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22 Feb 2021, 16:20
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Hi there
This is my first post on GMAT Club. I have been lurking around for quite some time now. Compared to the vast knowledge base on GMAT Club, I never had anything substantial to share; I still don't!
Sometime in September 2020, I decided to take the GMAT. I took my first official GMAT Practice Test 1 as a benchmark without any preparation - scored an abysmal 650.
Official GMAT Practice Test 1 650 V: 31 Q: 49
At this point, I should declare that I'm a typical Indian male engineer who is comfortable with maths but struggles with anything verbal. After reading reviews on GMAT Club, I signed up for the Bloomberg GMAT Prep course (formerly The Economist GMAT Tutor). I had three months of access. In between, I took a break for more than one month because of an important office project. I completed all theory lessons by November. During November and December, I took Bloomberg's three practice tests with the following scores:
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 1 740 V: 40 Q: 51
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 2 760 V: 44 Q: 51
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 3 770 V: 45 Q: 51
Until this point, I had mainly practiced with Bloomberg material. I had completed OG perhaps around 10 percent or so. So, we are in December and I'm scoring a decent 770 on a practice exam. Cool, right? To corroborate my scores, I took a free test from another test prep company and scored a 740. Stated working with OG problems in December 2020. In January 2021, I decided to register for the exam with a date in the second half of February 2021. I had almost 4 weeks on my hand. I doubled down on OG problems. With 3 weeks left, I got a feeling that I have not prepared enough with the official material. So I purchased Verbal Review and Advanced Questions from Amazon. But then I didn't have much time left on my hand. I took a leave from the office and, on a long weekend of 3 days, completed the Verbal Review and Advanced Questions. These two shattered my confidence as I was correct only 60 percent of the time on the advanced questions and 75 percent of the time on verbal review questions. Two weeks before the actual GMAT, I took the Official Practice Test 2.
GMAT Official - Practice Exam 2 740 V: 40 Q: 50
When I was taking Bloomberg's practice tests, I was struggling with CR and RC more than SC. With Bloomberg, I felt their questions were built around their material but the actual SC questions were quite different. Bloomberg nevertheless gave me a good foundation to build on. I watched GMATNinja videos by Charles and read his posts on GMAT Club. It gave me some reassurance that I don't need to remember every minute grammatical rule on sentence correction. One week before the actual test, I retook the first official practice test. I had not actually checked the answers for the test when I first took it some 5 months back and had scored a 650. Since I had not visited this test in the last 5 months, I thought it would be safe to retake the test instead of buying another set of tests one week before the exam.
Official GMAT Practice Test 1 (Retake) 770 V: 45 Q: 50
I thought I was in good shape and worst-case scenario I would score at least a 740 on the actual GMAT. Come the test day, after 3.5 hours of staring at that stupid large screen, my unofficial score popped up on the screen - 700!
Actual GMAT 700 V: 38 Q: 48
Did you notice that my quant score is less than the score on my baseline GMAT Practice Test 1 which I had taken with no preparation at all?
What went wrong - everything! The RC and CR questions were familiar and easy enough, to begin with. They did get tougher during the last leg of the section. But SC was something else entirely. Barring a few early questions, I was not able to exercise any grammatical rules or logic. It was like playing minesweeper. You click on the wrong button and boom! I felt most questions were in the ambiguous GMAT category of "awkward" and "rhetorical construction". Anyway, I somehow got through the verbal section. I took the 8-minute break. I ate a snack bar, drank a cup of water, went to the loo, and when I got back I was 2 minutes late! That didn't bother me much as I used to complete the quant section, during practice exams, with around 10 minutes left. The first question on my screen and I am not able to solve it. I'm not sure if they put in experimental questions at the very beginning but I found the question very challenging. It was related to integers and their properties. It took me around 5 minutes for that question. Now I am 7 minutes out and not sure if I have even one question right. After 3-4 questions, I got a question related to functions. I solved it within one minute but none of the answer choices match. I tried calculating again, and again but got the same result. I re-read the question just to make sure I was not missing anything. At that point, I felt the question itself is wrong. I was another 3-4 minutes out due to this question. Now, time was running out. I picked up speed but again I was left with 3 hard questions at the end with only 3 minutes left. I probably got all three wrong. During the whole quants section, the scratchpad and the markers were a bummer. I asked for replacement markers but it didn't work. I guess the scratch pads were more than scratched! I had to write something at least twice to register it on the scratchpad. I am not sure about the logic of using these scratch pads. Why can't they just provide paper and pencil?
Anyway, this post (my first post) was supposed to be a gratitude post to thank GMAT Club and its members; instead, it has turned out to be a whining post! I'm not sure if I will retake the test. I am thankful to GMAT Club and all its members. Even though I didn't participate, I always felt at home!
This is my first post on GMAT Club. I have been lurking around for quite some time now. Compared to the vast knowledge base on GMAT Club, I never had anything substantial to share; I still don't!
Sometime in September 2020, I decided to take the GMAT. I took my first official GMAT Practice Test 1 as a benchmark without any preparation - scored an abysmal 650.
