Profile Evaluation - GMAT

[gustavoreis]

Hi!

I am transaction lawyer from Brazil and have built my career over the last four years in Brazil’s leading law firm. Recently, I switched careers to engage in the financial department (corporate/project finance;M&A) of a large Brazilian corporation in the infrastructure sector. Starting an MBA next year would be an important and decisive step towards fulfilling with solitude my career change goals.

In the first GMAT I took on Sept. 27, 2010, my score was:

Scaled Score Percentile

Quant 42 61
Verbal 37 80
Total 650 79

I was confident that I could get a better score in the quant section and also that I could pump up my verbal score. Verbal has always been my strongest section - which is actually expected from a lawyer.

Today I took the test again and I got a good result in quant but a catastrophic result in verbal. As low as I had never got before, not even doing mocks or previous practices:

Scaled Score Percentile

Quant 48 82
Verbal 21 23
Total 570 55

I am not really sure what happened. Maybe I went to the Verbal section too confident about my quant performance. I knew right after I finished that my result would definitely not be the best one I'd ever gotten, but did not expect it to be so low. I actually did some decent previous study and sometimes I think that studying for the verbal section was actually worse than not having studied at all.

I am quite confused and would be glad to hear your comments and suggestions .

Many thanks!

[mbamission]

Hi gustavoreis,

Thanks for writing, and sorry to hear about your roller-coaster ride with the GMATs. I'm not a GMAT tutor so I can't provide specific insight as to your approach on verbal. However you did get your quant score up, and I am inclined to believe that the rapid drop in your Verbal was potentially a case of bad luck. I would look into another round or two of practice tests, and if scores are encouraging consider the GMAT a 3rd time and hopefully getting closer to your "true" score.

Best of luck!
Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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