How Hard is the GMAT?

coffeebateman:

CashCow:

It's pretty similar to the SAT. If you did great on the SAT, you are likely to do very well on the GMAT. If you did poorly on the SAT, you will likely do poorly on this unless you put in very substantial study.

740M 680V ball park me a GMAT score?

539.

Affirmative_Action_Walrus:

tentop:

I think if one's preparation is short term (less than 3 or 4 months), then there is definitely a personal ceiling, depending on the an individual's aptitude. However, if one studies GMAT long term, I think it's possible, depending on appropriate strategy to overcome the ceiling. Math section is probably more confining, especially if you're stuck on 48 or 49 raw score, bc at that point to score higher you just need to know numbers, and be comfortable with manipulating number, something that is hard to practice if math has never been your forte. But verbal, long term I think one can definitely improve by leaps and bounds. But I think its difficult to study for GMAT long term, because one has to be really persistent and committed to doing it.

Short term preparation of 3-4 months? I think one-two months of solid prep is more than sufficient- you will reach a point or ceiling at which you really can't learn to score better. part of the GMAT score is knowing how to take the test, but a larger part is innate ability, which you won't learn no matter how hard you try.

I personally believe "innate" verbal ability can definitely be overcome, especially if one is a native/fluent English speaker. But obviously, it's not easy bc it requires using appropriate strategies and often changing your approach. The approach that gets you say a 700 won't necessarily work if you're trying to get 750. Each strategy, depending on an individual has a ceiling, so one has to recognize when a ceiling is reached a employ new tactics.

APE:

You are giving a bad representation of people from BOCA.

Letsgomets:

GMAT is pretty easy. Very logic based test on both the Math and Verbal side. I prepped (very intensely) for 2 weeks and then took it.

Good job with the 780. I actually didn't have any problems with logic of the questions but rather than the time constraint (1 min for each on avg.)

Boothorbust:

The writing section is pretty formulaic. If you're a logical thinker and adept at identifying flaws in an argument and coherently organizing your thoughts you will do fine. I get the impression that you just need to put something servicable in, and after that it doesn't matter. Almsot 80% of the people I know got exactly the same score on the AWA this year (5/6, 91%). I don't think any school uses the AWA as a differnentiator.

TW Pepper:

It's both. It's out of 6 and reported separately, but it affects the range out of 800 you can get (with a 6/6 you can get up to 800, with a 5/6 you can only get like 740 max, something like that, the exact tables are on mba.com).

That's incorrect. I got 3.5/6 on the writing section and 770 overall. Besides, your score out of 800 is given to you just when you finish the test. The writing part is partly graded by a human and comes weeks later.

Boothorbust:

Yeah sorry TW, you are dead wrong. From the gmac website "Writing scores are computed separately from the scores for the multiple-choice sections of the test and have no effect on the Verbal, Quantitative, or Total scores."

Link is here: http://www.gmac.com/GMAC/thegmat/gmatscores/

You don't know what you're talking about.

The fact that you went that far to prove something as ridiculous as what I said wrong makes me unsure to cry or laugh.

TW Pepper:

I got a fucking 770 on the GMAT. I think I understand the test pretty well.

Yeah dude I totally believe you this time

FutureBanker09:

The GMAT is a complete joke, if you can't score 700+ with only a few weeks of practice and learning data sufficiency, you weren't that smart to begin with.

This guy seems like an asshole, but unfortunately he's absolutely right. After going over the Data Sufficiency questions and getting a feel for how that works you should be able to get a 670+ right away on your first try and a 700+ after a week or two... After a few weeks of tough studying I was getting 750+ on every practice.

One thing I'll say is that the real thing is harder than the practices though. I never ran out of time on the practices but the pressure of the real thing and all that really go to me and I ended up getting 730 which was like 30-50 points lower than I expected to get after all my practices...

Again though. It's not hard. You'll be fine.

FutureBanker09:

The GMAT is a complete joke, if you can't score 700+ with only a few weeks of practice and learning data sufficiency, you weren't that smart to begin with.

That's a pretty asshole way to phrase it (lol), but unfortunately he's absolutely right. After going over the Data Sufficiency questions and getting a feel for how that works you should be able to get a 670+ right away on your first try and a 700+ after a week or two... After a few weeks of tough studying I was getting 750+ on every practice.

