restore's journey from "clueless" to 700+

Quick update, as it's been a while since I've posted.

I lost motivation for the GMAT over these past few months. There has been a noticeable drop-off in consistency over my studying. All I have are excuses, so I won't bother to post them up.

I know I have to get my head back into the game. The benefits an MBA will not come to fruition immediately, possibly for another ten to twenty years. I've always been driven by immediate results.

What I do know is that it will help me get to the next level...someday. I have to stay motivated by knowing this.

Anyways, enough rambling. I'm still working through the final two MGMAT books; Sentence Correction and Word Translations. I sat down yesterday at the library for a four-hour straight study session and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was doing pretty well on the practice questions. I anticipated it to be much worse.

The plan is to take the GMAT sometime in the spring in 2012.

P.S I don't think I've ever prepared this much for a single exam. And I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

Keep it up man! I'm in the same boat as you realizing how motivated I am by immediate results but we'll both get there if we keep eyes on the prize.

I'm back...

A co-worker, who was a rank above me, was laid off a week and a half ago. There was no warning at all. He was essentially "caught with his pants down." This was a reality-check, because that could have been me. It was was this event that made me realize that I need to have something going besides my daily job. A criminal justice degree won't take me far.

And thus my GMAT studies restarted, once again. I reviewed my MGMAT Math/Verbal notes and some OG12 Problem Solving questions. It was a very meager amount of preparation, but I decided to take the plunge and do a CAT test (for the first time).

I scored 510 on the GMAT Prep #1 CAT. The split came out to 32Q and 28V.

My thoughts:
-The score seemed expected, given how long I was on "studying hiatus."
-The most surprising part was how poorly I did on the Verbal section. Granted, I did almost zero preparation, but the RC/CR sections were rather difficult.
-My biggest issues was time management. I flew through all the questions. I finished the Quantitative section with 30 minutes to spare, and the Verbal section with 20 minutes to spare.

Going forward, I will continue to review all the PS + DS questions in the OG12. At the same time, I will be reviewing all my incorrect questions from the CAT test.

I plan to take a CAT test every Saturday or Sunday until I feel somewhat ready to schedule a test. The plan is to take one in either June or July. Target score: 650+.

Can't you just study a bit harder for a month or two, take the exam, and get it out of the way? Studying at this rate seems a bit counterproductive, no?

I feel ya, I've lost motivation in my studying as well. I aiming for the 700+ range as well. I need to jump back into it otherwise I will have wasted the 3 weeks I've already put into it.

Wishing you the best.

@FatRiverPuff,

I work full-time. So at best, I get about 1-2 hours each weekday, and upwards of 12-14 hours for the full weekend.

With that, I don't feel that I'll be in the 600+ range with just 4 weeks of preparation. In fact, I've barely scratched the surface. Time management is a big issue, so I'd love to get at least 5-8 CAT's done (and reviewed) by the time I take my first official test.

@Yekrut,

I wish I had some inspiring words of motivation to give you! It's easy for me to say, "just get back on it!"

For me, my motivation is to protect myself in case I lose my job.

Best of luck to you as well!

I took the MGMAT CAT #1 yesterday, and scored better than the one last week.

I scored 580 with a 38Q/32V split.

My thoughts:
-I was surprised by my Quantitative score. I honestly felt that I "guesstimated" on more than 75% of the problems. There were quite a few questions that caught me completely off-guard. I'll be doing a very thorough review of the results this week.
-I was also surprised by my Verbal score. I thought I did pretty well, yet the result (32V) was lower than I had anticipated. Not a big deal though, as it is an improvement over my previous score (28V).

Edit:

I took a look at the MGMAT analysis of the CAT. In regards to the Quantitative section, a large percentage of my errors were in the 600-700 range for Problem Solving. In regards to the Verbal section, the total errors were evenly distributed among CR/SC/RC, but I had more issues with SC in the 500-600 range.

Current status:
I've already started working through the SC section in OG12. I'm also finishing up the video reviews of Data Sufficiency questions from OG12. At the same time, I'll be going over each incorrect answer from the CAT.

I'm probably going to skip out on the upcoming weekend of partaking in social activities (big party going on down in Atlantic City) to study. That'll be three weekends in a row of foreveralone status. YAY!

Officially registered for an exam on Wednesday April 25th @ 4:15PM. I was hoping for a 12PM booking, but unfortunately I missed the reservation. Anyways, my target score is a 650, at the bare minimum!

Target schools (In order of preference):
-University of Florida
-Arizona State University
-Penn State
-Florida State University
-Northeastern

Undergrad GPA: 2.99
Undergrad Major: Criminal Justice
Work Experience: 3 years total. I worked P/T in retail banking, then converted to F/T. Past 2 years and 5 months have been spent working in a Corporate Security/Risk Oversight group for a major financial firm.

I hope this will be enough to get in to one of the schools! Back to studying.

Took the m25 GMAT Club Test...talk about disappointing results. What just happened...

Only 13/37 correct, to put me in a lowly 11% percentile.

Time to review...

Also took the v06 GMAT Club Test.

Only 24/41 correct, to put me in the 12.9% percentile.

I took the second MGMAT CAT exam today. I decided to do the full-length test (AWA's).

Scored a 570 with a 39Q/30V split.

Disappointing results, given how much work I put in this past week. I literally made zero progress. I'm going to take a smoke break and come back to review the mistakes I made.

I will have to re-evaluate my study strategy.

I took the third MGMAT CAT test today.

I scored a 590 with a 40Q/32V split.

I'm pretty disappointed at how my score came out.

1. I reviewed the MGMAT SC book thoroughly this past week. Any spare second I had, I was doing SC problems on the iPhone GMAT Club app. I was also reviewing the mistakes I made.

2. I am shocked that I reached 40 points on the Quant. It's my highest score thus far, but I flat-out guessed on 3/4's of the problems. My foundation in math is very shaky. I was expecting this score to be in the 20-30's. I only had 17 correct answers, and 20 incorrect.

3. In the past two weeks, I've made zero improvement on my verbal score. This most recent test, I had 6 errors on each of the sections (CR/RC/SC).

I'm going to go lift then come back to analyze this some more.

i would focus less on the scores and more on where you're making mistakes... in fact, i would stop taking so many CATs. use the time to study/master the basics. I would take 1 CAT per week max.

order of importance, in my opinion

study material --> practice timing using OG problems (10-15 problems at a time) --> review mistakes on problems --> CATs

scores... especially unofficial practice CATs (i.e., not GMAT PREP)... aren't important and might not reflect how you would score on the actual exam. i would spend that extra time learning the material. your score indicates there is quite a bit of material you can improve on

dav35,

I appreciate the response. I actually agree with everything you're saying.

Because I worked through all 8 MGMAT books last year, I assumed that I would retain much of the knowledge from back then. Turned out to be a big mistake.

Since I did complete this CAT (#3), I will review my answers and go straight back to re-learning the fundamentals.

Thanks, again.

The test is four days away.

For the past two weeks, I've been reviewing all the fundamentals and concepts for the quantitative section. I've been supplementing the study with the OG12 questions, and I feel that my math skills improved a bit.

I was disappointed with my GMAT Prep CAT #2 results. I ended up with a 590, 42Q and 28V split. The verbal score dropped considerably.

Restore,
Keep pushing on my friend. You will do better on the main GMAT than on the practice ones. I also have a little of the same problem, where my Practice GMAT Scores are very disappointing, but I have the same ambition as you and even though things may seem not to be going well, I have not lost any hope. I believe that you will succeed despite the difficulties.