The journey is finally over!!! From 640 to 710 (Q50 V36)

Congratulations. That's a good improvement for 1 months work.

Regarding the value of Q versus V, there are substantial diminishing returns with V scores at the highest levels. For other levels, both sections will affect your overall score at relatively equal rates. The biggest difference is that Q scores will continue to have a significant impact on overall score up to the max, whereas benefits for raising V past 44 are very small.

Great Score. Congratulations! good luck with your application process.

Could you let us know that beside luck, what moved your score from 640 to 700+.?

Practice or time management during exam or improving some fundamentals? How did u manage AWA section. Did u put lot of energy on them?

Thanks?

Yes please let us know how you improved from 640 to 700

Thanks

Thanks for the congrats.

I prepared for the FIRST GMAT test using the Kaplan Classroom course as well as OG11. As you can see from my stats above, my GMAT practice test scores increased in overall score and reached around the 700-720 mark the last 4-5 tests. So come test day, you can see why I felt pretty disappointed with a 640. I expected to get around 680 minimum. Very next day I signed up for the test that would take place 5 weeks later.

Seeing my first official score as well as old practice scores, I could tell that my verbal was my weakness. I decided to buy OG Verbal and did all the probems in that book. This took me about 2 to 2.5 weeks. After that, I went back and did both Q and V problems again in OG11 and Kaplan strategies/concepts for the last 2.5-3 weeks. I took a test every week (sans essays), then took 2 tests the last week (one 3 days before test and one day before test). Since I got a 5.5 AWA on my first test, I decided that this was a cake-walk and decided not to focus on essays.

Come 2nd test day, I was ready to take on this test. I wrote both essays, but didn't focus on them very much. I just did the basic writing since I knew that I could easily get a 4.0 (we'll have to see what the real score is in the mail). Then came the quantitative part - it was very similar to my first test. I felt like I did well on this part and went to break. Then came verbal - first 3 questions were SC (which is my kryptonite). Throughout the test, I felt like I was just doing so-so and sometimes worse than my last test. When the test was over, I felt like I might have done only marginally better than my first test, but instead scored a 710!

I really just think my first test was a fluke. I was tracking in my practice tests to the 700 range and my 2nd test proved that I could definitely reach that score range. There also is some luck to it - what types of problems I received, which problems counted/notcounted towards my test score, etc.

Below is a quick recap on both sections:

Quant -
All the usual geometry, rate, arithmetic, mean, median etc, etc, problems. I did not encounter any Comb/perm problems. I actually think there was 1 problem that was EXACTLY the same problem as in GMATprep but with numbers switched or tweaked very little.

Verbal -
RC: No physical sciences. They were all based on government/business and social sciences. I'm usualy pretty good at RC so this wasn't an issue for me.

SC: Very similar to OG11, but I would say a notch tougher on the real test.

CR: I would say OG11 is right on the mark to the real test.

Thanks for the recap and enoy your day !

Congratulations! Your experience serves as inspiration for me. As I wrote in another thread, I also received a 640 on my first test though my practice test scores were higher. Thanks for showing that there's always hope!

congratulations - that's a nice bump in score, and should benefit your applications.

Congrats!
Great imrovement and resultant entry to the 700 club as well.
Best of luck for the next part of your journey to MBA

Regards.

That was a good leap over the hurdle. Congrats!

updated..just got the offical score back. Numbers did not change and percentiles are correct.

AWA score of 5.5