Events & Promotions
|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
Apr 2308:00 PM PDT
-09:00 PM PDT
Video explanations + diagnosis of 10 weakest areas + 150+ short videos + study plan!
Apr 2301:30 AM EDT
-02:30 AM EDT
Struggling with GMAT Verbal as a non-native speaker? Harsh improved his score from 595 to 695 in just 45 days—and scored a 99 %ile in Verbal (V88)! Learn how smart strategy, clarity, and guided prep helped him gain 100 points.
Apr 2512:30 AM EDT
-01:30 AM EDT
At one point, she believed GMAT wasn’t for her. After scoring 595, self-doubt crept in and she questioned her potential. But instead of quitting, she made the right strategic changes. The result? A remarkable comeback to 695. Check out how Saakshi did it.
Apr 2610:00 AM EDT
-11:00 AM EDT
The Target Test Prep course represents a quantum leap forward in GMAT preparation, a radical reinterpretation of the way that students should study. Try before you buy with a 5-day, full-access trial of the course for FREE!
Apr 2711:00 AM EDT
-12:00 PM EDT
Prefer video-based learning? The Target Test Prep OnDemand course is a one-of-a-kind video masterclass featuring 400 hours of lecture-style teaching by Scott Woodbury-Stewart, founder of Target Test Prep and one of the most accomplished GMAT instructors
Apr 2808:00 AM PDT
-11:00 AM PDT
Whether you are just beginning your MBA journey or fine-tuning your path to a 700+ score, GMAT Day is designed to give you a competitive edge.
12 Nov 2012, 10:42
Kudos
Bookmarks
Perhaps it's too early to post this since I haven't received my official score yet, but what the heck...
Two saturdays ago I was scheduled for my GMAT exam at 8:00 a.m. I had been thinking of doing the GMAT and applying to B-schools since early summer, and I had acquired the GMAT material since then, but I only got serious about it a month prior to the exam.
So how did I do it? The only thing I studied were the 8 Manhattan GMAT guides, and that's it. Nothing else. Occasionally I did some CR questions on this forum, but that's about it. I usually get obsessed with plans and structures and how everyone else is doing it, but this time I told myself to stay away from GMAT forums on purpose for fear of getting confused and lost. The only advices I picked from this website was to do a gmat prep exam before studying the material and to not waste the rest of the official prep exams until I'm done with my studies.
Manhattan's quant books, I thought, were amazing. I was less impressed with the three verbal books. In fact, the last Manhattan guide, Sentence Correction, was probably a valuable source, but it was just a 200-page book full of grammatical rules that had to be memorized. I actually almost entirely skipped studying and practicing sentence correction because it would've taken too much time. Critical reasoning was not that bad and I found it helpful, but Manhattan's reading comprehension was not that great (in my humble opinion). It had helpful tips and strategies, of course, but I thought it was geared towards people who have a lot of trouble with RC and their strategies (of writing down notes) took too much time.
On my very first prep exam, taken in June, I scored 570. After I went through the Manhattan guides, I scored 610, 730, 710, 690. One problem I had with all my prep exams is that I always ran out of time in the quant section, and that's because I generally have a hard time moving on from a question which is taking too long. I always feel if I think I can do the question, then I'm not going to give up, even if that means spending 5 minutes on it. So without exception, the quant section always ended with me having to rush through the last 10-15 questions in 60-90 seconds, and every single time I left 2-5 questions unanswered.
The day before my exam I stopped studying at 2pm. I cooked, hit the gym, watched some news, relaxed, and prepared to go to bed 8 hours before I had to wake up. Plenty of time. But even though I thought I'm not that nervous, my body/mind felt different about it. The whole night I was up with random thoughts rushing through and out of my head at such speed that I wasn't even sure what the hell I was thinking about. I managed to sleep for about 45 minutes out of the 8 hours, and with each passing hour that I stayed up I got more and more nervous as I knew a good night's sleep would be essential to doing well on the exam.
