GMAT Rewrite

good luck buddy

Good luck. I can see you getting an 800.

If you start at 12:15 with the test, that should put you done about 4:00 - 4:15. Find an internet cafe somewhere and tell us how you did already? It's 5 pm - why are you waiting so long ? lol We're all very anxious to get the results.

Well, haha, that was, retarded.

I did horrendously. I have to go to the doctor tomorrow, I woke up today barely able to open my eyes, my sinuses probably acted up worse today than ever before. I tried to sleep with my upper torso erect, so the mucus wouldn't drain into my sinuses, but I woke up over my bed with my head hanging down...... so yeah, I had a really really bad sinus headache. Plus I hit bad traffic today, a 1 hour commute took 2.5, and I made it with just 5 minutes to spare.

I was exhausted and had a pounding sinus headache; I still do, it sucks so bad. Anyways, after the essays, I overshot my break by 6 minutes, needless to say, I ran out of time on the Quant. I had 6 questions left with 3 minutes left, and they were ridiculously hard ones. If I had more time I'm positive I would have gotten them. 2 just involved a lot of grunt work, we're talking common denominators and multiplying about 20-30 numbers together. I started getting difficult questions from 15 onwards. Not being able to think didn't help. My mental math abilities were inept today, I wasted so much time calculating crap via mechanical calculations... when I can think clearly, I can do almost all math mentally in my head.

The verbal I got destroyed on. I know I did relatively well at the beginning, because I got extremely hard reading passages. Like nothing I've ever seen before. I couldn't read/absorb anything with my cranium about to burst. I got 3 science passages-- not a single minority, feminist or business one-- pure science passages, wtf! And each one was 4+ paragraphs!! One was 6 paragraphs. I'm pretty sure I got every single one wrong, I just couldn't absorb anything, f*cK. After spending way too much time on the passages, it was game over. The SC I know I absolutely destroyed, I don't even have to consciously think about SC anymore, but I know from the people I've tutored, if you screw up one area in verbal badly, your whole verbal score absolutely tanks.

So yeah.... the Q I got a 50 on, which was expected considering I missed the last 5-6 questions (you can only get up to 2-3 wrong for a 51Q). The verbal....... yeah. Let's just say I did bad, much much worse than my previous score of 41, which I wrote exhausted to begin with, but that was nothing compared to the sinusitic hell that I experienced today.

So I'll be booking my exam tomorrow, and until then, I'll be out on a date, with my good friend Jack Daniels.

Sorry to hear that Startup. On a bad day, you did better than so many others...but I highly doubt that's any consolation to you. Better luck next time.

yea if you get stuck with some horrible RC passages , your score will torpedo. I remember a RC passage that was like nothing I've seen before, I was like, WTFFFFFFF ha luckily I didn't get that my 2nd time around, even though I ended up with the same V score.

Better luck next time- I know you are going to surpass 750 if you look after yourself

So what score did you get exactly? 50/35? Just post it so that this thread can have some closure.

I think it goes to show. There is no way you can retake gmatprep 20x and think it's a reasonable approximation of your score. No matter how bad you think your memory is from the previous tests.

And you are going to take the test again?

Oh my goodness! That is severely under the time limit! You must have gmat super powers, good luck to you!

A little bit OT:

OA for the poster DS is (D), right?

It did not seem difficult to me*, but then I think I'm far weaker in math than StartupAddict, so I maybe got it wrong.


* the ABS brackets make it easy - you can just think of points on the number line.

*sigh*

Let's just say my Verbal was bad, real bad. Which is quite the shocker, considering my SC was flawless (I've trained this to oblivian...) and my CR was definitely reasonable-- I got some extremely hard CR's. But the RC..... man, the RC was another world. One of them went to 80-90 lines... If you kill 2 sections in the verbal, but get raped on a third, you get raped overall. I'm pretty sure they take the min of your performances.... all I can say is I got less than 750. It'll be my dirty little secret, just like that fat 4-eyed transvestite was in your second year at college/uni.

Anyways, on the brighter news, I did get a 6.0 AWA, which doesn't really mean much. I did my first essay in 12 minutes, my second one in 14 minutes, and I left the clock running while I went outside... it just goes to show that the AWA is completely useless. I did however abuse the hell out of the common GMAT idioms (between X and Y, Although X,Y, despite, in spite, not only/but also, as X as Y, more X than Y, less X than Y.......... hint hint ).

So after a few nights with my bud Jack, several things come to mind.

I did slack off on CR/RC, which raped me. I was overconfident. I neglected those, and it showed... the things I didn't neglect-- SC & Quant-- were OK.

I need new material for CR-- I'm starting to go over CR from OG10 (It's been about a year since I went over that), along with RC. Which is helping, a lot. I'm starting to get the 'frenzy speed' back. I'm starting to realize that the verbal is purely about speed. The more time you save, the more time you bank for the most difficult questions, a strategy that enables you to reach the upper percentiles. Just reading a passage and having your brain go at a million miles a second... an approach I didn't employ this time, and I do admit now, I had most passages on the paper & prep's memorized to a T... stupid me.

