790 GMAT (q50, v51)

[haneen97]

Well deserved. Congratulations

[rd_eastbay]

Twinsplitter,

That's just awesome. 790 has go to be the highest score I have come across on testmagic.

Question: could you give the rest of us a hint on the type of number theory and boldface questions you faced in the test?

[slick045]

Awesome score!!! Good luck on your apps. See you in B-School!!!

[scoot]

Twin,

Great score!!!!!

Congrats!!!

Good luck with your apps!!!

scoot.

[sachin_gmat]

Twin,



Amazing Score !!! Congratulations,

Please share with us your up-to-date preparations. I would really like to achieve such score.

[TwinnSplitter]

Thank you, everyone, so much for your kind words, I hope that my advice and experience help you achieve your goals as all of yours have done for me!

First, some background: I am a 19 year old California native (hence the surfing icon) in my junior year at the University of Chicago (like everyone else here, I'm an Econ major). My mom's a teacher and my dad's an engineer, so that may be what gave me such good balance on my math and verbal. I would take my girlfriend of 4 years out (without whose support this would have been much harder) to dinner to celebrate, but she's back home in California, so I get to write my debriefing as a celebration instead!

Now on to the de-briefing! To quote alakshma:

Originally Posted by alakshma

One note before delving in: The debriefings are all individual-specific. What works for me may not work for you and vice versa. So take it in with a pinch of salt and as a guideline, not as a bible. You will have to customize the debriefings for yourself. I think this is true for almost all the debriefings I have read.

I found this to be particularly true in my case, as several aspects of my prep were different from those of most other high-scorers in this forum. The first thing you should do when deciding how to prep is thoroughly assess yourself, so that you know which pieces of advice may be good for you and which ones may not. But more on that when I post my prep strategy....right now I want to speak more about my test day experience, while it's still fresh in my mind.

Note: I apologize if my memories aren't as specific as everyone (including myself) would like it, I normally have an outstanding memory, but I have a much harder time remembering things that occurred when I was nervous. But I'm sure that if you have any questions and ask me, the memories will pop right back in. So ask away!

Note #2: I really liked the way that Alakshma structured his test-experience debriefing (it was extremely helpful, thanks!) so sorry if my debriefing structure appears plagarized

Scheduling the Test:

Two and a half weeks back, I took PP2 and was extremely happy with the score, so I decided that I should schedule the test soon enough to where I was still hot but far enough that I could shore up any potential weaknesses that I had. In general, I think that this is a good strategy--as soon as you feel like you've reached your top score on PowerPrep, schedule the test. From then on, do whatever you think it takes to get that same score on the test: this usually consists of keeping your strengths strong and making sure that you don't have any glaring weaknesses that may undermine your score if they showed up on the test. As far as how I decided what day/time to schedule my test, I knew it needed to be on a Tuesday or Thursday (since I have more classes on MWF), and I knew it needed to be after noon since I function better at that time of the day.

The Night Before the Test:

To again quote Alakshma:

Originally Posted by alakshma

I had the worst night ever, tossing and turning and barely sleeping.

Luckily, I remembered the greatest invention known to man--NyQuil. While I probably wouldn't recommend others to take something to help them fall asleep, I was absolutely desperate, as I do not function well when I don't get sleep. Within 10 minutes of taking the NyQuil, I was out cold (anyone who hasn't heard Dennis Leary's bit on NyQuil should check it out, it's hilarious), and I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to go.

Morning of the Test (this morning):
Although I didn't have to take the test until 2 PM, I woke up at 10 AM (which, believe it or not, is early for me ) and hopped in the shower, which always manages to wake me up and get me going. Unlike most people in here, I didn't relax in the morning...for my school tests I usually wake up the day of the test and do some problems to get my mind going, and I figured that the more I treat this like any other test the better I'll do and the more relaxed I'll be (exhibit A of adapting advice to what you think is best for yourself). When I was going through Official Guide, I made sure to take note of good problems to do the morning of the test. I tried to get one math problem that was representative of each type (e.g. one mixture problem, one work, one variables, one percent increase/decrease, one--yes I repeat ONE--probability problem), and I also selected a random sample of SC questions from Official Guide. The morning of the test, I did these and felt that I was comfortable with all the concepts. Finally, I did the Problem Solving Test #5 on the Kaplan CD (#5 is the easiest one, and I wanted to make sure I got them all right so that I wouldn't get flustered). I really feel as though this got my mind going, and by the time I left to take the bus downtown my mind was ready to take the test.

