A little background:
I'm currently a junior at a Top-30 University in the US who decided to take the GMAT after hearing about business schools from some friends.
Studying:
I started studying in October, but did so absurdly sporadically until today. It basically consisted of just reading the
MGMAT books, doing problems, and taking CATs. I hit my weaknesses hard and relied on my strengths.
Resources:
-
Manhattan GMAT 9-session course
-
MGMAT Books-OG12
-Beatthegmat and gmatclub
Practice Tests:
MGMAT 1 (10/15): 640
Kaplan Free (10/18): 640
PR Paper (10/20): 640
MGMAT 2 (11/4): 640
MGMAT 3 (3/8): 700
GMATPREP (3/22): 640
MGMAT 4 (4/22): 720 (Q44,V45)
MGMAT 5 (4/23): 680 (Q40,V42)
MGMAT 6 (4/24): 720 (Q44,V45)
GMATPREP (4/25): 710 (Q48,V40)
Most of these scores were driven by solid performances in Verbal. I consider myself to be really good at sentence correction and CR, but just decent at SC. I thought my last practice test was an anomaly (even though it was GMATPREP) because I had never performed better in Quant than Verbal, and that was a big gap.
Test day:
I decide to take it in Waltham, MA, because I hear it's nice there. Turns out the test center had moved from the address I had googled, so I frantically found the place with a half hour to go (I wisely left with lots of time, but it was still very hectic).
I go in and begin. The AWA's are easy. I don't think I had spent more than five minutes combined in all my studying on those. As a history major at a liberal arts university, I write a lot.
I go straight to the Quant section without a break. Quant has always been my weak point, and I've spent the past week cramming it in hard. After getting some easy ones in the beginning and feeling good, I hit a wall. I barely see any geometry and just a bunch of advanced algebra, which was actually very tough (for me, I figure, but not for relative standards, which is bad). My mind goes frantic, and with about twenty-four minutes to go I have ~14 problems left. Guesstimating becomes necessary, and I finish with roughly 30 seconds left.
At this point I'm pretty sure I scored about a ~38 on Quant, so I realize I need to kill the Verbal to get a decent score. This shouldn't be much of a problem. I again do not take a break. I start out strong, and by the middle I'm getting what I consider to be very challenging questions with advanced tricks. I figure I'm coasting at about a ~44, and I finish with roughly two minutes to go, which was odd considering I had never finished Verbal without at least ~16 minutes left. Anyway, I feel I have salvaged my score and should get ~640.
I sit there and report my score. I didn't think about cancelling it just because of the randomness of the test.
Unofficial GMAT Score:
Quantitative: 43 (67th percentile)
Verbal: 40 (89th percentile)
Total: 680 (86th percentile)So weird. I'm thrilled to see the score, but have no idea how I did so relatively well in quant/poorly in verbal. Anyway, what i took from all this:
-I need to study more in verbal, despite getting 43-45 in most of my
MGMAT CATs
-I'm possibly better in quant than I am giving myself credit for
But most importantly:
-I can break 700. It's possible.
Now on to relaxing, but soon enough, back to studying and to try again!