HUGE gap in scores!?!

[Guest]

Hello!

I took a GMAT 4 years ago and scored 540, however I scored around the 25%ile in in the quantitative and 80th%ile in the verbal! I finished my mba a year ago and now want to go for my PhD so I obviously need to get my score up! I just took the free MGMAT at got a 520 (I haven't started studying yet this time around) but again a HUGE gap in scores - 30th%ile in quantitative and 68%ile in verbal. I've always considered myself to be decent in math and was always in the advanced math classes in school. I seriously think I have a learning disability or something!?! Does anyone else have a huge gap like this?

thank you!

[jthomassmith23]

I recently sat for the GMAT and had a similar gap. I scored a 540 as well. The breakdown was 25 (16%) in math and 40 (89%) in verbal. I was scoring as high as 43 on some of the MGMAT practice tests. I am starting to question whether the practice test questions are a good indicator of what you will see on the actual test. I feel the official test is much more challenging.

p.s. was it difficult to get into business school with a score of 540?

[Guest]

I had no problem getting into a good regional MBA program! I had a 3.6 undergraduate GPA and 3 years of work experience. It seems like the majority of people on here are trying to get into top 10 programs and that is great...just remember that you can still have a wonderful MBA experience and not be at Harvard! :)

How are you planning on tackling your quant score?? I just signed up for the Self Study prgram with the class recordings. Hopefully that will help!

Best of luck to you!

[StaceyKoprince]

Interesting - I would say that 70% of my students and other people I speak to here on our forums feel the quant portion of our test is harder than the real thing. How was your timing on that test on which your quant score dropped? (You are aware of what a HUGE penalty you get for running out of time, right?)

It's not unusual at all for people who did well in math or consider themselves math people to see very low quant scores before they really start studying - most of the material tested isn't stuff we use on a daily basis. Who remembers all those geometry rules, etc. (except for math teachers)? If you did reasonably well in math in high school, you should be able to learn what you need to learn here. It'll just take some work. :)

And, yes, I totally agree that people should do their research first to figure out what they really need. Depending upon where you plan to live and what kind of work you plan to do, it's not necessarily better to have a "top" school degree. And although it seems that everyone thinks they need a 700, most people really don't - why stress yourself out unnecessarily?