When I got downtown at around 12:30, the first place I went was Jamba Juice (a smoothie place for those of you who don't know of it). I strongly believe that this is a great pre-test meal/snack, because it's filled with fruit and carbohydrates (which don't wear off as quickly as caffiene or the fake sugar that's in soda).

Then, Jamba Juice in hand, I was off to the Prometric (however you spell it) Testing Center on Clark Street in downtown Chicago. For anyone in this area, I have nothing but good things to say about this testing center, and, although I have no basis for comparison, I would strongly recommend taking the test there.

I had already visited the test center twice just to get comfortable with the area, so I had no problem getting there or knowing where everything was. I arrived 45 minutes early, and I saw a few of my friends who had just finished taking it. One of them had just gotten a 750 without studying, which made me feel ready...that is, until the other one came out and told me he got a 500 even after a lot of prep. Conclusion: try not to converse too much with other test takers at the center, it could just end up getting you out of the zone, even if your situation is entirely different from theirs.

After filling out the non-disclosure agreement, I was ready to go and was seated at my computer. However, rather than clicking on the screen to say I was ready to begin, I quickly set up my answer grid both for Verbal and Quant (although the only time I use the answer grid in quant is for DS problems, so I can cross out A and D if stmnt 1 isn't sufficient, C and E if it is, etc.). If you are unable to do this before you are officially logged on (e.g. if the proctor already clicked on the computer to tell it you were ready to begin), then you can set up the grids while you're supposed to be filling in what schools you would like your scores sent to. I took GreyCellz's advice and didn't list which schools I wanted my scores sent to, instead waiting to fill out the sheet afterwards when I knew that I was happy with my scores and wanted them sent out.

AWA
As Grey said, this is an excellent way to get your mind going. First was Analysis of an Argument. My prompt for AOA was absolutely HORRIBLE, there was not much to say about the argument but I somehow managed to come up with some critiques. Before I even read the prompt I typed up a template that I had created and memorized for the intro and conclusion (which I will attach in my prep strategy post), and I simply filled in the blanks and then wrote the body paragraphs after I read the prompt. As many people have said, the intro and conclusion are the most important parts of your essay, so having that part done makes everything much easier/quicker. Then came analysis of an issue, and luckily the prompt for this one was much better. I quickly jotted down my several points, thought of some real life examples, and was off to the races.

My school has some of the most stringent general education requirements in the country, with 8 of the required courses being based solely on writing essays. Thus, I would consider myself a pretty strong writer. However, I normally take very long to write and get my ideas clearly organized, so this was a big challenge for me on the test. I finished both essays with 5 seconds to spare, and I was making adjustments to the essay literally 1 second before time was up. I would not recommend this strategy to others, but luckily I think that my essays turned out well (or at least adequate).

Break #1:
Like those who have come before me, I utilized the splashing-of-the-water-on-the-face technique. I got some very strange looks from the others in the bathroom. Thought the 5 minutes weren't going to be enough, but they were plenty.

Quant:
While I don't remember the specific order of the questions I recieved, I do know this...I disagree that the quant on the actual GMAT is much more difficult than Official Guide. While it may be slightly more difficult, I believe that the hard bin questions on the actual GMAT are very similar to the hard bin questions in the Official Guide. "How do I know which questions in the Official Guide are considered hard bin questions", you ask? Viola! By clicking on this link! (Classification of OG questions according to difficulty level) Open the document, click on data, click on sort, under "sort by" scroll to "difficulty", click OK and then you'll have all of the Hard questions next to each other (as well as medium and easy, depending on where you think you'll be on the test). The number theory DS questions I got were pretty much variations of those in the Official Guide, so do the ones categorized as hard by the document above and you'll be sufficiently prepared.

As far as timing goes, I didn't have a strict schedule set up for myself, because in my opinion you never know when a hard question will come up and eat up 4 minutes of your time. If I had set up a strict schedule and one of these toughies did come up, then I would have noticed that I was behind my planned schedule and would become nervous and flustered, so I figured a better approach for me is just to check once every so often, multiply the number of questions left by 2 (2 minutes per question), and as long as the amount (I apologize, "number" since minutes are countable) of minutes I had left was in this range then I had nothing to worry about.

For the first ten questions, I went fairly quickly (i.e. 15 minutes), even though, like Grey, I checked my answers several times. After that, I got into a fairly consistent groove, with the majority of the questions very similar to the hard bin questions in Official Guide, a couple which took me a bit longer, and a couple extremely easy ones (they were so easy I checked my answers several times just to make sure they didn't involve any tricks). Speaking of tricks, I found that the tricks (i.e. giving you data in minutes but giving answer choices in hours) weren't as common or as well hidden as they are in Kaplan, although I think that Kaplan is still good practice since you learn to stay alert for such tricks. The very few times that the test did switch units or employ other such tricks, it was very blatant.

