procastination Hi, I joined the community on the 31st of March 2010. At that time I wanted to take the GMAT. Five months later, I still didn't take it So first step in the GMAT process is to schedule a date to force you to work, otherwise you'll keep postponing the test and will certainly never take it. Moreover the test costs $250 so that's an additional incentive to do your best. I have now scheduled my test for the 28th of October. I consider two months enough time, yet not too much to create a time constraint and force me to work efficiently. Best wishes. ----------------------------- Test day debriefing So on test day, I went to the test center ahead of time and at a sandwich as it was lunchtime. Around 8 other people were taking the test. I didn't immediately enter the test room, I asked for a 5 minutes concentration time. The room was as hot as in hell, and the noise of the computers was unbearable. Even with the earplugs I could still hear the noise made by the fans, amplified by the carton cubicles. I thought I was in a nightmare. The screens were 22" 16:9 and made it painful to read the exercises. GMATPrep made it clear the screen's resolution must be 1280x1024 to mimic the real test. I might report that to Pearson. Moreover, I took the test in Switzerland, and realized the keyboards were not US standard, but QWERTZ! God, my essays were painful, I had to fight against the typos and struggle to find the misplaced punctuation signs. I barely finished my essays on time. My hands were shaking, as well as sweating... Thanks to Chineseburned's templates, I couldn't have written my essays without them. At this point my heart was beating at 160bpm, hopefully it's time for a break. First break. I raise my hand for the proctor to accompany me out of the room. After 3 minutes nobody comes, so I stand up and he tells me to just walk out the room. I drank a lot of water (it was an oven in the room) and ate a banana. By the time I went back to the computer, I was 1min40s overtime! ****! So I attack quant, with my stupid 1min40 penalty. The first question seems hard, and I struggle. Now I'm losing confidence. Fortunately, I was thinking about my commitment to gmatclub, and there was no way I was going to disappoint you, so I kept highly concentrated and managed to finish the section 2 minutes ahead of time, without having to guess too much. My target was to not make silly mistakes and secure a Q47 as I already did in the past with gmatprep. This time I immediately walked out the room to drink, eat, piss and go back in the room. Now it's time for Verbal. The first question is an SC which threw me off. It was a hard parallelism problem, and it took me 2 to 3 minutes to solve. There was no way I would fail the first problem. Then came RC and CR which I am good at, so my confidence came back. Then around halfway through the section, as I ate too quickly during my previous break to avoid going overtime, I started to have stomach aches and my heart rate increased as problems got more confusing. I had to take deep breaths a few times to stay cool. I was a pressure cooker about to explode. At last I complete the Verbal section, not too sure about my performance. I thought I would get around 680-690 and be devastated to miss my target by so little. Now it's time for the mba.com profile. Click, click... God it never ends! Where are my scores? I can't wait! And here comes the final screen, where you are allowed 2 minutes to report or cancel the score. As I want to go into finance, I ftold myself that I should have a poker player attitude: no emotions, poker face, blabla. So whatever my score will be, I will not rejoice or be upset. Final click. I see my 710, and damn the poker players, I was jumping all over my cubicle waving hands as if I had broken a 100m sprint world record. This was a huge relief! Now out of the room, I'm actually the last fellow of the session. In the office a cute blond girl and another guy are waiting for their score reports. I ask them if they took the gmat how it went on. The girl answered she took some other test and her young and beautiful face told me she was only around 20 yrs old, so gmat is not for her now. The other fellow however told me he preferred to cancel his score. We chatted a little waiting to be handed our score reports. I wished everyone all the best for the future and stepped out the test center with an incredibly joyful mood. I'm now done with the gmat for the rest of my life. A few tips - If you can, bring your laptop and fire gmatprep to warm you up before the test. Just do a few questions. - Beware of the 8 minutes breaks. Waiting for the proctor, going to the toilet and such will take you more time than when you are at home. - Take all the breaks or you'll have a heart attack around mid-test. - Take the earplugs. - OG12 covers everything you should know. - The test difficulty is equivalent to what you experience with gmatprep. - The GMAT not only tests quant and verbal, but also your stamina, self control, psychology and such. You must know yourself and be able to control yourself under stressful conditions to score well. I'd like to thank the website founders and moderators for providing us a place to share experience. And I'd like to address warm encouragements to Financier, Dreamy, and others I forgot, whose experiences I have carefully followed to build my confidence. I'm sure you'll all do well in your upcoming tests. Cheers

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From Padawan to 710 Jedi to IESE MBA

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cain

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07 Oct 2010, 16:56

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yes, I agree with you too

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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08 Oct 2010, 10:28

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I'm glad I'm not the only one.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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08 Oct 2010, 10:30

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Oh, one last thing. I completed all OG12 CR problems and scored 86% over the 124 problems. They are significantly harder near the end. I'm pleased with such score.

And in MGMAT SC chapter 13 "verbs and comparisons" I scored 64% in the corresponding OG12 problems. I'm pleased with that score as well. I think I'm just starting to get the hang of SC.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 02:12

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I will do my 4th test in roughly 3 hours from now. It'll be a GMATPrep this time. I hope I won't see too many overlaps with OG12. My target this time is 670-680. Due to my recent CR and SC results I should easily beat it.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 09:08

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710! V47 Q40! You can imagine how happy I am!

In Verbal I only encountered 3 questions I already read on the forum (one I found have answered wrong, the two others I had answwered correctly in my previous reviews).

