From 420 to 700....... It is good to be part of the 700 Club

Thank you, positive soul, for your nice words.

Goodluck and stay tuned.

Professor

CONGRATULATIONS positive soul!!
Your success journey is the hottest in this forum these days!!
It is really inspiring!!

Do you mind sharing your profile (e.g., background, exp...etc)?
How many languages can you speak? Are most candidates to this program multi-lingual?

Congratulations and good for you. I am just starting out my
GMAT prep and was bummed out with my 550 score on PR Cat 1.
After reading your post, I am inspired to take the bull by it's horn and ride it.

What an inspiring story. Harvard and Columbia are STUPID in not accepting you. Someone with your kind of persistence and dedication is EXACTLY the type of person I would like to work with.

Hats off !!

holy crap, just read this thread and i must say that i am amazed. just another example of how much hard work can pay off.

congrats congrats congrats

Wow!

Congrats!! Very inspiring!

Please, do post your debfrief, can`t wait to read it =)

Warton was/is my dream school! 'Was' before I read your story =)

Great post and real inspiration. I scored a 530 and I know I can do better... and I will.. Thanks!

What a man... what a soul... positive soul

Can you tell us how is life at Wharton? if you didn't forget us

Life at Wharton is fun but stressful. The program is set up in a way that you really...really need to manage your time wisely. I does not help to be doing the Lauder program as well. For those of you applying to Wharton, I would recommend to check out the Lauder program. It really makes a difference. It is more international that the Wharton program and gives you the opportunity to interact with truly international people that speak many languages and live and worked all over the world. It is a great complement to the Wharton curriculum.

At Wharton, there is also a LOT of extracurricular activities from sports intramurals, community service, clubs. In other words, it is amazing the spectrum of things you can do here. Wharton people are very active so it is not unusual being an active member of 3 or 4 clubs. They take a lot of time so in order to keep up with you school load and the activities, you only get to sleep 4 to 5 hours per day. luckily, Fridays are off there is always a conference or event that is so interesting, you end up attending.

Overall, Wharton is great and I highly recommend it. If you have any specific questions, send me an email.

Thanks Positive Soul for sharing your GMAT success story. You have showed me that it is possible to go from 420 to 700!

I did my GMAT on 29th Feb and scored badly - 500/38th (Q39/57th, V21/24%, E4.5/49%). In my last 4 months preparation, I typically scored 600-700 range, averagely 630. To see a 500 score on the actual day was a great demotivator. I have since picked myself up and with some words of encouragements from wife and a friend, I am re-energising myself with a better strategy. My friend sent me this thread and it is so good for me to read this post and be inspired.

I looked back at what were the mistakes I have made. In Quant, my weaknesses were Inequalities and Combinatronics. In total, I had 5 questions on these two. Those questions haunted me till end of of the Quant section; hence, also affected my performance in Verbal. Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension were my Verbal killers. Affected by Quant, I would not register what I read.

Anyway, I am back to my drawing board again. I read a few strategies from those who scored 700+ and will internalise those tips. I will be an active participant in this forum I am looking for a GMAT mentor. Any volunteer(s) highly appreciated.

The areas I want to focus are: Quant - inequalities, probabilities, combinatronics, divisibility/prime factorisation (I am okay on the rest of quant). As for Verbal - critical reasoning.

Cheers
Jimmy Low

P/S: Short intro: I am Jimmy, 34 chinese male from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Graduated from Australia and presently working in a leading mobile operator in Malaysia.

This is a very inspiring story..but also makes me do a "gut-check." I am a 2007 grad from Ohio Wesleyan University (Delaware, OH) who is starting to study for the GMAT. I work at (what I call) a temporary job, and find myself with a lot of "down-time." Thus, I decided to make the most of my time and bought study guides, etc. for the GMAT. Thought this story is inspiring, it also forces me to ask the questions of "am I too young?"

Any advice ??

Take your time to prepare, say 1 year. At the same time, accumulate your work experience and chart a clear career path. Once you are ready to do MBA, you don't have to rush to do GMAT. There is no such thing as "young" in GMAT (although I believe there is a minimum age to take the test)

Good luck!

Jimmy,

Thank you for the advice! I'm just starting to figure out things (such as grad programs, schools, career path, etc.) and have set a path of appx. two years to travel, experience, fill out applications..all that jazz. I'm really going to concentrate on the GMAT and set a goal-score for myself. I'm only 23, I feel like I have a sense of direction and ambition for the future.

Thanks again and good luck in the future!

Drea

very useful info.
thanks.

This is the best post I ´ve read about the success in the Gmat... Awesome, congrats!

I know you must be very busy now.

Just wonder if you could give us some examples of your point:

e) "I decided to learn from the GMAT questions ...For every SINGLE question, I would analyze each answer and find WHY it was right and WHY the other 4 were wrong...Depending on the question, you could eliminate the wrong answers by knowing your scope (even in math) and identifying how GMAT tries to trick you..."

How can you identify the patterns of the wrong and good answers? In some reading comprehension questions I understand that there are bytes in the answers (For example they asked about which theory is supported by the author and one answer is the contrary, etc., but in Math?

How can you identify the patterns for the wrong/good answers in Math?

Many tks in advance, and congrats again, you did it man!!

Hey, I just got this link from my recent post "I gave up.... 440 () 3rd time" and can't help but feel inspired, the test felt so easy when I took it, and I couldn't believe my score. I am still getting over it, I took it yesterday, I would look to get into Fuqua B school, but I still got a long wayz to go. So this story really inspires me to keep at it.
Thaks

you are right tigershahkhan, this post is really inspiring.

Winners Never quit, Quitters never win