Another thing I want to say about quant: although this has been said over and over again, it bears repeating: STOP WORRYING ABOUT PROB/COMB/PERM SO MUCH! I only saw one such question, and it was extremely easy. It was very similar to the one that SecurityGeek said was similar to what he saw on the test (Problems similar to the actual GMAT)--the one at the top of his post (in fact, SecurityGeek and I probably got the same question). Sorry I can't be more specific than referring you to a similar problem, but I am trying to make sure that my score doesn't somehow get disqualified!

Also, to answer another potential question, I didn't get any statistics problems, but had I, I wouldn't have been too worried because I took a statistics class just last quarter.

Anyways, I kept at it, finished 8 minutes early but decided to sit and relax for about a minute, then got too anxious and decided to take my break!

Break #2: Splashed some more water on my face, got some more wierd looks for doing so, and managed to chug down an entire Red Bull, all within 4 minutes. As far as the energy drinks go, I would recommend not having them until your last break, since if you have it before quant then the sugar will start wearing off by the time verbal comes around. Instead, have something healthy (i.e. Jamba Juice) right before the test, loaded with enough healthy carbohydrates to hold you over until the energy drink in break #2

Verbal:
Shocked that I got a 51 in this section, since there were some that I was unsure about (although I guess that's always the case with verbal questions). Although I haven't done many of the critical reasoning's in Official Guide, and I haven't done any of the reading comprehension's in Official Guide (more on that in the prep post), I would say that these types of questions on the test were pretty similar to what I have seen from the Official Guide via PowerPrep. Also, I have done the SC questions in Official Guide (several times in fact, but we'll talk about that in the prep post too!), and I promise you that, as several others have said, the actual verbal section is very similar to that in the Official Guide. I only got one boldface critical reasoning, and it was simple and very similar to the last question in the critical reasoning section of Official Guide. I would say that the boldface critical reasoning is the verbal equivalent of permutations and combinations--people spend too much time on it when they should be using this valuable time to get stronger in questions which actually appear more than once or twice per test.

Anyways, regarding timing, I used the same sort of loose approach that I used in quant, and it turned out to be fine, as I finished the Verbal section with 10 minutes remaining even though I double checked several of my answers (by double check, I mean reread the stimulus/sentence as well as all of the answer choices I eliminated--but don't do this unless you know you're fine on time).

As far as the distribution of questions goes, the first two questions were SC (in my case, the first one wasn't as simple as it is for most people), and the third question was an reading comprehension. I got two reading comprehension's within my first 10 questions, three within the first 20. I didn't get my first critical reasoning until question 11. My last reading comprehension didn't come until around question 35, but I would say that the majority of the end of the test was loaded primarily with critical reasoning's, with some SC's mixed in. All of the passages I read were fairly straightforward, with only one longer than 45 lines (it was 65 lines, so still not too unreasonable).

After the Test:
Went through the several pages where you fill out your information so that any interested schools will know your profile, and finally got to the dreaded page asking whether I wanted to cancel my score.

Before the test, I went through my mind considering the possible range of scores, and came up with this:

Quant:
Good Day: 51
Average Day: 50
Bad Day: 49

Verbal:
Good day: 50
Average Day: 47
Bad Day: 44

When the screen came up asking whether I wanted to cancel my score, I considered what kind of day I thought I had. For both sections, I figured I had an average day, and so I had little doubt that I wanted to see my score. Told the computer this (twice!) and was absolutely amazed when I saw the score. For a while I felt like I couldn't breath because that feeling you get in your chest when you're excited was so overwhelming. Pumped my fist (as has become standard on this website for people happy with their scores), got up, and made sure to hurry to the lady and get my score printed out before the electricity could suddenly go out and delete my score!

Went as quickly as possible to my phone, calling my girlfriend and my parents to tell them about my great score. Made sure to get on the next bus home because I was so excited to tell all of you guys that have been my partners in helping me crack this thing! Thanks guys! Any more questions, feel free to ask!


If you think I had a lot to say about the test experience, just wait til you see what I have to say about prep

[Obelixous]

Absolutely amazing score....
hats off...

must also say that your inputs to the forum reflected the score that you have got... super duper score...

congratulations once more...

[ebnx]

Incredible work. Well deserved!

[Priyadarshi]

Fantastic !! ..the force is with you...

[prep2max]

Very Well Done!!

Thats an amazing score!!

Wish you all the best with your apps!!