So I finally took the gmat. It's good to be part of the 700 club, but at this point I am thinking of re-taking the test.
I did not deal very well with the pressure. I spent 6 minutes + to solve the first quant question. The 1st one is an average difficulty question and should be okay to solved if well prepared. My calculations gave me a crazy result, so I re-started from scratch. Another crazy result and I started to sweat and panick a bit. Eventually, I solved it, but that was a bad start: confidence undermined and trying to catch up the wasted time.
The rest of the quant wasn't great: I feared I was actually bombing the gmat.
I did not feel comfortable, maybe because of the interface: I could only take one gmatprep test (it does not run for some reason on my machine) 3 weeks ago. That feeling reminded me another event from last month. I swim (well enough) on a regular basis in a swimming pool, and took part in a race in the sea. The race was my first time swimming in the sea. The first minutes were as if I couldn't swim anymore: cold seawater, waves, strange feeling from the wetsuit. I needed time to adjust. The gmat was the same: I felt at ease only from the Verbal section.
So, I wasn't really in control and probably could have done better. Walker (I believed) mentioned something about switching to "video game mode". I need to learn how to do that if I re-take.
Types of questions: several overlapping sets (3 I believe), geometry questions (equations of lines), only 1 probability question and no combination/permutation. So here's the proof that you can score in the 700s without mastering proba/combi/permut.
Verbal felt better, but I did not want to be catching up this time. However, I went so fast at the beginning that I forced myself to slow down about halfway through the questions, but still finished with 10 minutes to spare. The Verbal difficulty was similar to the
OG's. 2 sciences passage and a business passage. Again, timing could be better and I wasn't really in control of the test.
I probably do not approach questions the right way: I tend to be very fast. Therefore I often miss a detail (such as missing "if x and y are positive") or need to do and re-do calculations (because they aren't right the first time).When the score was to appear, I expected a low 700's or possibly a 680-690. I was relieved with a 710.
710 is decent, but what's next? I have done and re-done many, many questions: OGs, several paper tests, one gmat prep (710), one powerprep (740) and 1,100 questions from gmat hacks. I keep an
error log and feel comfortable with solving 98% of them. So, I had hoped to score a bit higher.
I'd like to re-take, but R1 are in just two months and I haven't started my essays. Btw, I also need to take the Toefl. However, improving my timing and changing the way I approach question (reducing stress, slowing down and moving to "video game" mode) might not take very much time.
What do you guys think?