650 Gmat 44Q,35V

[VGMAT700]

Hi All,

I took the GMAT today and got a 650 . Can't say I'm thrilled but not upset either. My practice exam scores were:

Princeton- 640,640
GMATPrep- 620,630,650,680 (many repeats)
Manhattan- a dismal 480 (after 1 mo of prep), 670 (3 days before exam)
PowerPrep - 680 (after doing OG and seeing similar questions)

My GMAT was pretty much in line with my practice tests. I haven't posted a lot on this forum but I did read it quite a bit and want to thank everyone for their help and advice.

It was strange- but I was expecting to see similar problems from GMATPrep or OG on my exam but all the questions seemed brand new. I thought I did horrible on the quant and pretty good on verbal. That just goes to show that you really can't tell how you are doing on the exam when you are taking it.

I'm a little surprised by my verbal score since I never scored less than 38 (scaled score) on any of my practice tests. I thought that the verbal section on the exam was going well-- but that was probably b/c I was getting easy questions. When I didn't see any bold faced problems I knew I wasn't doing great.

I'm still debating about taking it over again. I'm aiming for top 20 b-schools. A 650 is in the range but not very competitive.

Studying for this exam has been quite an adventure. I took my first gmatprep exam early November...I got a lousy 540 . I decided to sign up for the Manhattan prep class which lasted through the end of Jan. I took another exam at the end of Jan and got a 580 .

I don't think the prep class helped me much. I could have spent that time studying on my own..but it did teach me some fundamentals which were important. I'm still 50/50 on the prep classes.. if I were to do it over again I probably would not take one and just study on my own.

I think the most important factor in your prep is staying motivated and doing as many problems as you can. I studied for ~4 mos ..with a hectic work schedule.. it was hard. You just have to take one day at a time.


I know a 650 isn't close to the 700 marks that I see on this forum.. but I'm just glad that the exam is over and I can go back to having a normal life

I'm thinking of applying for 2008 and praying that the avg. gmat scores don't go up for next year's class Do you guys think I should take it again?

I'm a female engineer .. graduated from a top engineering school with a 3.5 GPA- will have ~3.5 years of work experience when I apply

[Clintonn]

Good score!! Retaking will depends on which schools you are interested.

[sgmat]

I agree with clintonn on this one....Retaking most humbly and respectfully would entirely depends on thy choice of school.....

Amit

[jordan23VT]

vgmat,

can you compare the difficulty of the real gmat quant/verbal to the og and gmat prep??

thanks and good luck!

[VGMAT700]

ShakeVT,

I would say that the real gmat is not very similar to the OG..for quant.

I was working off of OG 10 (so maybe OG 11 is a little diff).. but the questions for quant are way too easy in the OG. Hard bin questions might be relevant but this exam is a lot harder then medium difficulty questions.

The questions are most similar to GMATPrep.. I think the best prep though for Math is doing the MJJs. I didn't buy scoretop or scoreville gold membership or whatever.. but I did the MJJ's from Clintonn's post... sept/oct/nov.. and got a hold of some older MJJs. Although you don't see exact questions on gmat, you will know what sort of concepts are important to understand. Do as many problems as you can. All you really need to do are MJJs and GmatPrep and you will be fine for Quant.

For Verbal, I honestly didn't prep as much as Quant. I probably should have done a little more.
Manhattan SC is awesome. I would say the exam is about the same level as GmatPrep.. but it's hard to tell how you are doing sometimes. I did a lot better then V35 on my exams. I would do the 1000 SC's, all of the OG probs, and GmatPrep. This should prepare you enough. Then, you just have to pray that things will go well on GMAT Day.

Sometimes, it's all LUCK. Let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck!

[VGMAT700]

Just to add to my post above... I think that the GMAT is not hard but it's TRICKY. The only exam that I know of that has the same level of "tricky" questions is GmatPrep. The problems in the OG are more straight forward (easier to guess at if you don't know the answer). The Princeton exam questions are straight forward. You don't need to do many problems over and over again-- but you need to do these "tricky" problems.

Make sure that for every problem you don't just know HOW to solve it but you know THE BEST way to solve it. The exam is more a test of pacing & concentration then anything else. Also-although the Manhattan exams might seem harder when you are taking them.. their scoring algorithm is a generous. I got a 670 when I took it. So even if you do well on this exam- don't think you're all set. Their questions are hard but not "tricky". Does that make sense?

[jordan23VT]

thanks for the insight and good luck on everything!