EDIT:FULL DEBRIEFAWA 5.5-another 700 clubber. 710 (48Q 40V)

I just want to say that I am done with the GMAT - hopefully forever! Like most people, I abhor the thought of distilling my intelligence down to a 3 digit number that is spit out of a computer… but this was a necessary evil. While a 710 might barely be average for most PhD programs, it just means I am going to have to pull a 4.0 for my Master’s and get some sort of research under my belt over the next two years. (I don't even want to think about a retake right now. for ****’s sake a 710 is a good score!)

I slept for probably a combined total of 3 to 4 hours the night before the exam. I took 3 prescription sleeping pills throughout the night and even downed some Nyquil. That was how anxious ridden my mental state was!

You see, I’ve always had a bit of an anxiety problem. Reflecting back on grammar school, I can remember stressing about the CTBS tests (anyone who went to a U.S. Catholic grade school in the 1980’s knows what I am talking about.) I’d be in second grade and be up practically all night worrying about how good I would do (I would always score off the charts BTW). I almost considered asking for extra GMAT time, but I’ve never sought help for my anxiety, so there was no documentation for it or anything; I thought it would look fishy and I think extra time should be for those who *really* need it. Plus my anxiety has always been manageable and extremely rare; but that all kind of changed in December. I’m in my late twenties, and a few months ago I had to go to the hospital for chest pain that wasn’t getting better. I went to the hospital... the doctor’s do their tests. They conclude that it is probably a pulled muscle or inflammation in the layer of mucous over my lungs. Well I get a few days later and that they found something on the x-ray. So I have to go for a CAT Scan of my lungs. A few months later I had to go for MRI’s of my brain. Suddenly facing your own mortality can leave a lasting impression, and it magnified my latent anxiety. Everything turned out OK no cancer or anything – but the bad anxiety sort of stayed... and it made the week before the GMAT exam UNBEARABLE.


The Prep:

I know people are always interested in finding out what kind of prep strategies others used. I prepped *hardcore.* for about 8 weeks (3-4+ hours / day) and lightly for about 4 weeks. All in all, if you count the time I spent logged on here, prepping at home, and in class – I’d say I spent close to or over 350 hours.

I took a Veritas course, which was… well... USELESS. The Veritas instructor I had was at times down right ornery with students. He was mean, and inexperienced at teaching. Essentially, he was a 99th percentile monkey who just “taught” right out of the book. No panache. No skill. We could have just read the material at home and taught ourselves. I am trying to get some of my money back because some classes he cut short by a few hours. In other classes he was rude to students (at one time he actually yelled at one student). The environment as a whole was not conducive to learning. It turns out he was fired after our 7 week session ended.

I was told I could retake the course with a different instructor --- BUT I NEEDED TO TAKE THE GMAT AND GET IT OVER WITH ASAP! I could not sit through another 7 week waste of time. I am not sure why I even spent the $$$ on any prep class, as it isn’t my style… but I just wanted to be sure that I was doing everything possible to get my best score. I think the decision to take a prep class is a personal thing – and it wasn’t the right decision for me.

The Veritas materials borrow quite heavily from the OG’s and Powerprep. You get TONS of problems… but a full 25-30% you have already seen before. Their coverage of the Quant fundamentals is comparable to other companies’ coverage… nothing groundbreaking; they just tell you the stuff you already know (just like everybody else.) The CR components were helpful, however, I have nothing to compare them to, as CR was my strong suit, I did not try other companies products or strategies. I didn’t really use many “strategies” for CR anyway… I just used what I already had in my noggin. SC lessons were kind of weak and were mostly composed of OG questions. RC had some interesting problem sets that I didn’t see before… again RC was my strong suit, so I didn’t study other companies RC questions for comparison.

My strategy focused on *a lot* of CAT’s while concurrently completing the 3 OG’s for from cover to cover. Manhattan Books (all of the Quant and their SC) were helpful for brushing up on specific concepts. I did not like how they handled ‘VICs’ as don’t like plugging in the answer choices… but hey you gotta do what you gotta do! I also bought the PowerScore SC Bible. It goes into grammar more in depth than Manhattan, which was nice.

I bought the ARCO AWA Essay book. I read about half of each section over a 3 day period. It was helpful, but boring. Do not try to memorize it, as it is pointless to do so. I would say it is pointless to even read as much of it as I did. Just get familiar with the structure that they are looking for and get a feel for how to spot the flaws in the arguments.

I did take some GMATClub challenges. They were definitely helpful, and I think I can attribute a point or two bump to them... but it is not without its shortcomings... and ultimately the explanations just weren’t as developed as I was hoping for.

My CAT scores:
Princeton Review – I got a 540, 560 and a 580 at the beginning of my ‘light’ prep.
GMAT Prep #1 640 towards the middle/end of May and the start of my serious prep
800Score- good practice, but the scaled scores/percentiles are messed up and out of date
I got a 650,720,610. I got 50V on one test, which I think was a mistake. Taken in May/June/July
Kaplan Paper Diagnostic – 660 47Q 31V-June
ARCO – 690, 710, 720. Don’t remember the break downs, although Q was something like 46,47,48 respectively. Verbals were 38-40 - All were taken in July.
Powerprep 1 & 2– 720 and 730. I also don’t remember the breakdowns. I don’t know how valid the percentiles and scaled scores would be anymore anyway... but verbal was 99% on one of them and low 90’s on another. I did see some verbal Q’s repeated from the OG’s. Sometimes a whole passage... sometimes a two or three SC’s and CR’s, so my Verbal was definitely inflated. Even if I answered the same way that I did in the OG, just having the extra time gives you a boost and can inflate your score.
GmatPrep #2. 730. I think I scored 48Q 42V
GmatPrep #1 retake 730 Q46 V45. Again, I saw repeats in both Q and V for both GMATPrep’s so I was thinking they might be a bit inflated.
MGMAT (2 cats) I never took the Quant section under realistic time conditions – I always gave myself 20 or 30 minutes extra - so my 44 and 47 in Q are not realistic. The math is so ridiculous that its TOUGH, if not impossible, for non Quant jocks to get them all done in time. I received a 40 and 42 in the verbal.

