who here has just gone in and winged it, i mean really didn’t study much and what did you get? Ive haven’t taken it yet, and have heard so many mixed stories like 650 and higher without ever seeing a question before, down to 520 with a little bit of studying, I am just curious - is a lot to do with if english is your first language or not?
No, not really. The best performers tend to be asians/indians with great math background.
joemontana Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No, not really. The best performers tend to be > asians/indians with great math background. I disagree 100%. People who do well tend NOT to be heavily oriented in one of the two subjects; instead, they do pretty well in both. I didn’t do phenomenal in either math or verbal but my score was good overall. Verbal: 90% Quantitative: 86% Overall: 96% (720) It’s my experience that people whose first language is not English tend to struggle with the verbal section and their overall GMAT score may be much lower than someone who is just “pretty good” at both.
goblue06 - when did you attain that score, what year did you take it?
In the naivety of my youth I went in with very little preparation and scored a miserable 620 in 1998. My understanding is that scores are fairly highly correlated with the amount of time spent preparing for the exam.
I am a math guru. I really kinda am. Or used to be. Yet scored higher on the language part. I insprie me.
Time management/guesstimation skills…bailing on a question after 2 minutes is key…
philip.platt Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > goblue06 - when did you attain that score, what > year did you take it? July 2006.
Back in 2000. Not much studying. Verb 97 Math 90 (And I am a quant!) Overall 98 = 740 Essays 6+ (whatever top score was)
Verb 45 Quant 45 Overall 730
Funny…I am currently taking practice GMATs…and my Verbal is always higher than Quant…theory might be that as analyst we try to solve a problem, even if we are using up valuable time??
comp_sci_kid Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Verb 45 > Quant 45 > Overall 730 what a show off! just kidding bro.
if i would tell you the size of my… excel spreadsheet, then you would tell me i am a show off
Took it in March (needed to show an official score report here in a non-English speaking part of Europe, a new requirement) and thus “studied” for maybe 5 hours to get an idea what the questions should look like. I was a bit surprised that the average was lower than my score; mean score was 535.2 and for the essays it was 4.4 and I scored 600 and 5 without preparation. Am quite satisfied since I neither have English as my first language, nor prepared or reviewed anything in particular, nor have lived in any English-speaking country for any length of time. I’m wondering whether there are many people who don’t have English as their first language, nor live in an English-speaking country, who take the test??? That might lower the mean. Lot’s of countries making this a requirement perhaps. Otherwise people on these boards tend to mention scores of 750 or something.
Chances are many people take them as you have as a requirement for getting into a grad program and many could care less what they got as long as it does the job. ie they get the minimum to get into the program. While it is impressive that people get high scores in GMAT LSAT or IQ tests etc. It is clear that the level of your score on the test is this is not directly correlated with your ultimate success in anything other than the test.
That’s absolutely true, Flynn. My impression is that the test was more of an exercise in trying to decipher whatever the test constructor was after. There is definitely a certain technique. The essays for instance, a perfect example of the lack of correlation. You only had to figure out that they have to include “…first, … second, … third,… Morover… In conclusion…” and make sure you under no circumstances whatsoever repeat the statement upon which you are to comment. That ought to drive up your score on the essay at least one point because your silly little essay will then fit into the form (template) of literally thousands of other essays. This is not the place to be original in the least, and if you are, you’d better hide it. tmac, if you plan to take it, memorize a template for how to make up the backbone of the essay (“first” “second” …) and memorize by heart some pitfalls they probe for in the verbal section. There are quick summaries available on the 'net. Make sure you check for spelling mistakes, as if you are a word processor, before posting. I did then but not now, so had to edit this!