Test Day; 600. But now I know what I did wrong.

[nancyxhuang]

I've been studying for 3 months with high hopes. Scouring through every single book to make sure I'm at least somewhat familiar with the problems. Going through 3 CAT exams and one 800-score exam and scoring between 570-680.

Today's score from the real GMAT was certainly not impressive and I will most certainly be taking the test again.

However, I learned a very important lesson that everyone else has harped on but I've somehow tunnel-visioned past in the last 3 months.

Timing.

Timing was what, quite frankly, ruined my test today.

The AWA's were just fine. Writing had always been relatively easy for me so I breezed through the two essays. I expect at least 5's.

Quant started off decent. A somewhat-hard problem that took me a little longer than usual to solve met me as problem #1 but problem #2 was breezed through with 100% certainty on accuracy. It wasn't until I hit problem 15 that I came across a combinatorix problem that, in essence, ruined my quant score. I didn't know how to "properly" solve it but I was on such a roll, I. was. determined. to get the answer!!!

And I did!....6 minutes later. Crap. I arrived to problem #21 with 15 minutes to spare and at that point, I KNEW I was in trouble. By the time I had 3 minutes left, I was on problem 32 and basically had to say a little prayer as I random-clicked through the last 5 problems.

It was all that stupid problem #15! If I had just given up, I could have just eaten the ding for that one problem and gotten other, easier problems correct.

Realizing my mistake halfway through verbal shook my previous relatively stable confidence. After the quant, I went outside and got a drink of water. I mumbled to myself, "Now I have to kill Verbal".

Wrong approach again. I read through every critical reasoning problem with extra care---that took time. I read through the reading comprehensions with cut-throat scrutiny---that took more time. By the time I was on problem 32 with 5 minutes to go, it dawned on me that I made the same exact mistake in Verbal as I did in Quant. Can't blame anyone but myself. Silly me.

Quite honestly, I almost expected worse...something in the 500's. When the big 6-0-0 showed up on the screen, I breathed a sigh of relief and then swallowed the lump in my throat. Its not awesome. It won't get me to any of my hopeful MBA schools. But this will be the score that motivates me to actually practice with timing this time around and know how to prioritize.

600. 37 quant, 35 verbal. I'm paying attention now...and next time, the GMAT will be mine.