Destiny - how it looks like!!

[shankar245]

I wrote my gmat the 3rd time yesterday.

The first two attempts were

460 ( Q 35 V 20)
580 ( Q 47 V 23)
550 ( Q36 V 30) - 3 rd attempt.


So i have every reason to be depressed or confused. I really do not know what is happening!The practice tests which I took then under official conditions all gave me more than 680.

I also cannot fathom the fall from 47 - 36 ( This is absolutely bad)

after my second attempt my verbal improved(had to wrok really hard for this but quants pulls me down)

Quant Section:

I had close to 7 minutes left in quants section and i never felt the pressure the pacing was excellent and never was stuck in any concept , i had time to even double check few problems. I was confident of a 48-49. and I get this score.Considering I got 47 last time , it makes no sense for a 36 .I should have done something absolutely terribly wrong. The worst part is I'm never going to know where I went wrong.


Verbal section:

Verbal section was fine. It went smooth and did not have major issues. Though my quants score let me down, the verbal score is the small silver line for the effort i put for 3 weeks.

So Stacey/Ron.

I'm not expecting a 750 or 760. All I want is a decent 680 score and I have to struggle so much. This time though i never struggled during the exam. I felt like an expert when i was solving quant poblems. For eg : I could pick patterns , plug in numbers and cross checked.And having a 47 in the earlier attempt meant i knew i would not fall back much.

Should I stop taking gmat and eventually trashing my MBA dreams?
Can this ever happen to some one 47 - 36 that too in quants for a engineer?

please help!!!

BTW stacey's/ Ron's post have been very instrumental in pushing from 23- 30.
Ron's verbal posts?(CR/SC) are akin to stories. He presents in such a way that You keep reading reading and unknowingly you would have got that concept in your head.Ron's posts make you think not study!!!

Thanks a ton RON( your posts are the main reason for the 23 -> 30)

I hope Instructors at MGMAT can provide some guidance regarding this.

Please provide your valuable inputs.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm sorry you had such a disappointing test experience. I do want to congratulate you on the boost in your verbal score, though - 23 to 30 is impressive!

The quant drop is disappointing, of course. You mention actually finishing early and also never feeling like you'd hit a hard problem or had any timing issues. If that's the case, then my best guess is that you were actually going too quickly and made lots of careless mistakes without realizing it. If you're doing well on the test, then you should be seeing some questions that feel almost impossible to you (because they are too hard for you). If the test feels easy, particularly for quant, then something is definitely wrong.

Were you having timing problems on previous tests? I'm wondering whether you decided to change how much time you spent and then maybe you ended up going too far in the opposite direction. Were there any other differences at all between how you felt or what you did on the last test compared to this one?

[shankar245]

When i wrote the exam last time , I thought i had goofed up quants and ended up with a 47.This time around I would not say
that all questions were easy the first 8 were tough and i had to spend some , the 15- 25 range was pretty easy as in
I did not see any traps or tricks , pretty straight forward and then it maintained at that level.
So towards the end I got simple questions likes solving fractions, thats when i realised i ve made a mess out of it.

But I'm very sure that concept wise there is not an issue. The truth is that if I had made conceptual mistakes I woudl have
been happy but now i even do not know where I should work on.
As you have said I would have made Careless mistakes but how do i prevent such mistakes again.


Please guide. Also please let me know if I should it give one last shot or close the GMAT chapter and focus on something else


Thanks

[sachin.w]

Don't give up maan!!
Take a few more mocks and see where you stand. . You gotto fix the flaws and give a try again!!

[StaceyKoprince]

the first 8 were tough and i had to spend some , the 15- 25 range was pretty easy as in I did not see any traps or tricks

So you spent some extra time on the first 8 (I'm assuming that the missing word after "some" should have been "time," yes?). At some point, then, you would have had to speed up, which causes careless mistakes. And then you finished 7 minutes early, so if you were a bit slow on the first 8, then that means you FLEW through the rest of the test.

Also, you said that you did not see any traps or tricks in a range of 11 questions - yet there were definitely traps or tricks there. So that reinforces the idea that either you were rushing or getting mentally fatigued or both, both of which lead to careless mistakes.

So I'm guessing there was, in fact, a timing problem, which leads to other problems.

I'm going to suggest that you use the below to analyze your most recent MGMAT CAT(s):
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... ice-tests/

Even though your scores were higher in practice, you can usually still see the seeds of timing problems when you analyze the data. If any of those tests were taken under NON-official conditions, say so. Also, if you saw repeated questions on any of those tests, say so and try to quantify how many and what you did about them.

Then come back here and tell us the results of your analysis and what you think you should do based on that analysis. (Note: do share an analysis with us, as well as the raw data. Part of getting better is developing your ability to analyze your results - figure out what they mean and what you think you should do about them!)