by tomcanfieldjr Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:18 am
To Stacey and whoever may be reading:
I thought I would update this post since my journey has now finally come to an end...
After a 4th attempt at the end of August, and a 5th, (yes 5th,) attempt this past Saturday, I finally managed to reach my goal. 45Q (72%) 40V (89%), Total 700 (90%).
I was / still am in total shock considering that I took about a month and a half off after I scored a 620, (yes 620,) on my 4th attempt, thinking that my MBA dream was over. However, once again, my high verbal score on my very first attempt kept drawing me back. I knew I had that performance in me, it was just a matter of unleashing it.
Because of the long layoff, getting back into a groove in terms of studying / preparation felt like such a grind, and I contemplated quitting many times. Yet, I decided to soldier on, and thank god I did.
For those of you struggling with low to mid 600 scores, questioning whether you can score a 700, I'm living proof of it. My advice for those who are in the position that I once was in, is to heed the words of the late Jimmy Valvano, the former basketball coach at NC State, who famously said, "Don't give up, don't ever give up." People thought I was crazy when I told them I was taking the GMAT a 5th time. I thought I was crazy for taking it a 5th time. However, it really boiled down to me simply refusing to accept failure.
These are my official scores:
11/16/09 640 (75%) 36Q (45%) 41V (92%)
1/29/10 630 (74%) 42Q (62%) 34V (68%)
3/27/10 650 (79%) 43Q (67%) 35V (73%)
8/30/10 620 (70%) 42Q (61%) 34V (68%)
12/18/10 700 (90%) 45Q (72%) 40V (89%)
Takeaways:
I definitely had to resort to some unconventional strategies this time around mainly because I had exhasusted the 11th and 12th editions of the official guide, and the 1st and 2nd edition supplements, quant and verbal. (I probably did all editions front to back, twice.) Leading up to my 4th attempt I relied on Knewton CATs, (bad decision,) and on the 5th attempt I relied on Kaplan CATs (better decision, but still not as good as MGMAT.)
(I will not even get into my 4th attempt. Needless to say, it was a disaster. I was extremely anxious, thinking that it was my last attempt and I really struggled with timing and stamina issues. I also relied far too much on repeat questions while studying for it. Basically, I didn't learn much this go around.)
For my 5th attempt I didn't even look at the official guide. I was done with repeat questions. Again, not sure this is the recommended course of action, but in my situation, it helped. I was relying far too much on memory. I also decided to work with a tutor who provided me with some proprietary PS and DS questions, and I did about 12 quant tests from GMATClub. These tests are comprised of pretty difficult, complex, confusing, and somewhat unrealistic questions, but they really helped improve my stamina and timing. It made me realize that I would need to guess and to guess quickly and move on. The actual quant on the GMAT felt easy because I had done so many GMATClub tests. In the back of my mind, I was actually thinking that I was doing poorly, since it seemed too easy. The important thing is to really make sure you have the basics down, like to the point where you are getting 100% of the easy questions correct. If you are getting the easy ones right, and moving quickly through the exam you are going to at the very minimum hit that 70% quant mark. Now if you are trying to score higher, my approach will not work since you are going to need to answer the more difficult questions. Still it is important to get the fundamentals down. I really had gotten lazy with this and it took a tutor to point it out to me.
For verbal, my tutor suggested that I use LSAT material. Again, probably not the recommended approach, but it worked for me. The LSAT's CR and RC is similar to the that of the GMAT yet the LSAT is significantly more complex and really trained me to pay attention to what I was reading. The GMAT verbal seemed easy after having worked through multiple LSAT prep tests. For sentence correction, I actually used the SC from PowerPrep. There was a surprising amount of questions that I had not ever seen before, I would say a good 150-175 that are not in the 11th, 12th editions of the OG or the supplements. By doing new problems, I was able to improve and re-learn the rules. One helpful thing is that while there are no explanations to these SC's, (I just had a printout of all them,) it almost forced me to create my own explanations. I once thought that SC was my strength, but I quickly realized that it needed more attention.
As far as my 5th attempt, I felt much more relaxed. Knocked out the essays with ease. I felt great doing the quant section. Again, it felt easy so I was thinking that I was doing poorly, but I pressed on. It wasn't until the tail end of the section, (about the final 1/4,) where I started to run out of gas and fell slightly behind, to the point where I had to guess on the final 2-3. For some reason, I lost track of time during my break and walked into the verbal section, 2 minutes behind. I freaked out for a second but managed to get it together and stayed within a question or two of the timing benchmarks. I felt really good, but I did fall behind largely because I missed those two minutes in the beginning and had to guess on the final 3-4.
Because of the small timing issues and the fact that the quant felt too easy, I was not expecting much. Yet when I hit the score report, and saw that 700 out of the corner of my eye, wow, pure elation.
The good news is that my GMAT journey is over. The bad news is that round 2 applications are approaching quick. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire...
