Success! From a 640 to a 720!

Question

Hi guys,

Just wanted to share my success story after receiving a 720 (Q48V41) today!

Last month I took the GMAT and screwed up pretty badly. Ended up getting a 640 (Q36V41) after a little more than two months of studying. A week before the test, I had taken GMATPrep #2 and pulled a 750 (Q48V45)...to be fair, I think there may have been a few OG repeats. Nonetheless, to go from a 750 on the supposed most accurate practice test to a 640 on the real thing was really disheartening, especially because I'm considering a PhD where the GMAT holds verry significant weight in an application.
---In regards to this past test, I was happy with verbal because that's pretty much in the range of where I was testing at, but my quant score was lower than I'd ever received before. The real quant test just felt a lot different from what I'd been practicing, and I paced myself pretty poorly.

That said, I didn't let the low score pull me down and continued to study strictly quant up until today. Fortunately, it paid off with the 720. I was actually shocked to see the score when I had finished, because the quant today felt a lot like the quant last month. My heart was in my throat pretty much the whole time, and I only had around 4 minutes to answer the last 5 questions because of poor timing. I felt a little depressed going into the verbal thinking that I had wasted my time and money by trying again.

Unfortunately, I can't exactly attribute anything to what caused the major quant improvement this time around. Perhaps it was the fact that I just continued to pound the quant concepts (esp. MGMAT word translations) into my head.

However, I will suggest to those who are looking to improve verbal scores to just keep practicing. I was able to improve from regularly scoring between 36-38 on pracice tests to scoring a consistent 41+ just by practicing until everything just started to become a lot easier and make a lot more sense. I am a native English speaker, so this did make things easier, but the practice clearly helped nonetheless.

Here is what I studied from the beginning:
-All MGMAT math books (w/the exception of fractions, decimals, and percents). Geometry and equations were pretty basic, but I hadn't had those courses in a while and needed them as a refresher. Number properties was an easy read that really helped. Out of all of them, word translations was probably the best because it was a) the most challenging and b) very relevant

-MGMAT Sentence Correction - actually read this book first and ended up forgetting most of it by the time I took the test. It may have helped me a lot, it may have been minimal. Sometimes I think I may read things and benefit from them despite not even directly realizing it. All I know is that when I first started studying for the GMAT, SC seemed far more difficult than it does now. I can see how this book would help a LOT for non native English speakers.

-OG 12: Did all math problems and most verbal. The practice in this book was the practice that I believe really helped with my verbal score.

-GMAT Practice Tests: I took MGMAT #1-6, Kaplan #1, Princeton Review #1, and GMATPrep #1 and #2. GMATPreps, as others have stated, were the best. I took GMATPrep #2 for the second time last night and scored a 740 (Q46V47), so my score today was actually pretty close to that figure, unlike last time. I wouldn't say MGMAT was harder than the real thing (as many others have), but was a bit different. Kaplan and Princeton were both too easy quantitatively and had poor scoring algorithms.

-GMAT Focus: Wouldn't really recommend this. I took three tests, and the first time they said my score range would be 47-51, second time 39-47, and third time 43-49. Huge variances. As far as I recall, the questions weren't even that great. $65 for three 25 question quant-only tests is kinda pricey.

So there's my debrief. I must say, it's pretty awesome to go from having relatively few options to tons of options for next year with the improved score.

saurabhricha · Answer

Congrats...!!! Improvement of 80 in just one month.... All the best for your applications.

hgp2k · Answer

Congratulations

mrsmarthi · Answer

Posts like these really inspire a lot of members who are planning to re-take the exam(including me). Hope to write a similar debrief soon.

getmba · Answer

Congrats for a great score!! Good improvement in a month time frame.

saruba · Answer

Congratulations! Thanks for the feedback about books

Franklin · Answer

Nice job and good debrief. Good luck on your apps! I hope to be joining you in the 700+ club in about a month's time.

snipertrader · Answer

Great score-

Just on the gmat-focus - Would you say a lot of questions were either OG12 questions and/or rehash of GMATprep questions.

Good luck with the PHD apps!

dusklife · Answer

Thanks to everyone for the congrats!

...and good luck to those who have said that they're going to be taking/retaking the test soon.

The gmatfocus questions were a lot like OG12 (mid-level and onward), but there was no geometry at all. Hits a lot on word problems (rates, ratios, probabilities, etc).

Also, I'm pretty sure there were a few exact OG12 questions.

burnttwinky · Answer

dusklife, how were your MGMAT CAT exam scores compared to GMAT prep? Did you study verbal in any other sources other than OG?

burnttwinky · Answer

One more question I had was, how were you performing in the OG Critical Reasoning and Reading Comp? For instance, did you keep track of the percentage that you got correct? The reason I ask is because Im trying to guage how I did on my OG sets compared to someone who received a very good score of 720. Congrats by the way.

dusklife · Answer

MGMAT scores were similar at start, but my highest (and last, I believe) MGMAT score was a 700 whereas my final GMATPrep takes were 750 and 740 respectively.

I finished the MGMAT tests a bit early though and hadn't studied everything or worked a lot of the OG yet. For the most part, I'd say it's a pretty good indicator.

I didn't keep track of exact percentages of OG CR/RC correct, but if I recall correctly I was averaging one wrong per 10 questions. I worked them in sets of ten, and I remember sometimes I'd get all 10 right, sometimes I'd miss 2, sometimes I'd miss 1, etc etc and in the end I think it would have come out to around 10% wrong.

burnttwinky · Answer

Thanks for the debrief! Looks like I have some work to do.

burnttwinky · Answer

Did you work on any of the GMAT club math practice tests?

dusklife · Answer

One early on (the free one), and I didn't do very well.

I really don't remember much about that test and I took it pretty early, so it probably isn't representative of much in my case.

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Success! From a 640 to a 720!

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