My GMAT is tomorrow...nervous much?

Question

Yeah so my GMAT is tomorrow, on 13th of august, hopefully I'm prepared for it by now. I have been studying off and on for about 4 months, with several interruptions due to work issues, travel, and family issues.

My scores are typically lower on the quant than most of the people posting on here, but I'm also scoring higher on the verbal. I'm a native english speaker, but went to french school from grade 1 to 13, so there were several concepts than I never learned about the english language.

Mainly my weak points are some of the harder math questions that I relate to those in the 700 level section, but at this point I think that the effort required to get any better would be inversely proportional to the increase in score.

I've taken 4 online tests, the first was with zero studying, and I've been out of school for 10 years, so it was a bit of an eye opener (480). Studied for a few months and took my second test online. This was the kaplan online, and I scored a 610. I decided to register for my gmat at this point (this was 2 weeks ago), as I'm only aiming for a 650+ for the school I'm looking at. On the gmat prep 1 I scored 600 exactly, then brushed up some topics, and took the gmat prep 2 yesterday, and scored a 680.

I'm thinking with those scores, I could get pretty close to the 650 I'm looking for. In any case, I'll post back tomorrow how I did once I get home (and have opened a bottle of whiskey

)

lalithajob · Answer

Hi Jonas,
Good luck for the big day! Let us know your score tomorrow. You are scoring good in GMAT Prep which is good news for you.

bb · Answer

Good luck - thanks for sharing.
Please relax and take it easy today - it helps a lot! Not much you can do except be in the best shape you can be.

Jonas007 · Answer

Alright, here is my preliminary report...I may post more once I regain some mental stamina. As mentioned above, I was looking for around a 640-650. I scored a 660

Q42, 61th percentile, V39 87th percentile, total 660, 82nd percentile. All in all I'm quite pleased. I actually found that the math on the actual gmat, other than 2 questions, was actually easier than on the gmat prep software. In contrast to that, I found the verbal actually much harder than on the gmat prep, although I suppose that could have been because I was doing better at it, so started to see the harder questions. I actually had 2 quant questions that I literally didn't even understand what the question was asking, so I just guessed and moved on without wasting time. Time seemed to standstill or my brain was working faster than in prep also. In prep, I typically would get to the end of the quant section, with 3 questions left, but no time remaining, whereas in the real test I got to the end of quant with 4 minutes left. Anyway, good luck to everyone else taking this. I'm happy with my first attempt of 660, and will not be re-taking the exam.

bb · Answer

Congratulations!
I have to say people rarely come in around where they expect and esp on the higher end of it - good control of the situation.

rednblack89 · Answer

Firstly, congrats!

Secondly, you say that you found the actual GMAT's math easier than the Prep software. How is it in comparison to the OG (12, in particular)?

Does this mean that the GMAT Prep Quant section is tougher than most of the OG 12 questions?

smartmundu · Answer

My opinion: GMATPREP quant questions are very close to actual GMAT other than 1-2 questions in every test such as DS questions where question itself answers it and option is D, harder must be true type questions etc, every question on actual GMAT is doable within time frame but on prep its not always true.

OG is quite easy when compared to GMAT, i faced only 4-5 ques which i can is easy-med level of OG, 2-3 Hard level of OG

Best way is practice GMATPREP, Manhattan also good source but their level very high, so may be try out 1 full CAT (only thing is it should have atleast 25 700-800 level questions)

Jonas007 · Answer

Upon further reflection, I suppose it wasn't necessarily that the questions on the GMAT quant were easier, but more that they were generally faster to solve. I was pretty much able to see right from the beginning if I could solve the question, or not, and every one that I found suitable, I was able to solve in well under 2 minutes. I found that on the prep, a few of the questions were taking me 3 or even 4 minutes.

This led to me typically running out of time on all my gmatprep quants, typically with 3-4 questions to go, and only 2 minutes on the clock, whereas I finished all of the questions with time remaining in the actual exam.

I found the questions to be similar to the gmatprep software, and probably around 1/3 of the questions reminded me of a question I did in the OG12. There were many questions that didn't resemble anything I saw in the OG, but with logic and reasoning, I was able to solve most of them anyway.

Its sort of hard to get my point across without giving specific examples of questions, which of course I can't do, as I don't want to jeopardize my results.

Now I'm also really looking forward to seeing my essay scores (even if they don't matter much), because I finished each of them in around 18 minutes our of the 30 available (I type around 85 words a minute, and I happened to know alot about both topics/arguments they presented).

Jonas007 · Answer

And for what will probably be my last update on this post, I received the official essay scores today.

5.5, so I'm good with that. I was actually expecting a 6.0, but since I didn't want to waste time on the essay and be tired for the rest of the exam, I only took 18 out of 30 minutes for each of the essays, and submitted them. I suppose if I had reviewed each a few times and added additional background, more arguments, and context that I could have scored 6.0 or 6.5.

Good luck to everyone else

qweert · Answer

Wow, you received your AWA scores in just 6 days....

jcurry · Answer

I'm actually almost in the exact same boat as you with quant.. I take it on Monday, and I have a thread about which math I should focus on  here.

Also, tomorrow I plan on taking an MGMAT CAT instead of GMATPrep .. any suggestions here? My thought is that I will be able to use the more detailed report in my last few days of study to focus on weaker areas. I'm also going to try to take a prep test the day before (Sunday).

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My GMAT is tomorrow...nervous much?

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