Thanks for the advice and support, guys. I took the GMAT this afternoon and posted my key takeaways and observations here --> http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?1,1050393
topher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I haven’t started studying AWA yet either. My exam > is on 9/4. Good luck numi. How did you do?
710 (Q49, V39). I’m retaking. I was scoring 750 - 770 on all my practice exams for the month leading up to Friday’s exam. I feel a 710 is not reflective of my skills and I also believe a 760+ will help my applications enough that I will retake.
Why do you think you underperformed on the real thing then?
topher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 710 (Q49, V39). I’m retaking. > > I was scoring 750 - 770 on all my practice exams > for the month leading up to Friday’s exam. I feel > a 710 is not reflective of my skills and I also > believe a 760+ will help my applications enough > that I will retake. is V39 under 80th percentile? seems like if you have time, it would be a good idea to retake it…however, a 710 in and of itself is a good score. just don’t be too discouraged. if you were getting 750-770 on your practice tests though, you might have just had exam day jitters. my practice score spread was 710-770 i think so scoring in the mid-700’s for me was less of a certainty based on practice test predictiveness. i think if i got in the low 700’s i still wouldn’t retake, but that’s just me. i also don’t have the time or the desire to re-take. would rather work on mba applications, work hard at the office, and take naps in between.
BTW for anyone that was curious, I ended up getting a 6.0 on the AWA, so I appreciate the input from others on this thread in predicting my AWA score. I agree that it’s not necessary to practice more than 1-2 days in advance and it seems sufficient to prepare for it by just looking at the examples in the Official Guide to tell the difference between a “4” and a “6.” I think the key to doing well in this section for me was just taking a few minutes up front to outline my ideas, and then write as much as I could in the allotted time. I don’t have any other tricks besides that.
Both Q49 and V39 are 87th percentile, for a combined score of 710 which is 92nd %ile. I guess it was exam day jitters. I just feel that it was not a good performance. Just a few questions wrong on Verbal and your score starts dropping fast. On GMAT Prep, I once got 2 wrong in Verbal and got 47. I got 4 wrong in Verbal and got 44. I got 46 another time as well. Perhaps I was a little burnt out by the time Verbal came b/c I wasn’t practicing writing the essays in the beginning of my home exams. So if you happen to be a little tired and let’s say you lose a little focus for a string of 5 questions and you get 2 of them wrong… BAM. You probably lost 2 or 3 points in your raw score whereas getting 5 wrong in Math will maybe only lead to a 1 point drop in your raw score.
Yeah, the verbal score does plummet quickly. On the bright side, you did score meaningfully higher on your GMATPrep exams so there is hope your score goes up on a re-take. For most people, however, I’m not sure I’d recommend a retake if they scored at least a 700. It can be a lot of trouble and there’s always a risk that your score goes down. Plus, if you’re really gung-ho about improving your test score, you’re probably looking to commit another 40-60 hours to the project, which is a lot of time in my opinion. I guess you just have to decide how much it’s worth it for you though if you are leaning towards retaking it, I wouldn’t say it’s a bad idea in your case.
IHIHM: how is your GMAT prep coming along? Have you booked a date yet? I just got the Official GMAT Guide and Kaplan Advanced in mail. Planning to start in about a week.
Aiming for the week of 9/21. I’ve gone through a lot of the Official Guide, planning to do GMATPrep, GMAT Club, Kaplan, and Manhattan GMAT’s practice exams. If I can score consistently in the 700s I’ll sign up for the real deal. If not I might just scrap the whole idea.
hey numi need to ask u a few qs. can u gimme ur email addy plz. mine is terabyte101 at gmail dot com
porcupines at gmail dot com unless the questions are personal, please post them here so others can benefit from the discussion
Spent a couple hours in the library today looking at Kaplan. Looks like I need a lot more work on my Data Sufficiency skillz, made a lot of stupid mistakes.
I think the thing that helped me most on verbal was doing the silly CPA thing. Literally defining the conclusion, premise and assumption for each passage. When nervous during the test, it almost automated the answering process for me. I’m beyond shocked that Numi got a 6 on the AWA.
Has anyone done the GMAT classes at Princeton review or others??? Are they worth it or should I just buy the review and stick my head in a book for 3 months??
cfa2grunt Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think the thing that helped me most on verbal > was doing the silly CPA thing. Literally defining > the conclusion, premise and assumption for each > passage. When nervous during the test, it almost > automated the answering process for me. > > I’m beyond shocked that Numi got a 6 on the AWA. crazy right…guess i am just full of surprises :O)
I wasn’t that shocked, considering the long-winded drivel he sometimes posts on this site. His spelling and grammar is usually correct and if you write enough drivel on the page the computer will catch all the key phrases and give you a 6. Therefore not really a surprise to me.
MGG, if you buy the books and don’t sign up for the class, will you actually study? If so, then just get the Borders special and forego the pricey class. Also, I believe Princeton Review and others have online classes, etc. that cost less money. There are different levels.
iheartiheartmath Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I wasn’t that shocked, considering the long-winded > drivel he sometimes posts on this site. His > spelling and grammar is usually correct and if you > write enough drivel on the page the computer will > catch all the key phrases and give you a 6. > Therefore not really a surprise to me. They are graded by an person not a computer FYI…
This must be really embarrassing for you. Word of advice – know how an exam is graded before you take it. How AWA Is Scored Each of your essays in the AWA section will be given two independent ratings, one of which may be performed by an automated essay-scoring engine. The automated essay-scoring engine is an electronic system that evaluates more than 50 structural and linguistic features, including organization of ideas, syntactic variety, and topical analysis. http://www.mba.com/mba/thegmat/gmatscoresandscorereports