Official GMAT Practice Test 1 650 V: 31 Q: 49
At this point, I should declare that I'm a typical Indian male engineer who is comfortable with maths but struggles with anything verbal. After reading reviews on GMAT Club, I signed up for the Bloomberg GMAT Prep course (formerly The Economist GMAT Tutor). I had three months of access. In between, I took a break for more than one month because of an important office project. I completed all theory lessons by November. During November and December, I took Bloomberg's three practice tests with the following scores:
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 1 740 V: 40 Q: 51
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 2 760 V: 44 Q: 51
Bloomberg GMAT Prep - Practice Test 3 770 V: 45 Q: 51
Until this point, I had mainly practiced with Bloomberg material. I had completed OG perhaps around 10 percent or so. So, we are in December and I'm scoring a decent 770 on a practice exam. Cool, right? To corroborate my scores, I took a free test from another test prep company and scored a 740. Stated working with OG problems in December 2020. In January 2021, I decided to register for the exam with a date in the second half of February 2021. I had almost 4 weeks on my hand. I doubled down on OG problems. With 3 weeks left, I got a feeling that I have not prepared enough with the official material. So I purchased Verbal Review and Advanced Questions from Amazon. But then I didn't have much time left on my hand. I took a leave from the office and, on a long weekend of 3 days, completed the Verbal Review and Advanced Questions. These two shattered my confidence as I was correct only 60 percent of the time on the advanced questions and 75 percent of the time on verbal review questions. Two weeks before the actual GMAT, I took the Official Practice Test 2.
GMAT Official - Practice Exam 2 740 V: 40 Q: 50
When I was taking Bloomberg's practice tests, I was struggling with CR and RC more than SC. With Bloomberg, I felt their questions were built around their material but the actual SC questions were quite different. Bloomberg nevertheless gave me a good foundation to build on. I watched GMATNinja videos by Charles and read his posts on GMAT Club. It gave me some reassurance that I don't need to remember every minute grammatical rule on sentence correction. One week before the actual test, I retook the first official practice test. I had not actually checked the answers for the test when I first took it some 5 months back and had scored a 650. Since I had not visited this test in the last 5 months, I thought it would be safe to retake the test instead of buying another set of tests one week before the exam.
Official GMAT Practice Test 1 (Retake) 770 V: 45 Q: 50
I thought I was in good shape and worst-case scenario I would score at least a 740 on the actual GMAT. Come the test day, after 3.5 hours of staring at that stupid large screen, my unofficial score popped up on the screen - 700!
Actual GMAT 700 V: 38 Q: 48
Did you notice that my quant score is less than the score on my baseline GMAT Practice Test 1 which I had taken with no preparation at all?
What went wrong - everything! The RC and CR questions were familiar and easy enough, to begin with. They did get tougher during the last leg of the section. But SC was something else entirely. Barring a few early questions, I was not able to exercise any grammatical rules or logic. It was like playing minesweeper. You click on the wrong button and boom! I felt most questions were in the ambiguous GMAT category of "awkward" and "rhetorical construction". Anyway, I somehow got through the verbal section. I took the 8-minute break. I ate a snack bar, drank a cup of water, went to the loo, and when I got back I was 2 minutes late! That didn't bother me much as I used to complete the quant section, during practice exams, with around 10 minutes left. The first question on my screen and I am not able to solve it. I'm not sure if they put in experimental questions at the very beginning but I found the question very challenging. It was related to integers and their properties. It took me around 5 minutes for that question. Now I am 7 minutes out and not sure if I have even one question right. After 3-4 questions, I got a question related to functions. I solved it within one minute but none of the answer choices match. I tried calculating again, and again but got the same result. I re-read the question just to make sure I was not missing anything. At that point, I felt the question itself is wrong. I was another 3-4 minutes out due to this question. Now, time was running out. I picked up speed but again I was left with 3 hard questions at the end with only 3 minutes left. I probably got all three wrong. During the whole quants section, the scratchpad and the markers were a bummer. I asked for replacement markers but it didn't work. I guess the scratch pads were more than scratched! I had to write something at least twice to register it on the scratchpad. I am not sure about the logic of using these scratch pads. Why can't they just provide paper and pencil?
Anyway, this post (my first post) was supposed to be a gratitude post to thank GMAT Club and its members; instead, it has turned out to be a whining post! I'm not sure if I will retake the test. I am thankful to GMAT Club and all its members. Even though I didn't participate, I always felt at home!
22 Feb 2021, 23:36
Kudos
Bookmarks
If you had been a bit more serious about time management, you could have secured some more points in the quant section. Anyway, you have reached 700 brackets! Congrats!
shameekv1989
23 Feb 2021, 02:05
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Bookmarks
It feels as if I am reading one of my own debriefs. I was in a similar situation some months back - the only difference I scored even worse - 640 and then 660.
Even when I scored 720, I wasn't sure until the score popped up on the screen.
Nonetheless, congratulations for 700. At the same time I would suggest you to retake. Scoring 770 in mocks is not a joke. So if you can increase your score even by 30-40 points (which is huge) it will really help you stand out on the only thing that is in your control at this point. But of course, you would know best about your profile and the colleges you are targeting. But give it a thought.
I wish you luck with your future endeavors.
Even when I scored 720, I wasn't sure until the score popped up on the screen.
Nonetheless, congratulations for 700. At the same time I would suggest you to retake. Scoring 770 in mocks is not a joke. So if you can increase your score even by 30-40 points (which is huge) it will really help you stand out on the only thing that is in your control at this point. But of course, you would know best about your profile and the colleges you are targeting. But give it a thought.
I wish you luck with your future endeavors.
). Based on school selection, I will have a fair idea of the score required. If I plan to retake, I will come back to you for advice. 
