Preparing for GMAT in a week

Question

Hello,

I'll be taking the GMAT next week and I'd like to discuss what my chances of getting an acceptable score are, and for this I am going to give a very honest but short description of my profile.

I have studied for maybe 2 or 3 weeks altogether, for 4 or 5 hours a day, but not on weekends. I dislike long-term planning and preparation, I am a disorganized and undiciplined person and I didn't even know what GMAT was until 2 months ago. I often don't really know what I am doing or where I am going, so I mostly deal with situations on a case-by-case basis through improvisation and quick adaptation. Because of all this, I am simply not capable of preparing for ANYTHING for months or even YEARS like some people have been doing around here - for me that is unthinkable.

However, this does not sway me from my search of knowledge and experience, as I recently and blindly took TOEFL. I had not slept the day before, and because I had no clue how long the exam would take I didn't even eat before I left home. I have never taken an english course, hell I dont even know how I learned English... and yet I scored 107.

Although I come from a technical background, I really dont have the kind of skills tested on the GMAT, and even though I am a database administrator and developer, I find the graphics featured in the IR section really weird and I can't make much sense of them, the questions are ambiguous and confusing. I count myself as a good writer, so I'm not worried about the AWA section.

In truth, I haven't had much reason to care for my AWA and IR scores at all. What really worries me is the quant+verbal score. English is not my first language, and it's been almost 5 years since I last solved an equation. I didn't even remember what slope was in the xy-plane until a few days ago, and I saw the term "standard deviation" for the first time in my life during one of the practice questions. I scored 550 on both free exams offered by the official GMAT website, which was the first thing I did when I started "preparing" for this exam, and i bought a pack of questions to practice. Since then, I found that I do not have much difficulty on the verbal section. It is not perfect, but I think it will be sufficient to get something close to the 620 score I am currently aiming at. I've been intensively practicing to improve my quantitative skills this week and I've been experiencing a surge in the number of hard questions I answer correctly, even when my knowledge of mathematics is very limited. On the other hand, I sometimes get some of the easy questions wrong, mostly due to a lack of attention, but I dont know where this is coming from. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Are the practice questions really similar to the ones in the GMAT exam, or should I expect anything different? What do you think are my odds of getting a 600+ score?

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi samirabrahao1,

This score result is a good sign. I have a few questions about this CAT though:

1) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including the Essay and IR sections)?
2) Did you take it at home?
3) Did you take it at the same time of day as your Official GMAT?
4) Did you ever do ANYTHING during this CAT that you can't do on Test Day (pause the CAT, skip sections, take longer breaks, etc.)? 
5) Did you take this CAT before? Had you seen any of the questions before?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

prabhakar09 · Answer

Superb Verbal score. How many questions did you miss or guessed. let me know if this strategy works again in next CAT?

SamirAbrahao · Answer

1) Nope, do you think they have this much weight on test day?
2) No, took it at work again. I find it very hard to concentrate at home. 
3) Yes
4) I paused the CAT once or twice to pick up the phone. I didn't work on the questions.
5) No, it was the first time.

Good news is, I found a test center in Rio de Janeiro that offers schedules during the afternoon, when I know I'm at my best. There's only one test time available for scheduling at my home city, and that is very early in the morning, which is not a good time for me to do anything at all. I tried to take that CAT at that same time (8:30 am) and failed miserably, so I'm much more at ease now that I know I'll be taking the test in the afternoon haha :D

SamirAbrahao · Answer

One more thing I've learned today: We should NOT leave ANY questions unanswered. I have never left any on the verbal section unanswered, but on the quant section they appear to have a huge impact on my score. On my last CAT I left 6 or 7 unanswered at got only a 47% when I could have gotten at least 60%. From now on, I'm gonna start to guess the last questions if I'm running out of time. I'm gonna take another CAT today, this time from the GMATPrep, and keep you updated of the results.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Just took another CAT, this time from GMAT Prep, and scored as follows:
 Scaled Score Percentile
Integrated Reasoning 7 81%

Quantitative 47 73%

Verbal 41 93%

Total 710 92%

Either I have some sort of superhuman ability on the verbal section, or there was something gravely wrong with this latest CAT I've taken. I've not been following any particular strategy on the verbal section, nor have I practiced those question types, and yet my scores are very high.

The difference on this one was that I didn't leave any question unanswered on either sections (and IR as well). Alas! That meant the difference from 47% to 73% on quant.

