680 1st time, shooting for 700+, anyone did the same??

Question

Took the test today.

680 Q48 (85%) / V35 (57%)

I know now that I was not fast enough for Verbal. I had to guess couple questions. I don't think there's much room for me to improve for Quant. I believe it reflects my ability fairly.

RC seems bit easier than I expected. But SC and CR seems much harder than OG. Most of SC, I could not answer in 1.5 min. CR, the same.

Are there anyone in this community and score about the same? And you improved and got 700+? How? Any advice?

Thank you, all.

uphillclimb · Answer

Yes, I did. Increased my score from 680 to 740. Raw score breakdown for that was 46Q, 45V. My 680 was 40Q, 42V. So you can see the bulk of my improvement was in quant, although I also upped my verbal a bit. I took a 9 week Manhattan GMAT course and studied for a month or two after the course was finished. I made up flashcards for all important formulas and concepts for both math and verbal, went through OG 11 twice, keeping an error log each time, and then took a series of GMATprep CATS. I did not reload the software for the CATS to do this; I found as I got better at answering the questions and got more correct, the exam automatically flipped new, more difficult questions out from the question bank to me, so I got a good workout each time. I should note that in addition to keeping an error log for the OG 11, I went over each of my mistakes several times until I understood what I had done wrong. For the CATS, if you don't understand a problem, obviously post it on this board, and someone will walk you through how best to approach solving it. When you are at the point where you are pretty much only taking CATS for practice, keep taking them until your eyes bleed. I'm serious. That will do so much for your timing and your comfort level, and help your score immeasurably.

Hope this helped!
Cheers,
Uphill

Hope this helped!
Cheers,
Uphill

omega17 · Answer

Thank you,
I've done GMATPrep 5 times before my first GMAT, but I guess I need to do alot more until I do not see any new questions, =)

How long you waited after your first GMAT? Just curious.

uphillclimb · Answer

Well, I waited almost a year - I was busy with other things, and figured that I'd take my time studying before the next round. In retrospect, it was not necessary for me to wait that long, and there are many other bright folks on this forum who pulled off dramatic score gains in relatively short periods of time. But doing well on the GMAT isn't about being a rocket scientist, as we all know. You just have to know some basic concepts cold, and then practice practice practice until doing the questions becomes second nature.

As for not seeing any new questions...I think there are something like 10,000 questions in the question bank?? Perhaps I'm overstating. It might be "only" 1,000. But still!

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680 1st time, shooting for 700+, anyone did the same??

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