The Ups & Downs Of Taking Those Practice GMAT Tests

I had been doing well recently with my studying and my practice tests. I had been scoring 700, with my quant score  around 45 and my verbal score around 40. Since I scored a 48 on the real GMAT I figured that I should study a little more quant than verbal last week to try and bump my quant score nearer to 48. That part worked, somewhat, with a score of 46 for this weekend. The problem was that I ended up neglecting verbal, like I always do. i don’t know why I always do this, or how I get stuck in that trap, but I always loose track of verbal studying. I scored a 34 on verbal this weekend….giving me a 660 on my most recent practice test. My verbal feel hard, and I am going to have to see what I messed up on and then try to rectify those mistakes before test day, which is rapidly approaching!

Speaking of coming up quickly, application day is screaming like a freight train towards me and I don’t know if I am going to be able to finish my Yale application in time. I will certainly have time for more revisions on my Cornell and Columbia apps, but Yale has quite a few essays and I think I might need to scrap Yale R1 in order to concentrate on making Cornell and Columbia the best that they can be. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, as conventional wisdom seems to indicate that R1 vs. R2 doesn’t really matter that much, unless R1 is ED or EA. I set myself for a hectic week to start October, as I have my GMAT on Oct. 2nd…then Cornell is due the 5th, and then Columbia the 6th! I should have Columbia done the week prior, but you know how these things tend to go (I can just picture myself hitting submit at 11:59 pm on the 6th!)…

Other than the GMAT/application happenings, the Red Bulls won, Notre Dame lost (kick the field goal Brain, kick the field goal), the Yankees slipped into a virtual tie with Tampa, and the Redskins somehow defeated the Cowgirls. A middling weekend, with middling weather. Hopefully this week can start out on a good note, verbal….here I come!

This post has been adapted from Confessions of an MBA Applicant where Steve Gargiulo has been blogging since May of 2009.

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