First Time Test Taker Result: 167V 150Q

This score is so uneven, it can hardly be useful. The quant score feels like a red flag, so I dare not send this to any university. 😭

Anyway, how this happened:

TEST PREP: I have been preparing for the past 2 months, primarily using ETS and Gregmat materials, and my test day went awry. I stay at home and recently shifted from a full time to a remote work situation so for the past month at least, I was able to study 6-8 hours a day, perhaps not consistently during the week but I adhered to my study schedule.

Test day Panic(not at the disco) :( Honestly quant has been my biggest weakness and the reason I switched from the GMAT to the GRE. On test day last week despite feeling very well-prepared and reasonably confident, I messed up quant severely. Due to a series of incidents on the way to the test centre and a mistimed phone call from a relative, I suffered extreme anxiety over certain private issues, and despite my best attempts to not let it affect me, it did just that at a physiological level. I felt feverish, jittery, etc.

What happened during the exam: VERBAL: difficulty level of questions was RCs > TCs > SEs. I've always been quite skilled at these types of questions and am an avid reader, so it was as natural as breathing and not at all stressful.

QUANT: Section 1 went well but not as well as I'd hoped, did not get time to review 2 questions I had marked.

Section 2 — I missed 6 questions, I had almost solved 3 of them (which proved excessively lengthy/perhaps I was going about it the wrong/longer way in my frenzied state), and the most TRAGIC part: I never even got to see the last 3 questions.

Such poor time management has never happened before during my mock tests, although I've only given two. Still, I have given countless sectional/chapter-wise math tests and have never had such a grievous issue. My confidence was shaken, in fact my hands were quite literally shaking throughout the section.

From my scores, aptitude and level of prep I knew I would most likely score in the mid 150s range, and I was extremely stressed since the programs I am applying to require a 160 minimum in quant 😭. I guess I really felt the pressure, and the bad news on the way broke the dam of anxiety that I had desperately struggled to contain. It was terrible timing.

I need to give it again. I also do want to get better at quant as well as time management.

As far as foundational/concepts are concerned, the topics I know most/extremely well to least = Algebra (particularly linear and quadratic) > Geometry > Arithmetic (except some rules about multiples/sum of integers in a series/numbers questions that I had trouble remembering) > Coordinate Geometry > everything else. I skipped probability, SI & CI (since I remember these well from high school) and the permutations and combinations thing (I've never studied it and it also didn't show up in the exam, plus I was hard-pressed for time). It's also unfortunate that one of my favourites, quadratic, didn't feature on the test at all. That's the one topic I studied and revised most thoroughly due to past failures in 10th grade (a decade ago haha).

I don't need to give the exam again ASAP, I can give it in the latter half of February or in early March.

Any tips, words of advice, insights would be most appreciated and very welcome. Also shoutout to gregmat for the vocab mountain, it was extremely useful for revision. :)