One thing I'll say is that the real thing is harder than the practices though. I never ran out of time on the practices but the pressure of the real thing and the weird location/setting (I was in China, which wasn't ideal) and all that really got to me and I ended up getting 730 which was like 30-50 points lower than I expected to get after all my practices...

Again though... It's not hard. You'll be fine. Smart people who are native English speakers tend to do well.

selleverything:

That's your problem right there. Go study seriously or go bang girls seriously.

came to post this, not leaving disappointed

And lots of people can take GMAT cold and top 700, most engineers who can read a chapter book can do this.

Realistically speaking, improvements of 50 points are likely, I went from 720 in 1st cold practice test to 770 on the real thing, engineering and yes I can read books with more words than pictures.

ANT:

The issue with the GMAT is that they ask questions in a fucked up, unnatural way. Math in schools is straight forward. The GMAT is from another planet.

I personally think the whole test shit is a monopoly. GRE isn't enough competition. There needs to be more entrants to drive the test down and make it more relevant and predictive. Past a 600-650 the GMAT doesn't tell you shit about your chances for success in business school, which is largely soft skills and stuff like that. If you've had calc in undergrad the quant section on the GMAT proves nothing.

Didn't studies show that there's a pretty strong correlation between gmat scores and b-school performance? This is why b-schools care so much about the exam, and a lot of employers want to see strong gmat scores when they recruit mba students.

socola2003:

a bad gmat score indicates stupidity but a good gmat score does not indicate intelligence..let's put it that way,

True to an extent. But you have to be pretty smart to get a score like 780. There's a reason why b-schools tell their students to put their gmat scores on their resumes if it's 760+.

Dr Joe:

Few things:

Some of the concepts on the math section are actually quite challenging. Not in a "high level math" sense, but in the sense that it makes you think in unusual ways. Which is exactly the point.

Spending 4 minutes on a single math question can actually sometimes be a good idea, particularly in the beginning of the exam.

Nailing the early ones and saving time for the tough ones at the end will not cut it. As estimation theory would indicate, to get the most information out of a limited number of questions, the test ramps up to difficult questions very quickly - often by question 3.

Sure, you will not use geometry in business school. But I think beyond the actual concepts tests, part of the value of the GMAT is in gauging the seriousness of candidates - in the "Are you willing to jump through hoops to get into b-school?" way. If yes, then learn useless geometry - small time commitment compared to b-school. If no, then we don't really want you anyway - if you can't do as much as spending a few weeks studying for the test, then go somewhere else.

The correlation between GMAT and b-school GPA is, I would think, explained largely by the "effort" idea above - those that would study hard in b-school would study hard for the GMAT. Notice intelligence not being a part of the equation. Not that there is no correlation - there definitely is some.

I agree with this 100%... you are not a special and unique flower! jump through the hoops monkey! lol

Dr Joe:

Few things:

Some of the concepts on the math section are actually quite challenging. Not in a "high level math" sense, but in the sense that it makes you think in unusual ways. Which is exactly the point.

Spending 4 minutes on a single math question can actually sometimes be a good idea, particularly in the beginning of the exam.

Nailing the early ones and saving time for the tough ones at the end will not cut it. As estimation theory would indicate, to get the most information out of a limited number of questions, the test ramps up to difficult questions very quickly - often by question 3.

Sure, you will not use geometry in business school. But I think beyond the actual concepts tests, part of the value of the GMAT is in gauging the seriousness of candidates - in the "Are you willing to jump through hoops to get into b-school?" way. If yes, then learn useless geometry - small time commitment compared to b-school. If no, then we don't really want you anyway - if you can't do as much as spending a few weeks studying for the test, then go somewhere else.

The correlation between GMAT and b-school GPA is, I would think, explained largely by the "effort" idea above - those that would study hard in b-school would study hard for the GMAT. Notice intelligence not being a part of the equation. Not that there is no correlation - there definitely is some.