I took the CAT under the same conditions as yesterday's, but I took the IR part this time. Everything I did on this CAT would have been the same on the real exam.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Today I took another test from GMAT Prep (bought the second exam pack) and these were my scores:

Scaled Score Percentile
Integrated Reasoning 6 67%

Quantitative 43 61%

Verbal 28 48%

Total 590 59%

Left one quantitative question unanswered.

I think overall what made me perform much worse today was the amount of beer I drank last night, which in turn made me have a bad night's sleep. From now on, I will avoid consuming any alcoholic beverages until Test Day.

So far these were my GMAT CAT scores:

GMAT exam 1: 550
GMAT exam 2: 570
GMAT exam pack 1, test 1: 530
MGMAT free CAT: 630
GMAT exam pack 1, test 2: 710
GMAT exam pack 2, test 1: 590

SamirAbrahao · Answer

I'm feeling better than yesterday and got these scores today:

Integrated Reasoning - 7 - 81%
Quantitative - 46 - 71%
Verbal - 41 - 93%
Total - 710 - 92%

I'm starting to think I can score much better than 600 on the actual test hahahaha

prabhakar09 · Answer

if this was from the GMAT exam pack then you good to go bro...

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Yep, it was the 2nd exam of the 2nd extra exam pack. Have you taken them as well? Did you notice any difference in difficulty among them?

prabhakar09 · Answer

No i have not taken from the exam packs.

I took two from the first two free exams available from MBA.com so far. 590 and 650. I have another PC. so i will take two more similarly from there on next two weekends.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Lol I'm starting to think the second CAT of each set is easier than the first...

prabhakar09 · Answer

Don't underplay yourself. it can also be that you are improving

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Dude, I got 530 on exam 3, then 710 on exam 4, then 590 on 5, and finally another 710 on exam 6. All of these tests were taken over the course of merely 5 days. You appear to have been affected by the same trend.

Whatever caused this large standard deviation could be attributed to my esquisofrenic verbal scores. Im no genius, and you probably had more contact with the English language than me, given the fact that you're from Europe, which could be an indicator of inaccurate verbal scores.

There are many ways of explaining this but... what if I'm right? You get my reasoning? I'm gonna ask around if this pattern has occurred for other people as well.

prabhakar09 · Answer

yeah but i take tests once a week. 
Also even some native English speakers have trouble with English. and i live in estonia. English is not that famous as in India or Brazil.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Thats... crazy lol

Well, I've read the entire Witcher saga AND all the "A song of Ice and Fire" books released so far over the course of the last 8 months alone, all of them in English, so I guess I'm just a frequent reader hehehehe

Still, it appears people tend to score higher on even numbered tests from GMATPrep for some reason... I aim to find out why

prits · Answer

I am looking to buy e-gmat sentence correction course and looking for someone to share the cost..
Please contact in case you are interested.

prits · Answer

I am looking to buy e-gmat sentence correction course and looking for someone to share the cost..
Please contact in case you are interested.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Hello everyone, today I took the first free CAT offered by the base GMATPrep software again, as it has been more than a month since I last took it, AND I didn't have enough time to complete half of each section. I didn't remember any of the questions at all. Wouldn't eliminate the possibility of a little inflation here, but we should also account for the fact that I didn't sleep every well today, so perhaps one thing offsets the other.

Also, I skipped lunch just to add a little bit of challenge. Additionally, since today is Friday, everyone is talking in my room and singing and dancing and offering me stuff to eat, the whole damn company seems like a nightclub hehehehehe

Integrated Reasoning - 8 - 92%
Quantitative - 48 - 78%
Verbal - 40 - 90%
Total - GUESS WHAT? 710 AGAIN LOLOLOLOL - 92%

I think there must be some sort of glitch. Im gonna reinstall this program.

March 28ish - GMATPrep free exam 1: 550
March 29ish - GMATPrep free exam 2: 570
May 7 - GMATPrep pack 1, exam 1: 530
May 9 - MGMAT free CAT: 630
May 10 - GMAT exam pack 1, test 2: 710
May 11 - GMAT exam pack 2, test 1: 590
May 12 - GMAT exam pack 2, test 2: 710
May 13 - GMATPrep free exam 1 (retake): 710

Silviax · Answer

Just read this post. You started out on a much higher level than I ever did. My first "cold" CAT (official GMAT prep test) resulted in a rocking 450 and two weeks later I made a 470. I think you did really well on your first test for such a short prep time.

SamirAbrahao · Answer

Thank you Silvia!

I'm think I'm pretty good on standardized tests in general. On the other hand, my GPA is joke. GMAT scores, however, can always be improved...

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