I really need to focus on fresh CR/RC to stimulate the whole fatigue aspect of them. I'm going to start studying hardcore again-- 2-3 hours/day. Not to mention 2-5 hours of tutoring a day, although that's working mainly off memory.

The thing that's really making me nervous is WTF are business schools going to think? Well he got a 750 the first time, then got raped the second. Perhaps they'll think "Oh, he's Polish. That explains it." haha.

Another thing that I'm pissed off about-- I took about 5 different decongestants before I wrote. Then I realized that decongestants lower blood flow, including to the brain..... ......... ........... ............. yeah, that was genius of me. Real genius.

Yesterday I did some OG10: 15 CR, 2 passages, 15 SC. 1x CR, 1x RC, 3x SC. I did not remember any of the CR/RC's, and I did these in about 50 minutes, so I definitely felt my brain working hard. Had the buzz going after.

On even brighter news, my sinuses are finally 100%. 1 week too late but never the less,

I think it was D, but yes, your approach is correct. Think number line. Doing it any other way is too much of a hassle... absolutes & inequalities = number line

Try LSAT and GRE Reading Comprehension Passages. I want to see another Canadian break the 750 barrier!

How you handle this is going to be just as meaningful as your 3rd score (if there is one). There are several difficult scenarios to compare with the 750-only scenario.

- Stop now. This leaves you with a 750+xxx bomb to explain. Adcom might ask, why did you retake? And then how do you explain the bomb?

- Retake and score less than 750. This leaves you with 750/bomb/bomb and would be quite difficult to explain, even more difficult than the above scenario. This would be the worst case.

- If you retake it and score "only" 780, is scoring 750+bomb+780 better than scoring just 750 alone? Probably not, the 750+bomb+780 *probably* looks worse.

- If you do score 800, does that even help? 750/bomb/800 vs 750? Unfortunately, even this is debatable.

I'm going to start working on some LSAT passages. They do test other concepts, but they are good mental stimulation none the less. How are the GRE's?

And Yes, I've considered the different scenarios already.

750/bomb just makes me look like a retard.

750/bomb/750+ would be ok, since I took the 750 back in November, almost a year ago.

750/bomb/bomb would be, ugh bad. but very unlikely. If I'm sick, I'd move it. And I am studying my ass off, working on the CR/RC stamina again now.

As it stands, 750/bomb/780+ looks a lot better than 750/bomb, so I'm 100% going to rewrite. I haven't rebooked yet, but will soon.
The main thing I have to focus on is mental stamina.... and writing it alert/sober.

Today I only managed to do about 1 hour of my own studying, +2 hours of tutoring (and tutoring does not equal studying, that's for sure. Something I didn't realize before...). Did 2 passages, 17 CR, 15 SC-- got 40/44 (2x RC, 0x CR, 2x SC). Did 44 questions in about 60 minutes.

Tutoring 2 people tomorrow (5-6 hours), then studying myself for 1-2. Plan on studying hardcore Wednesday/Friday (3-4 hours each day), and 1-2 hours Tues/Thurs/Sat.

Tough luck buddy - sounds similar to my story - except I had no flu - just an awful day.Right this very moment though, essays are a higher priority for me since I am applying to a lot of schools in R1. What are your plans ?

I'm planning on applying in R1/R2... my initial list consists of Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, Wharton, LBS & INSEAD. Maybe MIT, NYU & Columbia... depending on how the wallet is feeling. PS-- Does anyone know how financing works? I have dual Canadian/EU citizenship... can I get any financing from American schools? Or is it only for American citizens?

I'd like to go to B-school in (order of preference) Cali/Europe then Boston/NYC.

I'm going to rewrite before Sept, going to work on the mental speed hardcore, and if I write feeling 100% I should kill it. The only thing that annoys me is the times-- I'm going to try to get a 1:30-2:30pm time for the GMAT. My brain capacity on a scale of one to ten corresponds pretty much to the time in the day. I've gone to a few docs, I've heard delayed phase sleep syndrome a few times-- I can never fall asleep before 3am.

As for studying today, didn't get too much done, I worked the phone for 5 hours straight-- too exhausted after. I have 20 hours of tutoring to do in the next 5 days. Tomorrow I plan on studying for 2 hours, doing about 80-100 questions under strict timing. I really need to find new passages for CR... are LSAT passages good for training CR? I can get 95%+ accuracy if I'm not exhausted, so mental endurance is the main issue...

I've also been getting "flashbacks" of my GMAT-- I know for a fact I killed the SC & CR, the CR I admit I got absolutely annihilated on. Is it normal to get killed on the verbal if one section is terrible (ie almost all wrong?). I've tutored a few people, and they were scoring 600-650, and once we worked on their weak area (typically CR/RC in the verbal), they nailed a 700+ no problem.

But yeah, expect some hardcore studying from me in the next few weeks... I might start lurking in the Quant/Verbal forums a bit