The CATs I recommend the most (beside powerprep and gmatprep) are the ARCOs. not many people mention this company, and i think it is a shame becuase their CAT's were extremely realistic in content and accurate in their grading.

The GMATClub estimator predicted me getting a 702 based on ARCO and Powerprep... so I guess it was dead on. I think I could have done maybe 20 points better if I rescheduled the test and got more rest, but deep down inside I knew it was time... and if I rescheduled I would just be a crazy insomniac again... so all in all I don’t know if it is worth it.

The actual exam:

The people at Pvue were total sweehearts! Because I never fell asleep the night before, I called them first thing in the morning as soon as they opened at 8AM to see if I could come in earlier because I wouldn't be able to make it until my late afternoon appointment. The receptionist said to come in at noon and they would try to squeeze me in. Thank god they did!

AWA:

The AWA Argument was not bad. It was the one about the post office and the price of stamps. Even though I was a zombie from lack of sleep, I was still able to process arguments logically and I always have done well in CR, so this wasn’t bad. The issue was second and it was a bit tough; I have a hard time coming up with ideas and supporting them adequately in only a half hour sometimes. My issue was about personal faults of people who achieve greatness or something like that. The time actually ran out in the middle of my last sentence (oops!) I pulled a 5.5 on the AWA… and while I was expecting this score base on my prep, I was surprised I achieved it given my lack of sleep and loopy state of mind. I really felt that I was rambling a bit on the issue and it wasn’t coherent. I guess the e-rater and the human scorer disagreed!

Quant:

I am pretty sure I got q#1 wrong, because #2 was super easy. It was a question about primes, and looking back I know that the right answer was B – just don’t remember if I picked it! Around 8-10 I had a mixture problem that I just got stuck on. We’ve all done them a hundred times and we can do them in our sleep… but I just got stuck on it. I had to compute it by plugging in the answers because I just could not set up the formula!

GMAT Quant can be evil and it plays games with you. I remember around question 14 or 15 it asked me what the angle measurements for the triangles inside of a regular pentagon. I thought I was screwed, because it was so easy. I did not receive many number properties that seemed all that difficult. I think the algorithm adapted very well to my skill level, and most questions I sailed through. I was surprised at how few calculations I made on the scratch pad. There were a few questions that I wasn’t really confident with my answers, specifically on a DS questions dealing with the equation of a line. Sometimes you just have to reason the answer, and commit to the fact that you have to move on to the next question.

In the last quarter or so of the questions I was literally asked "2/3 is approximately equal to what percent" I am not **** kidding. I wanted to DIE. I thought it was over! But then I received a problem that I knew came from the tough bins because it looked very intimidating, and had *A LOT* of squares on the screen…it was the type of question that you conquered with reasoning and logic as opposed to techniques and formulas.

I did not get any permutations or combinatorics – which was surprising for a 48!

Verbal:

I probably could have done a bit better in verbal. A 40 is a good Verbal score, yet I did not see any “boldface” CR. Although some of the strengthen questions were tricky.
I normally don’t get CR questions wrong, but I think I got one or two wrong on test day as my brain was really starting to melt down at this point.

RC was maintainable. Don’t remember the first topic… the second passage was looooong and about predatory pricing. I had an inference question in every RC passage. Despite what others say, I believe you should read the entire passage to answer more difficult inference questions, as ‘skimming’ can miss an important detail, unless you have photographic memory. I had one short technical passage towards the end about luminosity, temperature, and the radii of stars. The inference question required information to be combined from the first, second, and third paragraphs and simple math was involved. It was a nice question, and it reassured me that I must have been doing OK. This was a much needed confidence boost! It is easy to panic if you see a short passage because you assume you are doing bad. Again, this is just the GMAT messing with you.

SC sucked as expected. SC is my true weakness. Generally, this is the only section where I make mistakes consistently in verbal. Some questions were disturbingly easy. Some weren’t. I kinda have always coasted through the verbal section. It doesn’t intimidate me as much... and I don’t feel as “committed” to completing a certain question like I would feel in Quant (when you KNOW there is a definitive answer, that can be mathematically proven, no questions asked... EVER!)



PHEW!

I just wanted to thank everyone here. Especially:
trahul - you are gonna do it this weekend! – Kryzak --KillerSquirrel -you are really smart person. Unfortunately, I never got to use arithmetic progression on the actual exam, but learning it was helpful!—hobbit, nervousgmat, lanter1, robin in NC, beckee, -- and anyone else I forgot. I can tell that all of you guys and gals are very talented folks. This website is definitely the place to be if you are looking for a 700+ GMAT score. GMATClub.com is an essential component of *any* prep strategy.