GMAT Tutor Debrief: Finally cracked Q50 (750: Q50, V42, IR8, 6 AWA)

I've been a private GMAT tutor since 2002, but I waited 10 years before taking the GMAT myself for the first time. I've now taken the exam 5 times, with a personal best of 770, and have been lucky / skilled enough to have scored in the 700s all 5 times.

I've always been naturally talented at Verbal, but today--after much struggle--I finally broke the Q50 barrier! As usual, I prepared by using only real GMAT questions, and I leveraged the GMAT algorithm to my advantage during the test.

Overall, I scored 50/51 on Quant (86%), 42/51 on Verbal (96%), a perfect 8/8 on IR (93%) and a perfect 6/6 on the essay (89%), for a 750 composite (98%).

As I noted the last time I took the GMAT, Verbal seemed tougher than usual--lots of tough CR questions and complex reading passages. I thought IR was a breeze, and the essay was fine, although I was a bit tired by that point. I'm also a big fan of the new "Select Section Order" feature: it was so nice to be able to complete the (more important) Quant and Verbal sections before the (less important) IR and AWA sections. I decided to go with section order #2, 1) Verbal 2) Quant 3) IR and 4) AWA.

Here is a complete chronology of my GMAT scores since I started taking the test myself (instead of just teaching it).

January 2012: 770, Q47, V48, 6 AWA
May 2015: 710, Q42, V46, IR 8, 5.5 AWA
October 2016: 730, Q44, V47, IR 3, 6 AWA
April 2017: 700, Q46, V40, IR 6, 6 AWA
August 2017: 750, Q50, V42, IR 8, 6 AWA





You can see that there is a decent range of scores here, even for an expert GMAT test-taker:

My Quant scores have ranged from 42 to 50 (8 pt. range).
My Verbal scores have ranged from 40 to 48 (8 pt. range).
My IR scores have ranged from 3 (ouch, I know) to 8 (5 pt. range).
My composite scores have ranged from 700 to 770 (70 pt. range).

The take-away? Don't ever give up, and allow yourself plenty of chances--GMAT scores can vary quite a bit from test to test.

Update 9/2/17: It only took 4 days after the exam for GMAC to send me my official scores, and less than 24 hours before my ESR (Enhanced Score Report) was made available. I am relieved to report that I scored a perfect 6/6 on the AWA, despite having to write the essay at the end of the test.

Full ESR now attached below!

-Brian