Amanda12345 wrote:
Hello,
First a thank you to everyone on this forum. This forum was key in my preparation and has been a good source of support throughout the process. See below for overview of my question. Thank you everyone for your insight!
Summary: I took the GMAT and got a 730. My diagnostic was 700, but quant was a 40 and 52nd percentile (surprising given my 45 is 59th percentile, but I digress). I was hoping for better outcome given the strong starting point but.. My quant is low and I'm wondering if I should retake, particularly if I think it's possible I won't get over 760 (I read elsewhere you want at least 30 higher).
Process and goals: I studied for ~100 hours for 5 weeks with (I think) a decent strategy. I focused almost entirely on quant. I plan to apply to the top business schools, where my overall score is around average.
Issue: The issue is my 45 on Quant. The score is below what I have received in practice tests (46-47). For my verbal - I generally received higher in practice tests. Moreover, the person next to me was fairly noisy and - despite my complaint to the test admin - continued distracting me the entire VERBAL section. I did not answer the last verbal question. The key issue is that my quant is listed as 59th percentile on the report. I'm worried the business schools I plan to apply to will have an allergic reaction to the tens digit "5" in quant percentile.
Additional context on my app background: I took no math classes in college so there's no dice there on them believing I'm good at math. However, I am at a MBB firm currently. Historically, I am not bad at math - I've gotten >90% in math in every previous standardized test (although I realize this is a different beast). I have a lot of time before admissions and the tradeoff of time to application prep applies less. Should I retake?
Sorry if this is a bit disorganized - I just got out of the test and am still somewhat shaken by the whole thing.
Key extra point - I had scored 46/47 on quant fairly reliably on practice tests, so this score is not so far off. If I had read the 80/80 thing I might have reconsidered taking the test with that, but I thought it was fine and was hoping for a 47 (most recent score after a final week of push). I read about 80/80 today while reviewing posts about retaking and am now concerned.
Nice job! 740 is a very high score- I wouldn't retake it.