out getting a problem that states that something is proportional to the square of some rate. It then says if you increase the rate by 10% the something else increases by what percent. A word problem. For some reason I go off on some tangent and start wigging out when my answer didn’t match the stuff. I’m like crap, problem one. I close my eyes for 5 seconds and calm down and re-attack, getting quite a simple problem correct. Basically its just a simple equation S = r2. set r to 1, increase by 10% to 1.1, then square that to get 1.21. 21% increase boom simple. After I regain my confidence I start whizzing through problems, only taking educated guesses on about 7 out of the 37 problems. Once again a lot of number properties problems, the standard sequence problem. 2 probability (1 which was DS and 1 PS) , 2 combinations (1DS, 1 PS). I was working like a machine. I hit one impossible geometry problem, which I knew I could solve, but just required so many different steps I got about halfway through and then took an educated guess. I knew that it had to have a sqrt 2 in the answer due to part of a 45 degree triangle in the odd shaped figure, and that limited it to 2 answers. Boom, I guess then move on. I finish right on time with about 30 seconds to spare.

Verbal: first thing I do is hide my time! Then I attack my first sentence correction problem. I get it down to 2 answers. Crap. I guess then move on. I get another sentence correction, same scenario. Why the hell can’t I get past the 2 left mark. Then I get a Critical reasoning problem, the answer jumps out on me. Funny thing is: All my critical reasoning problems seemed to just be on point. Some were challenging assumptions, and method of argument problems, but still manageable. No bold faces this time – woot! Those I always seem to screw up. On the reading comp problems I trick myself into believing they are interesting. I carefully read each passage, no rush, then attack each problem in less than a minute, some as quick as 30 seconds! I had one passage on African Americans and their economic progress post World War II. A science one on tadpole survival in different types of ponds (ones that dry up, and those that don’t) – some technical terms, but believe it or not manageable and interesting (Or at least I tricked myself into believing soo! Lol). After a plethora of the mid part of the test with RC and Critical reasoning, the test transitioned back into a large amount of SC. I get some manageable ones where the answer jumps out if you knew the tricks. One: not only, but also. Another tricky meaning one where you had to realize that you couldn’t refer to the 19th century scientists using they because it was talking about scientists now. It was something like “19th century scientists believed xyz, but today <scientists> have proven abcâ€