just finished up, whatchyall think?

Before I delve in to the details, let met tell yall how I wound up takin the test in the first place.

The geniuses in the student government of our graduatin class decided to host our highschool reunion on Saturday October 30th. Said geniuses didn't realize the party was going to land directly on Halloween weekend until after they had already sent out the invitations. Solid. Instead of just throwin the party as is, somebody decided it had to be a costume party. Turns out, the student government, like some other governments I know, was running a deficit and couldn't justify sending out more invitations. The geniuses then decided to utilize the interwebs, social networking stuff, personal connections, and the ole phone book to track everyone down and let them know the party would be a 'costume' party instead of a 'black tie' party. Good thing those geniuses didn't go on to careers in public service.... OH WAIT, 2 of em did.

As you probably guessed, confusion, as to the nature of the party, ensued. Apparently, the geniuses' enthusiasm died out and they weren't able to get in touch with a most of the class, myself included. However, I heard through the grapevine that there was a Face Book Event that the geniuses made especially for this here reunion. Now, I don't have my own Face Book, but my girl on the other hand, does. Turns out, she already signed up and wrote on the 'wall' sayin that I'd be goin as well. I guess I didn't have a choice, it was written on the interwebs.

The cool thing about the Face Book is bein able to check out all the people's pictures. My girl and I spent hours flippin through all these goofy pictures of our old friends. The pictures all seemed to fall in one of three categories: pictures of the person doing something that makes them look cool, weird angled pictures that make the person look better than they actually do, and drunk pictures. There were a lot of drunk pictures. I guess that Dave Atell guy was a bit before his time.

So, back to the confusion about the party. The invitations that some people got said it was a 'black tie affair', however Face Book said it was a costume party and everyone you talked to said somethin different. My girl kept askin what we should do. Since I had little interest in wearin a tie, I told her we'd go the costume route, but I didn't want it to be a goofy ass costume. I pondered for a while and eventually I came up with what I thought was a purty good solution to this here conundrum. If you've ever been to one of those line dancing cowboy bars they have in the cities, you'll know where I'm comin from. It's a place where regular suburbanites go and and attempt to line dance. The type of place a real cowboy wouldn't be caught dead. Ya know, the paces with all the big trucks parked outside without any scratches or dirt on em. You should see some of the stuff they wear, lookin like they just came out of Drysdales catalog, stiff boots and all. So the thought was, we would dress up as a cowboy and cowgirl, but a classy lookin kind so we'd fit in wth both the black tie and costume crowd. My girl looked hot, she was wearin cowboy boots and these jeans that make her ass look like... well you know. I looked fine too, but I had a few bourbons before hand to bring out my accent, that way my lady wouldn't steal the whole show.

It was fun party and all and I was but pretty much just what ya'd expect. Aside from our friends, we got to see a bunch of kids we had checked out on Face Book just a few days before - most of em uglier than their pictures lead on. And then there was a bunch of people I didn't even recognize. It was a good thing everyone had nametags. My friends thought the costumes were a real hoot. Kinda tacky, yet refined - not in a slightly more classy than Hooters way. I wasn't a super popular kid growin up but I got along pretty well. Mainly, I think everyone was just intrigued bout me because I moved to the burbs part way through the 10th grade. I managed to make a few people laugh so I got to know a bunch of people.

We were enjoyin the company of our friends and catchin up on time gone by when one of the black tie kids started talkin bout how he's goin to some fancy dancy business school. He's a fine kid and all, but he always kinda rubbed me the wrong way, ya know? Now, this kid kid had a facebook to and we checked it out, I didn't remember much but I did remember that he was workin for a bank in Manhattan, so we got to talkin about finance and all the hoopla with the financial crisis. I keep up with that sort of thing and read the WSJ every morning just like my pappy did. So we get talkin a bit and eventually come back round to this business school he's goin to, ya know... stuff like why he wanted to go, how tough it is to get in to a good school, how prepared your applications gotta be, and so on. Now, I assumed the application process would be a little tricky, I did go to college ya know, but I guess I was just feelin a little mean, or maybe a bit jealous (business school did sound like it was right up my alley). I prodded him to keep on talkin, and he did.... on and on and on. Eventually, he got around to talkin bout the GMAT and how well he did (he took it twice). So, by now, we're all a little tired of hearin him talk about himself, so I told him I thought I could do better on the GMAT than he did. Turns out, the boy got a 700.

So, monday, at work, I hopped on the interwebs for a bit to do some research on this GMAT. I learned a few things that day. First, I found out that the score is out of 800, not 1000 like I had assumed, Second, it turns out that a 700 is a pretty damn good score, and third, it was going to cost me $250 bucks just to take the damn test. Now, I'm not the type to back-down from a challenge, especially one that I initiate. So, I bit my tongue and went ahead and made an 'appointment' (this still cracks me up for some reason) for December 2nd. This way, I'd get bout a month to get ready. I knew I'd have to do do a little studyin, but damn I didn't have a clue bout the torture yall been puttin yourselves through.

Somewhere along the way, I came across this beatthegmat.com website. There's so much stuff in here it'd take me a lifetime to get through it all! Anyhoo, I found the practice tests and whatnot and I guess I did alright. On the MANHATTAN one (seems yall like them a bunch) I got a 650 (44 math, 35 verbal). I took a few others too (like 800score) and ranged between 640 and 720. Despite the fact that I'd been doin better on the math than the verbal, I figured I'd have to do a bit better on both of em if I was gonna best a 700. So I spent pretty much equal time preparin for each section.

Well, doomsday finally came and it looks like the ole GMAT, and the kid from my high school, beat me. Check out the scores for yourself.

Quant: 42 (61%)
Verbal: 40 (89%)
Total: 660 (82%)

I guess I could say I'm happy bout my verbal score, but what in sam's hell happened to my damn quant score? The quant section was tough, and I might have missed the first question, but I dug back and the questions got hard. I even came across one almost identical to question 19, page 352 of Kaplan GMAT 800 (data sufficency - straight math). In the answer explanation it starts by saing "This question is one of the hardest you'll ever see on the GMAT". If said question is as hard as Kaplan claims and assuming I got it right, how is it possible that I screwed the pooch so badly as to fall back down to 61%.

Guess I'm just lookin for some explanation and a little advice...

This topic has expert replies