What a BEAST..... They gave me a 470. No mercy...What now?

Don't despair, you can improve.

How can you have studied for 5 months and yet be blown away by verbal? You should at least know what it looks like. It sounds like your tutor did not adequately prepare you regarding expectations of material.

Also if you are averaging around 580 on gmatpreps, and you need 660+ , you need to reschedule and study more. There is no reason to think you can score 80 points above your average unless you just like to gamble.

Also, why did you fly to a different city to take the exam? Try to keep your schedule as normal as possible. I took my exam on a saturday, I didn't even need to take time off work for it. No reason to put unnecessary pressure on yourself.

Bottom line is, if you really need 660 and that is your hard cutoff, you need to at least get to the point of being able to score around 620 very consistently.

Yeah, don't despair. With lots of practice and an organised schedule, you should be able to improve.

uzoik you've come to the right place. You will find plenty of good questions on the forums,keep participating and keep practicing, you'll hit 650 in no time.

I am ashamed. I really appreciate your replies. I went out last night and drank (LARGE) for the first time in four years! Made no difference. Clearly, this GMAT is taking its toll on me mentally. I write now with so much remorse, but in reflection you guys are simply right!

The best moment in the last 24 hours for me has been reading your replies. Thanks.

Ok, back to business.




@ barfer. I like what you mentioned here. I never could think I could solve half after these questions mentally. I have realised what I do when answering a Math question is that I always jot stuff down, even before reading the whole question. I don't know why I do this. I think its something I picked up in school. But mentally solving the questions in the head first is definitely what could help me improve, especially with the time factor. Do you have any strategy to share?

@bsd_lover, cheers man. Your right, I always glance at the forum questions and never really get involved. I am sure there is much to learn.

@ Tarmac, you know, i think I have spent 99% studying only Quants during the last 5 months. I really left Verbal to the last 2 weeks or so. I am a native (bad) English speaker so I thought I would be OK with Verbal. What I later realised was that most RC questions were always difficult for me to grasp, the scientific essays always failed me. Furthermore, the CR questions were really difficult for me to get round. I always had to re-read the questions 2 or 3 times to understand what was being said. SC was weird. Sometimes I will get 16/17 questions right on the GMATPREP test, other times it would be a 50/50 split. Oh yes, I had to fly to a different city because the spots to take the TEST in my city was full. Yesterday was one of my deadlines for one of the schools. I have no idea what to tell them now?

Not to ask too much. Can anyone give me a 10 point plan on what to do say over the next 3 months or so.?

Thx.

uzoik, first of all pls return to basic things even to elementary school's ones. Any human might easily solve Q-qs to gain Q45-Q50. But the problem that you lost a math base in your childhood for sure. I know that 3 years ago my younger brother met the same barrier.
Many years ago I was just a brilliant in math & phisics (many thanks to my teachers who worked with a such damned boy ) but my brother was unlucky cause his health was weak that's why he lost many basic things of school program. So that his math skills was not weak but very weak indeed.
3 years ago he came to me and ask for supporting him with english & gmat. I helped him to find a language course and said to him that gmat is something new but I was ready to give some lesson of math. today he's about to take mba diploma of the best local GSB and works in a bank of Uni Credit group as a credit analyzer. He's still young, younger then majority of us.
OK first lesson was about common principals of math - more/less/equal, number properties, real numbers, basis of geometry etc. how many gaps in his understanding of those I found then. wow. So we repeat all those at least twice. maybe it sounds stupid for many but we did it. then we started solving easy tasks. he complained but i always said that it was his life, his choice and i might leave. so we went on. repeat the multiplication table. it's very important!!!! Even I [after tones] failed huge amount of times only with stupidest mistakes of multiplicating. then we began to find patterns. remember that in school a teacher always shows how to solve a new kind of math tasks and only after that you start hack these tasks by your own. the same principle, the same law. you find out the pattern then practice it. and partice again and again. after that you become able to solve quadratic equations mentally even with real numbers' answers. my brother practiced a lot. finally i left him and he just practiced. he practiced, practiced, and practiced again. he passed gmat i can't remember his score but he shooted the aim. now he speaks english much better than me and consults enterprise clients.

so all you really need is understand the basis of math and spend you time for practice. use this forum to find pattern which u can't recognize and practice those until you win. good luck!!!

Well It is always tough

However I am trying to figure out how am I gonna be over the 600's as well if you want we can study together and help each other

See ya

Don't sweat it maing. You now know what the test is all about. Keep up the hard work and it WILL pay off.