GMAT a third time?

[amyjgottlieb]

Hello,

I'm wondering if I should take my GMAT a third time, and I would love to get your advice on it. The first time I got a 620. I then took a class and understood the material much better. In fact, I was scoring 690-710 on my practice exams. However, when I took the test for the second time, I froze. On that second exam, I ran out of time had three minutes to fill in the last 8 or so questions. I ended up with a 580.

Should I take the exam again?

Please advise.

Amy

[StaceyKoprince]

Did you take our class? If so (and if you haven't already done this), then you're eligible for a free Post-Exam Assessment. This is a phone call with an instructor to figure out what went wrong and come up with a plan to re-take the test. If this applies to you, please send an email to studentservices@manhattangmat.com and request the Post-Exam Assessment right away - this is the best feedback you can get!

You did fill in all of the remaining questions? Your penalty would likely have been something like 10 to 25 percentile points for that section (depending upon how many you happened to get right and how many were experimental). If you left some questions blank, the penalty would be at the higher end of that range.

So, yes, that's a pretty significant penalty. If you can fix the timing problem, your score would likely be higher on a re-take - I don't know exactly how much, though.

Were you taking practice exams under 100% official conditions, including essays and length of breaks? If you deviated from official conditions in any way, let me know how. (That can result in artificial score inflation, so that would mean your practice test scores weren't as high as you thought.)

[amyjgottlieb]

Thanks for the reply. I did take a course with Manhattan Gmat. Nerves just got the best of me and I ignored the time because I was so focused on getting those few questions right. I spent 4-5 minutes on 2-3 questions.

At home, I took the test in semi-real conditions. I never wrote the essays.

[StaceyKoprince]

Okay - your practice scores might have been a little inflated due to skipping the essays. For future, do the essays - do all practice tests as though they're the real thing.

Go sign up for the PEA right away!

Also, try this:

Think of this as a tennis match, not a test. You're going to win some points and the other guy is going to win some points; you're not going to win them all, right? Your goal is to put yourself into position to win the LAST point. Translated, that means you have to put yourself in position to answer the last question - you have to have time to address it. Otherwise, you've lost the last point, and by extension the match. When the other guy hits a winner, don't go running after it so fast that you hit the fence and injure yourself, thereby hurting your chances on the later points. (Translation: don't go way over when the problem is too hard.)

If you can pretend you're playing tennis, it'll be a lot easier to say, "Nice shot!" and move on when you should be moving on. :)

[amyjgottlieb]

I love this analogy. Thank you! This will definitely help me to approach the test differently.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'm glad! It totally helps me too! :)