Hey guys!
First of all, I wanna thank all of you who wished me well... it is always cool to know that there are many people who have been in the same spot and who know how all this experience is...
Unfortunately, I did not meet my goal... I've got a 660 (43Q,38V), which is ok, but definitely not what I was trying to get...
Let me start with a debrief of the whole scenario and of the exam:
The location was comfortable... no external noises or anything like that, the registration process went very smoothly and the AWA section went ok considering that I had just typed one argument essay and that was about it regarding my essay preparation... I think I have standard writing abilities so it was the part that I paid the least attention to... I think it went fine... we will see when the score report comes back and hopefully it won't bite me in the butt...
I started the Quant section and I believed I did a couple of early mistakes, but generally speaking I felt comfortable with it... DS questions were tougher as I expected... I saw some complicated questions but not that many... a couple of averages, a couple of geometry problems... I guessed probably 4 of them... obviously I did some mistakes, that's why I did not get to the high difficulty level questions and that's why I just scored 43 in that section... maybe I misread the stems or just fell into the traps, but I really thought I had done better there, for me it was surprising to see that 43 when I felt I had done better than in the GMAT Prep exams in which I scored 48 & 47.
In the 8 minute break I was excited because I had caught traps in three or four questions right before confirming the answers, and the last question I got to solve it in the last minute and I think I nailed it... my confidence was way up... then I got back in the test center...
I really felt I bombed the verbal section... seriously, I felt it was worse than advertised... SC & CR were tough since the first ones... and the passages were nightmarish... by midway of the section I was already thinking of retaking the test... that bad I thought I was doing... I had read that bold statements were the new trend for difficult CR questions in the GMAT, and since I was not seeing any, I thought I was doing poorly... so when my split showed a 38, which was my score in the GMAT Prep tests, I was really surprised... I really thought I was gonna get a 30 or something...
I believe that my failure in the verbal section had a lot to do with falling behind the pace in the first 5 questions... after that I really could not regain the time I had lost and ended up with 13 questions left with 10 minutes in the clock... I feel I rushed and probably my 700 slip through my fingers right there, since I was doing better than I was thinking. Generally speaking, I felt tired during the exam.
I have a couple of advices from my personal experience, and I had read about them before, but for some reason I thought I was superman or something like that, and I did not follow them when I should have...
1. Do not try to cram everything in the last three or four weeks... I "studied" at a slow pace the first two months, doing some problems here and there, going to my Kaplan sessions but not doing my homework... then, when I signed up for the test at the end of April, then the fun began... I started to do problems like crazy (mostly Kaplan's, since I wanted to save
the Official guide for the end), by the beginning of May I had done just one CAT... so I went through many Kaplan problems, 14 CAT's (including 2 extra Kaplan's and three GMAT Prep's) and online workshops in roughly a month. Man I should tell you, this is not the way to go. In the last ten days I tried to suck everything
the Official guide had, and obviously, it just was not enough time, I was sleeping and average of 4 hours during the weekdays, overslept in the weekends to try to recover, gave up exercising and working out, I just threw away my daily routine to focus 100% in the exam. Now that I have experienced this, I truly believe it is not the way to go.
2. Sleep well. Man I am still tired and exhausted from the exam, from Saturday to Sunday I slept only 5 hours, and then I wanted to leave Sunday off to detoxify for the exam, but I couldn't... I felt that I still had many things to cover and I ended up studying until 6 pm on Sunday when I finally gave up... I watched a baseball game (Twins won!) and went to bed, but by the time I fell asleep it was almost 1 am... since I had to wake up at 7, that gave me about 11 hours of sleep for two mentally exhausting days... so catch some sleep... otherwise it is probable that the GMAT will make you pay for not doing it, as I did in the verbal section... I would like to stress that point.
3. Somebody recommend me to have a red bull during the test... which I did after the essays... man I think it was a mistake... normally, caffeine starts to kick in in my body after some minutes, but this time, I really felt that I had drunk a large amount of coffee by the time I started the verbal section. So, the feeling was kind of mixed up... a little bit of headache, mentally tired but with physically energized... I did not like the result... I did it in order to compensate for the lack of rest of the last couple of weeks, but I think it was counterproductive. Proper rest and an structured study schedule must be 10 times better than what I did.
I plan to retake the test in a couple of months, but I have to start planning my schedule since this moment. I wanna get back to have a semi-normal routine... giving me some time to exercise and occasionally go out to have some beers without the guilt of giving up study hours. I also gave up my little league coaching and I would like to retake that, kids are gonna start the tournament soon... anyway, I believe I am not far away from my target... so I wanna plan a structured schedule that focus in the tough questions and the proper techniques to master these questions. I do not feel that I have to go through to complete study books again, but to refine my strategies and attack my weaknesses. Kaplan offers the higher score guarantee so I am counting on having three extra months of practice material form them. I also have the GMAT Club sets that came with the Ipod app and that I did not have the time to practice. I have not touched the Kaplan 800 book that is sitting in my desk. The additional Quant and Verbal complements of
the Official Guide are brand new, building up dust in my bookshelf. So I think that I still have material to be busy with for a couple of months.
Any other suggestions to improve those 40 points are welcome. I hope this debrief helps out some people in the things they
MUST NOT DO before an exam.
I hope to post another debrief in a couple of months, this time with the details about a successful study schedule that can help out people to get the score of their dreams.
Any other questions about the test experience, just let me know... I will be more than happy to help.
Take care fellas...