What a BEAST..... They gave me a 470. No mercy...What now?

Question

What a disgrace. In the last 5 months I have put time, energy and money into this GMAT beast. I have witnessed my close ones suffer, my job deteriorate and my money spent and all for this GMAT. Moreover, using a private ManGMAT tutor (who I have to say did help, yet expensive) and still this is what I have to show for, a measly 470. What a disgrace! Flying over to another city to take the exam did not help either, to think the time and effort for THIS! 470.

Sorry, I had to poor it out. I have taken some solace in reading other low scores on the forum but what do I do now? I have three Schools (LBS, Standford and IESE) just each waiting for me to give them a 660+ (I have got a solid background and work experience) but this is what I have, a lonely 470.

Q33,V22. I completely underestimated verbal. Left studying for it far to late. I thought it would have been a ´breeze´ but instead I got totally blown away. I was soooo nervous, I do remember sweating profuesly all the way up until l finished my Quants. When I realized towards the end of Quants that the questions were too easy, I knew then that I could not have done well so I began to relax a little. Another big blunder, this lead me to my poor score on Verbal. But I was not going to score above V35 anyway. The highest I got on practice test was a V31.

Where am I going with all this? Well, I do know that I have to spend less time now on the GMAT. I have too much workload on my plate within the next few weeks. However, I will be able to spend 2 hours a day during the week and about 8 hours on the weekends which I think is quite normal for most of you.

I used the OG11, did nearly all the questions there and all the MANGMAT books. On the GMAT prep I got 460, 600, 580. so I thought I could have at least got a 600?

Well, there is much to do. I will have to start again and hone in on my weaknesses. The real thing, is much harder than the GMATPREP by far... Surprising, Percents and XY Planes are clearly my weaknesses. In the real Test I am certain I got at least 6 Percents and 4 XY plane questions. I am sure this CAT test is designed to find your weakness and exploit them. What a monster. Well I guess its fair game. Still got to push it through to get that 660+...

Your 2 cents on what to do now will help a lot. Thanks.

barfer · Answer

uzoik, dont warry. all u need it's just to understand the concept of Q-part. it's not so hard, believe me. after that you'll solve a half of Q-question mentally. Just again refresh the base of math then practice, practice, practice...

gmatnub · Answer

I agree, just practice.

The point of practicing is to train yourself to recognize the wording of a problem and then readily choose an apt equation to solve your problem. This will save you time and not cause you to fluster. If all stanford needs from you is an above average GMAT score, then I say they are well within your reach.

Tarmac · Answer

Don't despair, you can improve.

How can you have studied for 5 months and yet be blown away by verbal? You should at least know what it looks like. It sounds like your tutor did not adequately prepare you regarding expectations of material.

Also if you are averaging around 580 on gmatpreps, and you need 660+ , you need to reschedule and study more. There is no reason to think you can score 80 points above your average unless you just like to gamble.

Also, why did you fly to a different city to take the exam? Try to keep your schedule as normal as possible. I took my exam on a saturday, I didn't even need to take time off work for it. No reason to put unnecessary pressure on yourself.

Bottom line is, if you really need 660 and that is your hard cutoff, you need to at least get to the point of being able to score around 620 very consistently.

altaurus1 · Answer

Yeah, don't despair. With lots of practice and an organised schedule, you should be able to improve.

bsd_lover · Answer

uzoik you've come to the right place. You will find plenty of good questions on the forums,keep participating and keep practicing, you'll hit 650 in no time.

uzoik · Answer

I am ashamed. I really appreciate your replies. I went out last night and drank (LARGE) for the first time in four years! Made no difference. Clearly, this GMAT is taking its toll on me mentally. I write now with so much remorse, but in reflection you guys are simply right!

The best moment in the last 24 hours for me has been reading your replies. Thanks.

Ok, back to business.

@ barfer. I like what you mentioned here. I never could think I could solve half after these questions mentally. I have realised what I do when answering a Math question is that I always jot stuff down, even before reading the whole question. I don't know why I do this. I think its something I picked up in school. But mentally solving the questions in the head first is definitely what could help me improve, especially with the time. Do you have any strategy to share?

@bsd_lover, cheers man. Your right, I always glance at the forum questions and never really get involved. I am sure there is much to learn.

@ Tarmac, you know, i think I have spent 99% studying only Quants during the last 5 months. I really left Verbal to the last 2 weeks or so. I am a native (bad) English speaker so I thought I would be OK with Verbal. What I later realised was that most RC questions were always difficult for me to grasp, the scientific essays always failed me. Furthermore, the CR questions were really difficult for me to get round. I always had to re-read the questions 2 or 3 times to understand what was being said. SC was weird. Sometimes I will get 16/17 questions right on the GMATPREP test, other times it would be a 50/50 split. Oh yes, I had to fly to a different city because the spots to take the TEST in my city was full. Yesterday was one of my deadlines for one of the schools. I have no idea what to tell them now?

Not to ask too much. Can anyone give me a 10 point plan on what to do say over the next 3 months or so.?

Thx.

barfer · Answer

uzoik, first of all pls return to basic things even to elementary school's ones. Any human might easily solve Q-qs to gain Q45-Q50. But the problem that you lost a math base in your childhood for sure. I know that 3 years ago my younger brother met the same barrier. Many years ago I was just a brilliant in math & phisics (many thanks to my teachers who worked with a such damned boy 8-)

) but my brother was unlucky cause his health was weak that's why he lost many basic things of school program. So that his math skills was not weak but very weak indeed. 3 years ago he came to me and ask for supporting him with english & gmat. I helped him to find a language course and said to him that gmat is something new but I was ready to give some lesson of math. today he's about to take mba diploma of the best local GSB and works in a bank of Uni Credit group as a credit analyzer. He's still young, younger then majority of us. OK first lesson was about common principals of math - more/less/equal, number properties, real numbers, basis of geometry etc. how many gaps in his understanding of those I found then. wow. So we repeat all those at least twice. maybe it sounds stupid for many but we did it. then we started solving easy tasks. he complained but i always said that it was his life, his choice and i might leave. so we went on. repeat the multiplication table. it's very important!!!! Even I failed huge amount of times only with stupidest mistakes of multiplicating. then we began to find patterns. remember that in school a teacher always shows how to solve a new kind of math tasks and only after that you start hack these tasks by your own. the same principle, the same law. you find out the pattern then practice it. and partice again and again. after that you become able to solve quadratic equations mentally even with real numbers' answers. my brother practiced a lot. finally i left him and he just practiced. he practiced, practiced, and practiced again. he passed gmat i can't remember his score but he shooted the aim. now he speaks english much better than me and consults enterprise clients. so all you really need is understand the basis of math and spend you time for practice. use this forum to find pattern which u can't recognize and practice those until you win. good luck!!!

TheRob · Answer

Well It is always tough

However I am trying to figure out how am I gonna be over the 600's as well if you want we can study together and help each other

See ya

kykboxr · Answer

Don't sweat it maing. You now know what the test is all about. Keep up the hard work and it WILL pay off. 8-)

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What a BEAST..... They gave me a 470. No mercy...What now?

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