My understanding is...and this came from a guy who got a near perfect score and teaches for a GMAT testing company...your score has little-to-nothing to do with the number you get right or wrong. Your score is determined by the level of the last question on the test. Please understand that this is a very crude explanation. Anyways, hypothetically speaking, you could skip the first 5 questions on the test and still end up with a top score. As everyone knows, it's an adaptive test, so if you get it right, the next question is supposed to be harder, whereas, if you get it wrong, the level of difficultly drops. Because your score is determined by the level of your last question, the number you've got right or wrong has no bearing on your score other than it impacts the level of questions you are asked. Say you have 20 questions, you could get the first 15 right and the last 5 wrong and you would have an abysmal score. Conversely, you could get the first 15 wrong but the last 5 right and you could end up with a stellar score. Potentially you could skip half of the questions, save all that time and then spent twice as much time correctly answering the back half of the test. Although I don't plan on doing that when I take the test, I will allow my self a shorter amount of time to answer the first handful of questions with the hope of providing myself some additional time on the back end, on what should be, harder questions. The one 'wrench in the works' here is that nearly 40% of the questions you answer on the test are actually experimental questions that don't count towards your score. You rarely will know which ones are real and which ones aren't, but sometimes you can tell by the level of difficulty...if it's way out of line from the previous question.

Anyways, I do agree that it's probably not the most accurate way to determine success, otherwise there would be a significantly smaller range of scores at the top schools. After all, why would an M7 accept someone with a sub 700 score when they have 750 applicants that they are rejecting?

Regards

Ravenous:

Having geometry on the exam is probably the single most asinine requirement for getting into b-school. It has nothing whatsoever to do with business school, success in business school, or success after business school. Everyone applying to the top schools is hard working and intelligent. There is no reason to make people jump through arbitrary hoops. The test / process is out dated and should be revised. And in fact, to the extent that it gives engineering people (I guess the only people who are probably fresh on the geometry topics) an advantage, the test is biased anyway.

But much of success in life is about jumping through "arbitrary hoops." For instance, getting good grades in college is about doing your work, going to class, memorizing shit, etc. But b-schools and recruiters care about those measures because they are proxy indicators for hard work, ambition, and persistence-qualities that play an important role in determining one's future success.

I don't see how you can have a viable admissions process without some sort of standardized exam. Maybe one can argue that the GMAT should test more "relevant" material.

Unforseen:

Geometry questions on the GMAT do not test if you know how to get the circumference of a circle from the area, but how you can logically deduct getting from point a to point B, then using the geometry formulas to get there.

I got killed by the GMAT last week, and I wouldn't consider it easy. Like someone said its an adaptive score, so if it just happens that you get 3 or 4 questions in a row wrong towards the end of the test, chances are your score wont be great.

I will be retaking but not in a few years. I want to wait until the integrated reasoning section is fully integrated.

I left some stuff out of my last post. As you pointed out above, the GMAT isn't entirely about geometry and algebra comprehension, it's about analysis and deductive reason in most cases and you will need to use certain concepts to get you to the answer...this is why they use 'simple' math and this is why many instructors will tell you to write a word problem as an equation, so you can see what answer the question is trying to get at. The test is absolutely beatable, though it will be easier for some and harder for others. You have to be able to read the question and actually decipher what they are actually asking. If you can't do that, you are going to struggle.

Remember, people are paid to generate test questions that appear to have an easy solution, which is why you have problems that have 3 potentially 'right' answers if you miss a step in the process. They will take a question like 3*4 and give you answers that you are likely to generate from making common mistakes...like 3/4 if you divide instead of multiple, 7 if you add and -1 if you subtract. Obviously that is a very bad example, but for those that haven't really been exposed to the test, hopefully that gives you some idea of what to expect.

The point is, you have to know what the process is to get to the answer. The ability to guess the answer right on the GMAT is very small if you don't know what's going on because it's very difficult to run a process of elimination when many of the answer choices will look like 'real' choices.

People with good memories (generally of higher intelligence) who are methodical will do well on a test like the GMAT. I would bet my ex-gf, who has no business background whatsoever, could get a near perfect score on the GMAT with only 1 month of studying because she remembers just about everything she reads and has the ability to recall it, especially when it comes to math and number properties and rules, etc. Ideally you would look at a question and decipher what answer they are really looking for and then apply the handful of concepts in a particular order to get to the correct answer.

And don't get me wrong, I am not trying to make this sound like it's an easy test because it isn't...but like I said above, it's beatable if you can memorize and recall the required steps/process for the different types of questions they ask you. Of course, that's easier said than done.

Regards