bschools03

It does not matter if you apply earlier than R2 deadline except few. At least that is what I understood.

I am sorry to say that I found it very helpful and is quite a replica of actual grading system for the essays (set aside tech difficulties)

Actual: 690 (q49, v35) In order: 800score:580, 720 Kaplan:630, 590, 580, 640 Arco:670-690 ETS Paper: 740, 730, 740, 710, 740, 720, 750 PP: 750, 770

Kaplan is good as it stretches you a bit.

Traingulo14, It's worst as I only got 35 in verbal and not 39. I do believe that I screwed up in CR and may be many of them. I kept changing answers. During my practice, I had realized that my firts instinct was always right and when I changed I got many wrong. So I guess I should have remembered it but in paranoi of making sure I get every right, I paid too too much attention to these puzzles. (I am generally not a good test taker.either...). Hope that helps. aaa: Just stick to PP. Keep repeating the practice sets in PP (not Full length test) as you need to practice your strategy now and not knowledge but do time them. Also, don't ignore quant, take one quant and 2 verbal practice every day or take one of each with a good break and ponder more over your mistakes. Also, my strategy with RC was I made lots of notes as I read and I generally read a lot (subscribe to Economist, New Republic and so on...). I think there is no subsitute to reading for verbal as one needs a good speed to read every question and choices.

aaaa: I would say everything was very similar to [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip]. Just more thoughts into many questions (a score of q49 used to be 99% but now it is only 90% suggesting people are getting better). No probability question if I remember. Lots of sets/series question but you don't need to practice special. I did most of them by substitution and were faster. I found something unusual in both verbal and quant (at least that is what I saw) that my questions were hardest at the end , especailly last 3-4. May be it was a function of my performance.. I do have one advice (even though I only got 690) that "Read questions very very very carefully" and "read every choice in verbal even though you may have found your answer". I cannot stress this enough and it is even listed in [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip]. We are kind of tuned to "time scare" and tend to rush but long term you do end up saving time. My two cents.

I had 4 RC. Most of them short. Last one was between Q32 and Q36 so near the end but very very short. RC is my strength so it was easy except one question that I struggled with. SC was very easy , probably easiset questions from [tooltip=Official Guide]OG[/tooltip]. I got lot of SC and in a row. (except 2 that I am still not sure:e.g. I was struggling between ";" and "," and both seemed right to me) I got boldfaced question in the middle of the test and was an easy one (or may be wasn't that easy as reflcted by my verbal score). For some reason, I am thinking that spending too much time in the beginning and double checking may not have been worth since I had to rush through last 12 questions in about 9 minutes with a RC and lots of CR.

I am not happy with the score and am wondering to retake it? Any suggestions? Is 700 a magic number? Does anyone hava a list of averge GMAT scores at top schools? I found CR very lengthy and the choices were also quite wordy. I think my most incorrect were in CR (talk about overconfidence, I thought CR was a breeze). Rest were ok.