Dear Forum members,
First of all I want to thank GMAT club. Although I don't participate much in the forums, reading has helped me a lot.
Demographic info: 25 years old / male / Uruguayan
Work experience: I've been working since I was 18. Most of the time for government.
You can read about my preparation here:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/from-510-to-650-on-the-gmatprep-real-test-next-friday-130425.htmlTo sum up, before studying I scored
510 Q28 V33 on the GMATPrep1 and then I studied for three months. A week before the test I scored
650 Q44 V36 on the GMATPrep2. The last week I studied A LOT to improve both my Q and V scores. The result on the real test was
650 Q39 V41. Why did I improved my V but my Q was so bad? I had a problem in the test center during my first break. This is a summary of what happened to me during the test and some parts of the complaint I already sent to GMAC:
I arrived more than 30 minutes early to the test center. There were two women there, whose names I do not know. One of them (woman A) gave me the forms to sign and took the picture, palm scan, etc. After that the other woman who was younger and kinder (woman B) went downstairs to the computer room where she logged me in and I started the AWA section. The AWA section was very easy. When I finished it I was very relaxed and concentrated. I knew it was going to be a great day. After the AWA, I went upstairs to take the 8 minute break they had told me I could take. There is no "raise your hand policy" in the test center, you just go upstairs... I went to the bathroom, and afterwards I respectfully asked the woman A, who was sitting in her desk chatting on Microsoft Messenger, to log me in again to start my quantitative section. She refused and told me that she could not do that because only the other woman that had initially logged me in (woman B) was allowed to do that. The problem was that the woman B was talking on the phone. I waited about a minute and told woman A that I was running out of time and she told me that the phone call was important so she could not interrupt woman B and I would have to wait indefinitely. After another minute or two, I started to panic and told woman A that I was surely losing precious test time. With extremely very bad temper she told me "Ok, I will go see if my user works". She slowly walked down the stairs and tried her user and password which worked. I started my quantitative section with around 2 minutes less than I should have had. The 2 minutes I lost and made me rush through many of the first questions and forget about the timing strategy I had practiced to get to the final questions on time. Moreover, the fact that I started the quantitative section very angry after a quarrel had a negative impact in my ability to concentrate properly. Only after going through several quantitative problems could I forget about the quarrel and concentrate appropriately on the test. After the Q section, I decided not to take a new break (in case a similar thing could happen again). I knew my Q result was not going to be good so I really concentrated myself for the V, forgetting about everything that happened before. I did better than I expected in the V section.
When I saw the results in the screen I was very disappointed to see that the problem I had influenced so negatively in my Q result. I went upstairs and the unfriendly woman gave me the results without apologizing or saying a single word. The stamp on the border of the unofficial report paper says "LOSE THIS REPORT", because she was so careless and on such a bad mood that she stamped it without the "DO NOT" words that probably were on the stamp and she did not even looked at it before giving it to me.
Now I have the TOEFL next Friday. After that, I might take the GMAT again. The problem is that the only test-center in my country is the one with the unfriendly and inefficient woman. I wanted to take the GMAT and forget about all this so I could concentrate on researching business schools, applications, etc. Now I can't stop thinking about what happened to me and weather to take the GMAT again or not.