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15 Jun 2017, 05:17
Kudos
Bookmarks
There have been many posts in this forum similar to mine but still i want to share my experience. I appeared for my gmat exam today and scored a miserable 520. I studied hard for the past 3 months for this day and after seeing 520 in the computer screen i wanted to cry. I had taken a few CATs like the manhattan, kaplan and the gmat prep. I didnt score so bad in any of the test like i scored today in the real time.
I had quit my office, stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped my social life completely and dived straight into studying. I studied day and night for this exam. I solved nearly 500 data suffiency questions and over 200 sc and cr. Regardless of these i scored miserably.
I scored poorly, both in quant and in verbal.
I am planning to retake the gmat later this year and am in serious need of motivation and a plan which I can follow so as to improve my score and enter the 700 league. I request everyone to please share me so as how I should prepare for the gmat.
Thanks to all the readers and all the best to all the gmat takers out there.
I had quit my office, stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped my social life completely and dived straight into studying. I studied day and night for this exam. I solved nearly 500 data suffiency questions and over 200 sc and cr. Regardless of these i scored miserably.
I scored poorly, both in quant and in verbal. I am planning to retake the gmat later this year and am in serious need of motivation and a plan which I can follow so as to improve my score and enter the 700 league. I request everyone to please share me so as how I should prepare for the gmat.
Thanks to all the readers and all the best to all the gmat takers out there.
15 Jun 2017, 11:16
Kudos
Bookmarks
Sorry to hear that you had such a horrible experience, snowden19. And welcome to GMAT Club!
This might sound totally counterintuitive, but I'm 100% convinced that everybody needs balance in their lives in order to perform well on this test. The GMAT isn't a knowledge-based test. Sure, you need to have a grasp of fundamental mathematics and grammar and reading, but it's ultimately about precision and focus and logic and reasoning. And that takes more than just hours and hours of brute-force studying. If you're not 100% sharp and clear-headed on test day, you'll underperform your skills.
And it sounds like that's at least part of what happened in your case. I don't know what your practice test scores were, but if they were consistently higher than they were on your actual exam, then you presumably made mistakes that you don't normally make.
Everybody is different in terms of their appetite for studying, but we usually discourage our students from studying for more than four hours in any one day. Most people will start making careless errors -- misreads, silly calculation mistakes, that sort of thing -- once they start getting fatigued in, say, hour #5 on any particular day. And on an adaptive test, that's the kiss of death. If you make silly errors on questions that are easy for you, you'll just see more easy questions, and your score can plummet in a big hurry. So don't overdo the studying! Quality ≠ quantity.
And sleep, diet, exercise, and a little bit of joy in your life also make a big difference. Yeah, this test is hard, and you might need to work really hard to beat it. But you can't just bludgeon it into the ground with the brute force of hundreds of hours of studying. So say hello to your friends again, and make sure that you keep some balance in your life. You can't memorize your way to an amazing GMAT score, but a clear, well-rested mind will definitely help.
And poke around this section of the forum for inspiring stories. You're definitely not alone in your struggles!
Keep us posted, we're rooting for you!
This might sound totally counterintuitive, but I'm 100% convinced that everybody needs balance in their lives in order to perform well on this test. The GMAT isn't a knowledge-based test. Sure, you need to have a grasp of fundamental mathematics and grammar and reading, but it's ultimately about precision and focus and logic and reasoning. And that takes more than just hours and hours of brute-force studying. If you're not 100% sharp and clear-headed on test day, you'll underperform your skills.
And it sounds like that's at least part of what happened in your case. I don't know what your practice test scores were, but if they were consistently higher than they were on your actual exam, then you presumably made mistakes that you don't normally make.
Everybody is different in terms of their appetite for studying, but we usually discourage our students from studying for more than four hours in any one day. Most people will start making careless errors -- misreads, silly calculation mistakes, that sort of thing -- once they start getting fatigued in, say, hour #5 on any particular day. And on an adaptive test, that's the kiss of death. If you make silly errors on questions that are easy for you, you'll just see more easy questions, and your score can plummet in a big hurry. So don't overdo the studying! Quality ≠ quantity.
And sleep, diet, exercise, and a little bit of joy in your life also make a big difference. Yeah, this test is hard, and you might need to work really hard to beat it. But you can't just bludgeon it into the ground with the brute force of hundreds of hours of studying. So say hello to your friends again, and make sure that you keep some balance in your life. You can't memorize your way to an amazing GMAT score, but a clear, well-rested mind will definitely help.
And poke around this section of the forum for inspiring stories. You're definitely not alone in your struggles!
Keep us posted, we're rooting for you!
15 Jun 2017, 11:24
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi,
I'm very sorry to hear about your exam experience. Having said that, through my research I have come to realise that the GMAT is about a lot more than having knowledge. You have to work on time/pace management, exam day stress and fatigue management. To sit in front of a screen for almost 4 hours and retain your attention span is by no means an easy feat.
Another thing that I have noted is that the exam environment itself is something that throws people off. Most of us, including me, tend to do all our practice from the comforts of our home. This is gong to be far from the situation you will face at the exam. For your future CATs try giving them at a library and try to take them at the same time as you would the GMAT.
Other than these few suggestions, I can only offer my best wishes. I hope my 2 cents turn out to be useful for you!
I'm very sorry to hear about your exam experience. Having said that, through my research I have come to realise that the GMAT is about a lot more than having knowledge. You have to work on time/pace management, exam day stress and fatigue management. To sit in front of a screen for almost 4 hours and retain your attention span is by no means an easy feat.
Another thing that I have noted is that the exam environment itself is something that throws people off. Most of us, including me, tend to do all our practice from the comforts of our home. This is gong to be far from the situation you will face at the exam. For your future CATs try giving them at a library and try to take them at the same time as you would the GMAT.
Other than these few suggestions, I can only offer my best wishes. I hope my 2 cents turn out to be useful for you!