Anyways, 6:30am finally came by and I got out of bed feeling defeated. I was at the exam center half an hour before my exam time, 7:30. I'm not sure how I did on the IR section... not too well, I'm guessing. I'm sure I did fine on the AWA. Quant? Same problem as before. I got stuck on a few questions and had to rush through the last 10, and I left one or two questions unanswered. I know--bad. Verbal I finished just on time. The result? 44 on quant, 41 on verbal, and a total of 700. I'm sure if I wasn't such an arrogant idiot and finished the quant on time I would've scored even higher. Needless to say, coming to the exam with only 45-minutes of sleep didn't help either.
I was thinking of doing the exam again, but I've talked to a few schools and all of them have told me not to bother. So I guess that's it for me. Now to figure out how to apply to B-schools
Two saturdays ago I was scheduled for my GMAT exam at 8:00 a.m. I had been thinking of doing the GMAT and applying to B-schools since early summer, and I had acquired the GMAT material since then, but I only got serious about it a month prior to the exam.
So how did I do it? The only thing I studied were the 8 Manhattan GMAT guides, and that's it. Nothing else. Occasionally I did some CR questions on this forum, but that's about it. I usually get obsessed with plans and structures and how everyone else is doing it, but this time I told myself to stay away from GMAT forums on purpose for fear of getting confused and lost. The only advices I picked from this website was to do a gmat prep exam before studying the material and to not waste the rest of the official prep exams until I'm done with my studies.
Manhattan's quant books, I thought, were amazing. I was less impressed with the three verbal books. In fact, the last Manhattan guide, Sentence Correction, was probably a valuable source, but it was just a 200-page book full of grammatical rules that had to be memorized. I actually almost entirely skipped studying and practicing sentence correction because it would've taken too much time. Critical reasoning was not that bad and I found it helpful, but Manhattan's reading comprehension was not that great (in my humble opinion). It had helpful tips and strategies, of course, but I thought it was geared towards people who have a lot of trouble with RC and their strategies (of writing down notes) took too much time.
On my very first prep exam, taken in June, I scored 570. After I went through the Manhattan guides, I scored 610, 730, 710, 690. One problem I had with all my prep exams is that I always ran out of time in the quant section, and that's because I generally have a hard time moving on from a question which is taking too long. I always feel if I think I can do the question, then I'm not going to give up, even if that means spending 5 minutes on it. So without exception, the quant section always ended with me having to rush through the last 10-15 questions in 60-90 seconds, and every single time I left 2-5 questions unanswered.
The day before my exam I stopped studying at 2pm. I cooked, hit the gym, watched some news, relaxed, and prepared to go to bed 8 hours before I had to wake up. Plenty of time. But even though I thought I'm not that nervous, my body/mind felt different about it. The whole night I was up with random thoughts rushing through and out of my head at such speed that I wasn't even sure what the hell I was thinking about. I managed to sleep for about 45 minutes out of the 8 hours, and with each passing hour that I stayed up I got more and more nervous as I knew a good night's sleep would be essential to doing well on the exam.
Anyways, 6:30am finally came by and I got out of bed feeling defeated. I was at the exam center half an hour before my exam time, 7:30. I'm not sure how I did on the IR section... not too well, I'm guessing. I'm sure I did fine on the AWA. Quant? Same problem as before. I got stuck on a few questions and had to rush through the last 10, and I left one or two questions unanswered. I know--bad. Verbal I finished just on time. The result? 44 on quant, 41 on verbal, and a total of 700. I'm sure if I wasn't such an arrogant idiot and finished the quant on time I would've scored even higher. Needless to say, coming to the exam with only 45-minutes of sleep didn't help either.
I was thinking of doing the exam again, but I've talked to a few schools and all of them have told me not to bother. So I guess that's it for me. Now to figure out how to apply to B-schools
15 Nov 2012, 15:15
Kudos
Bookmarks
Congratulations on the excellent score, sepandee! Welcome to the 700 Club!
15 Nov 2012, 15:27
Kudos
Bookmarks
GMATNinja
Thanks. To be honest (and risking looking like a pompous jacka**, I was a little disappointed with the 700 score. I knew I wanted to score above 700, and I got the minimum of my acceptable range. I wasn't even sure if 700 is a good score. But I've talked toa few b-schools and they all say 700 is great. So I suppose that's the end of my GMAT story (unless I did awful on the IR section, in which case I have to figure out how it will affect my application).
