So I've been told I should make a post here about my successful quest to break the 750 barrier on the GMAT. I'm not sure how interesting of a story it'll be, but here's a little recap about my journey and accomplishing my score of 760!
Who I amWhile I won't go so far as to say it's totally unique, I probably have a slightly atypical background. I'm 26 years old (okay, 27, but my birthday was the day after I took the GMAT) and have been in the workforce for about 5 and a half years. I graduated from Tufts, where I had a math major and a music minor. My dream was to be a pro musician, a rock star, a pioneer of electric bass, etc etc. I had wanted to go to college for music, but my parents wisely convinced me to get a degree in something more useful, and then pursue a music career, using my degree as a fallback should things not pan out.
Which is what I did. I'll be blunt: I slacked in college. I graduated by the seat of my pants with a 3.0 GPA, and barely did any career research, knowing - absolutely convinced - that I was going to become a famous musician. (FWIW, I was and am still excellent at my instrument) My plan was to find a job to pay the bills and focus on my band, which I had been in for three years at the time, and was starting to take off somewhat. I found a temp position in operations at an investment bank in Boston, which led to a better operations position six months down the line. I've been with the same company ever since.
I probably don't need to say that music didn't work out. The band from college continued strong for another year, playing some high-profile shows and opening for some national acts, but never quite breaking out into the mainstream or getting major label interest. Our guitar player and primary creative force graduated from school and moved to NYC to eventually go to law school. The band broke up, and while I've been in several bands since then, I have yet to experience the same level of success.
2009 rolled around, and I started getting antsy, wanting to do something with my life. My band situation was stagnant, my professional life was unsatisfying and leading nowhere, and I decided I had reached the point where I needed to focus on getting a real career. The problem was... what? I never really spent much time figuring out what I wanted to do with my math degree, outside of the small amount of research I did before graduating - research that included operations research analyst and actuary. And when my bandmate commented to me on a friend who had just passed an actuary exam, I decided mostly on a whim that I was going to become an actuary. I won't delve into this experience too much, because this is entirely too long already, but the long and short of it is I struggled mightily with the first exam before passing it last November, then passed the second exam in May of this year, before coming to the realization that I really, really, REALLY did not want to be an actuary.
I found myself rethinking my life again, somewhat depressed about being stuck in a dead-end operations job where I'm up for a promotion into management that never seems to come, and heard someone talking about getting an MBA. A light bulb went off. I had never thought about it before, but I've always been interested in business, so I started doing research. Lots of it. Tons of it. I spent more hours researching the MBA, schools, the GMAT, and possible career paths over the next month at work than I did actual work. And I was hooked. This was it - this was what I wanted to do. I was WAY more excited about going back to school for my MBA than I ever was about becoming an actuary. I spent some time deciding on part-time vs. full-time, finally concluding that I want to go all the way with this and do a full-time degree. With my passions ignited, and with the support and encouragement of my girlfriend and my parents, I stopped studying for actuary exam #3 and began going for the GMAT.
GMAT PreppingI was confident. I had two actuary exams under my belt - the GMAT should be a piece of cake! In terms of the difficulty of the material covered, actuary exams are on a totally different level than the GMAT. But the type of thinking that the GMAT requires is completely different, and presents its own unique challenges (and obviously there's no verbal in an actuary exam!). I was (and am still) aiming high, wanting to get into a top-10 or 15 school, so I knew I had to get a 700+ GMAT. But I really wanted to break 750, mostly because I hoped it would at least partially make up for my subpar undergrad GPA. I began by taking a free Kaplan practice exam, before doing any studying, just to see how I would do on it. This was in early August. I got a 630. It was not a CAT exam, so I had no idea how accurate it actually was, but considering I hadn't done a lick of studying, I was pleased. I also went hunting on the internet to see if there were any GMAT forums similar to the actuary forum I used to help study for those exams - guess where I ended up?
After the diagnostic exam, I ordered the 11th edition of
the Official Guide, while spending a ton of time on these boards answering questions. When the book came, I dove right in, starting out with the diagnostics tests at the beginning of the book and then working through each section one by one. I marked every problem I got wrong or had difficulty with so I could go back and review them later on. This took up most of my September, if I remember correctly. I was still doing problems on the boards, as well, especially during downtime at work. I was basically following the strategy I used for the actuary exams, which is practice, practice, and practice some more.
When I was done with the entire book, I took my first practice exam. It was GMATPrep, and I got a 730. I was obviously very happy with that result. I continued my studying completely using GMATClub, doing problems posted here, math problem sets from Bunuel's profile, the brutal sentence correction set, and as many of the
GMATClub Tests as I could. I took GMATPrep #2 a week later, getting a 770. I was THRILLED, and my confidence was through the roof. This is now early-mid October, and I felt completely ready to take the exam. My only problem was that I didn't have the money for it.
So I kept studying. The process was basically the same, though I was doing more of the Club Tests and reviewing old problems I had gotten wrong. I began identifying my biggest weaknesses. Reading comprehension was giving me a lot of trouble and I didn't know why. For math, mixture and rate problems were my biggest foils, and the trickier geometry and coordinate problems were giving me trouble too. So I focused on them, doing as much practice as I could to really improve my weaknesses. My third practice exam was a step back - I took the free
Manhattan GMAT exam, getting "only" a 700, with a verbal score of around 35. This shook me up quite a bit, but I did the only thing I could: plow forward and keep studying.
