Updated: Q50V32, 690 (90%)

Friends,

Thanks for all the congrats…much appreciated. I was expecting my verbal to be a bit higher, but oh well. I wish my score is 10 points higher because that would reach my target of 700, but I won’t complain. I was expecting something between 680 and 720. At this point, I’ll accept the 690 and move on to my application because I really want to apply R2 this year, although I am not sure what to think of this score. I am planning to apply for top schools and this score certainly doesn’t put me ahead of the crowd, but also it won’t put me in the bottom of the crowd either. So I guess I’ll just have to do well on other stuff. I don’t think I can afford two more months of studying because the deadline is coming up soon. If I were given two more months, I truly believe I can reach my 700 goal. I wish I started studying for GMAT earlier. Right now, I’ll just have to divide my time wisely.

Yesterday wasn’t my first attempt at GMAT. Here is a past result:

GMAT1: Q51 V20, 620 (1 month ago)
GMAT2: Q50 V32, 690 (yesterday)

I am able to bump my verbal from 20 to 32 in a month, not bad. However, I must say that nervousness played significant role in my horrible score of 20, so in a way that score isn’t accurate of my ability. During that test, I couldn’t comprehend what I read and I ended up guessing a lot of the questions. I knew I messed up even before I completed the test. Afterward, I was very upset, but determined not to make the same mistake again. I searched a few posts in this forum and was able to get some good advices. BCC145’s post is advice I took. Basically the strategy is to treat the test as another day. This strategy worked amazingly well for me. I felt that I was focused and able to comprehend the readings through out the test. Thanks BCC145.

My problem with verbal is not the difficulty of the content, but the timing. Given the time, I believe I can do most of the problems. Because I am a slow reader, every GMATprep exam that I have taken, I was not able to finish the test and often forced to guess 7-8 questions. I usually guess a whole last RC passage to maximize my time. As a result, my verbal score never go above 37 in GMAT prep (42 is my highest in MGMAT). At this point, I haven’t figure out a way to become a more efficient reader. If I plan to take GMAT again, I would definitely take some time to read a book about this.

For Math, I won’t say much. My past score shows 51 and 50. The only difference between 51 and 50, in my opinion, is that I guess one question yesterday. When I got 51, I was confident that I got everything right. Maybe it is that one question that caused the difference between 50 and 51, I don’t know. A point to remember for someone who is shooting for 51 in Math.

Thanks for everything…you guys/gals have been an important part of this score. Please PM me anytime. I’ll still be checking this forum for a while. I think there is some good info that can help my application in different section of this forum.