But the GMATPrep is a bit painful to review, as it gives no explanation of the errors, and no statistics.

Quant went out pretty well, I didn't do silly mistakes this time.

Debriefing to come.

whiplash2411

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09 Oct 2010, 10:43

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Sorry, was that the actual GMAT or a practice test?

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 11:30

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GMATPrep

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 12:08

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Wow! Only one error in RC! And two errors in CR!

SC is my weak point and there room for improvement. I scored 10/16 (62.5%). If I want to be sure to score good in Verbal on test day, I must push this number somewhere around 70% so it can compensate for a few mistakes in CR and RC.

Dreamy

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09 Oct 2010, 12:13

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That's great improvement. Keep it up.

As usual I am dreading to take my next practice test. I am thinking whether to take Knewton/MGMAT. I have taken GMAT prep already. So, it might show me the real score.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 12:25

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Yeah, PowerScore Critical Reasoning + OG12 brute force has helped me a lot these last days. I was doing CR 40 by 40 problems and as I was advancing in the problems, something clicked in my head. I started to understand what the stakes exactly are, and specially the scope! GMAT often tricks us with very interesting answers that are unfortunately out of the scope of the argument and the question. At the same time CR boosted my RC capability.

Now I have about two weeks left, I'll dive into the advanced sections of MGMAT math books and at the same time do a bit of CR+RC and bruteforce SC so it's definitely out of my way, just as I did for CR.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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09 Oct 2010, 12:39

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Here are the scores:

PS: 14/20 -> 70%
DS: 11/17 -> 65%

CR: 9/11 -> 82% :-D

RC: 10/11 -> 91% 8-)

SC: 11/17 -> 65%

I was complaining about not liking MGMAT CAT, I'm glad to see I like the official test prep better :wink:

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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14 Oct 2010, 09:04

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I just completed MGMAT CAT #4 and scored 660 Q46 V34. I don't consider it a reversal to my current trend, as it's higher than the previous MGMAT's I took.

Honestly I find that MGMAT CAT is completely different than GMATPrep. In Verbal, the SC often relies on too subtle changes. The difficulty curve is also much steeper.

MGMAT CAT doesn't click for me. So that will probably be my last MGMAT CAT before my final GMATPrep a few days before the test.

I don't know how people can score 730+ on MGMAT CAT, I just can't and probably will never reach anything near 700.

I felt really happy after the Quant section, so I'm disappointed with this score. In Verbal I felt I did good in the beginning, then some SC were so ridiculous that it started to bore me. I got twice a boldface CR problem which normally means I was doing well, hence I don't understand this low V34. For once, I was feeling the MGMAT CR problems and answers seemed obvious.

I noticed that some questions were too obvious for someone who read their books, and therefore impossible to answer if someone didn't read them. I spotted that a few times in Quant and SC, especially for Number Properties Advanced section. As if they tailored the tests to their books. Obviously, that won't be the case in the real test.

It's now time for debriefing.

EDIT: AWA went on well.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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Updated on: 14 Oct 2010, 11:39

Originally posted by PadawanOfTheGMAT on 14 Oct 2010, 10:26.
Last edited by PadawanOfTheGMAT on 14 Oct 2010, 11:39, edited 1 time in total.

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Something is wrong with MGMAT CAT. I almost always score the same accuracy.

Moreover, in SC I scored only 40%. But I have been working on SC intensively these last days and scoring 90% in OG Verbal review, untimed though.

When I look at the sentences MGMAT threw at me, they were very long ones, and often it was a perfect tie between two prepositions.

MGMAT SC book didn't help me at all to improve my SC accuracy in MGMAT CAT.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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14 Oct 2010, 10:58

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I also scored a pathetic 58% in RC and CR, score that's completely nonsensical with my recent scores in the OG12 and OG Verbal Review. I don't understand the exercises featured in MGMAT CAT.

Dreamy

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14 Oct 2010, 11:03

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When I tried RC in grockit, I am get mixed results on RC depending on the passage. There was one passage, in which I got every single question wrong. On the next passage I was able to score 7/8. That could also be the reason. Identify the weaknesses using MGMAT and focus on those errors.

You are consistently improving. Good job.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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14 Oct 2010, 11:53

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The thing is that yesterday evening I did the first 3 RC passages in Guide for Verbal Review I got only one question problem (out of 17)... Same for CR, in the first 30 problems I scored 90%.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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14 Oct 2010, 13:17

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After reviewing my Verbal errors I have decided to not take any more MGMAT CAT. It consumes time for little to no rewards. The CR problems are the main reason.

I agree CAT help build stamina, but at this stage, MGMAT problems and wordings just confuse me.

prashantbacchewar

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15 Oct 2010, 00:17

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Can you give some details of difference between MGMAT maths and GMAT Prep maths

What other Full length test you are planning to write.

PadawanOfTheGMAT

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15 Oct 2010, 00:33

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Some exercises seem to be taken straight out of their book. So if you read and memorized the theorems and formulas you can answer fast, otherwise you'll struggle. I haven't encountered such problems in GMATPrep and OG.

Ex: what are the properties of a perfect square's factors? What's the formula for compounded interest rate? You either know and move on, or make a dumb guess to avoid wasting time failing to solve it.

MGMAT CAT Quant is okay. But Verbal is not.

I have my second GMATPrep ready to fire. And I'll hammer the OG and OG Verbal Review. I'm sure I'll be fine.

prashantbacchewar

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15 Oct 2010, 02:07

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are you writing GMAT club tests as well

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