A few weeks later, practice exam # 4 (Knewton) was a 750, and I finally got the money to register for the exam. At this point I had completed every free GMATClub test, and having reached the threshold for access to all of the tests, I had also done most of the verbals and several of the maths. I registered to take the exam on December 3, the day before my birthday. I had less than two weeks to go to tighten up my knowledge. I took GMATPrep a third time (getting almost no repeat questions) a week before the real thing, getting a 750. I took the rest of the verbal tests and as many math ones as I could. The week of the exam, I did relatively poorly on the
GMATClub tests, getting 10+ wrong multiple times. My confidence was getting shaky, and I started wondering if I wasn't as ready as I thought. But that kind of thinking is pointless and counterproductive, and I went into the exam knowing I had gotten 700 on every single practice exam, and knowing that I would do the same on the real thing.
Exam dayMy exam was scheduled for 8 am Friday morning, right around the corner from where I work. I took a half day and got there about 10 minutes early. Everything went smoothly, and before I knew it, there I was ready to begin the analysis of an argument essay. I don't think I'm allowed to say what the topics were, so I'll just say that I felt I wrote a really strong analysis of an argument, but a really weak analysis of an issue. On the issue essay, I started off writing one way, then realized my arguments sucked and started over, arguing the opposite viewpoint! I had wasted ten minutes and ended up writing a shorter essay than I had hoped, only really using two points of evidence and writing a lot of BS. Overall, I thought I had nailed the first essay while writing a subpar second essay.
I skipped the first optional break and went straight to the quant section. Although I have very good verbal skills, obviously quant is my strength with my math background. I had spent a lot more time studying quant, as well, since it's much easier to study specific topics, and because there are more resources available here to study quant.
So, needless to say, I was pretty rattled when I found the quant section INSANELY DIFFICULT.
I found myself staring at problems that I had no clue how to solve. I found myself spending 2.5 minutes solving a problem, only to find that my answer wasn't one of the choices. I found myself guessing - not just once or twice, but numerous times. And I found myself with two and a half minutes left to answer the last two problems. I SCRAMBLED to finish them before running out of time, and I think I had about ten seconds left before finishing.
I was panicking. This wasn't what I expected. I had never seen problems like those before, and I thought I had prepared for everything! I knew I was bombing it. I suddenly found myself wondering if I was going to walk out of there with a 600, needing to take the GMAT again. I took the second break and went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, took a deep breath, and told myself to calm down. What's done is done, and all I can do now is go back out there and ace the verbal section.
And I did. The verbal section felt much easier, and I raced through it with half an hour to spare. Now, on all the practice tests and most of the verbal Club tests, I always had a ton of time to spare when I finished, so I made a conscious effort to take my time, slow down, and really think about every problem. I also did something on the RC problems which I never did while studying - took notes. I swear that it seriously helped me keep track of what I was reading. I highly recommend it.
I finished the verbal section, went through the questionnaire, and actually thought about not submitting my score for about 1.5 seconds before realizing how stupid that would be. I clicked through and covered my eyes while it calculated my score. I slowly moved my hand over, revealing a little bit of the screen at a time, until I saw the header "Percentage" and the number "99" under it. There it was: 760 overall, 42 on the verbal, and, amazingly, a 50 on the quant!
I was ecstatic. I let out a huge sigh of relief and fist pumped silently to myself. The very friendly proctor who gave me my printout joked that I needed to take it again because it was too easy for me, before wishing me luck on my applications. I called my parents and texted my girlfriend before going to work to brag a little.
Today I got my official score report and found that I got a perfect 6.0 on the AWA section as well. Obviously I was really surprised by that, because I thought my second essay was mostly garbage, but clearly the grading system disagreed!
What now? Closing thoughts and thank yousSo now I can move on to the application process. I'm currently enjoying not having to study - this is the first time in a year and a half that I haven't had to study relentlessly, and I'm not used to having all this free time. I have a lot of research and essay preparation to do, and I'm bound to still be around here, so if this ridiculously long-winded story didn't bore you to tears, you'll be able to follow my progress as I continue on my journey. I don't know yet what schools I'm definitely applying to, nor do I know exactly what I want to do. I'm very interested in marketing and brand management, but I've also been investigating other paths, like management consulting and investment management. I know there's a long road ahead of me, but I'm glad to have step one out of the way!
I can't thank GMATClub enough. I don't know if I would have been able to do this well if it wasn't for the vast amount of resources, discussion, advice and support this forum contains. I want to give a special thanks to Bunuel, whose problem set compilations and impeccable solutions to almost every question posted on the math boards helped me learn a tremendous amount. If you're struggling with quant - by all means, go to his profile and visit every single link in his signature! Also, chineseburned's guide to getting a 6.0 on the AWA, which is stickied on the AWA board, is an excellent guide for the essay portion of the exam. Follow it and you can't go wrong - but I wouldn't recommend starting over ten minutes in
The most important thing to keep in mind when studying for the GMAT is to never give up! Focus on your weaknesses, go back to old problems and do them again and again and again, until you know them cold. Practice as much as you can as often as you can. Do several practice exams. And try not to stress yourself out - the GMAT requires sharp, quick thinking, and putting more pressure on yourself will only diminish your performance.
If you read through this whole thing, thanks - it ended up being way longer than I expected, and I'm sorry for being so long-winded! Good luck to all future test-takers!
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08 Dec 2010, 11:43
