Well I just had a pretty dismal Official GMAT performance, so I figured that I would come to the forums. I am hoping to find some sound advice, but this may just be a way for me to vent out my frustrations.
A little summary of my journey. I did the Veritas Prep online tutoring back in 2018-2019. I was around 5 years out of college at the time and had to review a lot of things. I thought the course was great, but I think that I relied too much on the course and not personal practice. I was in the military and knew that I would not be able to get my MBA until after 2022. I went to a service academy and I normally excelled at quant type subjects and normally had to work harder to excel in verbal subjects. During my studies with Veritas, my last couple practice tests were in the low 700s.
660 (Q46/V35) - May 2019 - GMAT Official Test #1
After this period, I started a new job and figured that I would just study again in the future. I ended up taking 3.5 years off from studying, so as you can imagine I had to relearn a lot of things. I purchased the basic
Magoosh Online Course at the end of August 2022. I opted to do the 3-month study plan, which also incorporated questions from
the Official Guide. I stuck to it rigidly for the first 2 months. I watched all the videos and probably studied 4-5 hours per day for the first month. I was noticing improvement on my practice as I continued forward. During the last month of studying, I traveled a bit and studied a lot less. But, after the time away, I came back and scored the best I have on an Official Practice Test. I noticed that being calm made me feel a lot more confident.
680 (Q47/V37) - September 25, 2022 - GMAC Practice Test #1
640 (Q46/V33) - October 8, 2022 - GMAC Practice Test #2 (As a bonus, my IR was a 3 on this - normally a 5 or 6)
700 (Q50/V34) - November 14, 2022 - GMAC Practice Test #3
After every practice test, I reviewed all the wrong questions, the questions that took me over 2 minutes, correct guesses, and any flagged questions. I am very deliberate on this for quant and often spend more time reviewing than solving questions. As you can see, I was trending up in Quant and down in Verbal. My errors tended to be somewhat evenly split between RC, CR, and SC. I started off stronger in CR than the other two, but over time the verbal errors seem to be more evenly spread. I am a native english speaker, so I feel like I have no excuse. I speak a foreign language, but I cannot imagine performing at a high level on a verbal section of the GMAT in that language.
I set my exam date at the beginning of my GMAT studies, which I have seem multiple people on the forum warn against. I figured that with a previous 660 would only take me three months max to turn around, but boy was I wrong. I opted to take the GMAT Online because I am currently living in a foreign country and it seemed easier than finding a testing center. I tend to sink down into my whiteboard a few times in the quant section and got told to get back in camera. That messed with my focus and flow for sure. I ran out of time on the quant section and guessed on the last two. For verbal, I had two questions left. I do timed practice, but consistently run out of time.
640 (Q47/V31) - November 26, 2022 - Official GMAT #2
I was pretty disappointed with my quant, but blown away by my verbal. Looking back, I was always able to go back and review quant questions really easily, but verbal questions just seem so easy to see in hindsight. The verbal section definitely seems to have chnaged a bit from when I first took the test in 2019, but I feel like I should be performing at a far higher level.
My target schools are Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, USC, UCLA. My undergraduate GPA was a 3.81 (weighted) from a service academy.
My goal is to score a 730 (Q50/V39). I will be applying in Round 1 in 2023, so I still have around 10-11 months, but I will not be able to be as dedicated to studying after January. My goal was to finish the GMAT before January 7th, but that kind of seems like a longshot now.
I know there are tons of success stories of students working for months to achieve an elite score, so I am hoping to be one of them.
Should I continue with
Magoosh or is there a better option for me? I have seem that these forums have great resources for CR and RC, which I will definitely look into. I am getting bombarded daily with emails from
e-GMAT,
GMATWhiz,
TTP, etc, but unsure if it is worth it to make the jump. For quant, I feel like I am past the point of watching videos and just need more practice. A lot of times I can solve questions that I got wrong without looking at the solution for quant. So, timing is definitely an issue. For verbal, I feel like I need a better framework for RC and SC. I used to use the "GAP" strategy by Veritas, but question stems are a lot more complex for CR than they used to be IMO.
Any advice or help would be appreciated! I know this test is meant to be hard, but it sure does suck to be stuck.
close
26 Nov 2022, 13:25
