620 (Q-49 V 27) to 720 (Q-50 V-37) Did I beat the GMAT?

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anandr84
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Topic: 620 (Q-49 V 27) to 720 (Q-50 V-37) Did I beat the GMAT?
PostWed Nov 18, 2009 11:09 am
First attempt on aug 28th - 620 q-49 v-25
I fell short of time on the quant section, ended up guessing the last 4 answers. This lowered my confidence going into the verbal section. Got stuck between two answers a hell of a number of times again ended up with a lot of guess work and a measly 25.
Just for information i got 690 and 710 in two GMAT preps that i took before the exam around a week apart.

Second attempt Nov 17 - 720 Q-50 V-37
phew!! Crossed the 700 mark. Quant section was a breeze this time. Was left with around a minute to spare. Verbal did pose problems. One of the RC passages though easy, had really weird questions. Tests these time included

Gmat prep 1-690
Gmat prep 2-720
MGmat 1 - 600
MGmat 2 - 680
MGmat 3 - 640
MGmat 4 - 640
MGmat 5 - 710
MGmat 6 - 750

ANALYSIS after first attempt

Quant
Speed in quant needs improvement. During practice tests i could complete almost on time, guessing perhaps the last question. But in actual exam its different because you tend to double/triple check your answers, which takes time. I decided to go back to the basics once again. Dug out my math fundamental books, re-learnt Inequalities (major weakpoint), probability, and number properties.
Solved the OG again. Timed myself and tried to complete most OG problems within 1 minute. and this was quite possible in PS. DS took around 1.5 minutes. The hit rate was pretty high, I could get around 95% of them correct. I marked the wrong ones and analyzed what went wrong. Realised i have a penchant for silly mistakes - reading half of the questions, leaving out data etc.
Hit rate in DS was lower. around 90%. I practiced more DS from the 1000Q series. They are pretty easy too.

Note:I felt quant questions in actual exam are tougher than OG questions.

I felt the the problems in Mgmat tests are tougher (max Quant score i got was 48 in Mgmat), but when worked out give you a lot of confidence. Also while solving those, you realize/recollect some of the mathematical properties you might not have used in a long time and hence forgotten.

Verbal
Again did OG all over again. Last time i hadnt analyzed my mistakes properly. This time i made a note of all the mistakes and analyzed them. beatthegmat really helped a lot Smile thanx to everyone out here.

Sentence correction - Manhattan's SC notes are really good and help a lot. Apart from this i strengthened my verbal abilities using Kaplans Gmat verbal foundation. I found the small tests at the end of each chapter really useful.
For more practice again caught hold of 1000 series Sentence correction. Reached around 250 in that. Could achieve around 90% success rate.

Critical reasoning - I thought my CR was pretty good, till I did the og again. I realised that i have a similar hit rate for CR as i have for SC around 75-80%. I heard about PowerScores critical reasoning Bible and tried it out. I felt really confident after doing that. Its a pretty decent book. Though i never could actually follow it completely wrt the strategies given. For practice used 1000CR. did around 200 of it.

RC - They were not that big a problem. I didnt have problem with reading speed. The most problematic type of questions for me were - tone of passage, what is meant in the passage etc. To start with i did still feel that improvement in reading was necessary. used to read wall street journal and NY times editorial (Special thanks to google reader here). Did mostly OG for RC.

My work schedule used to be pretty hectic. Took a good two weeks off before the exam though still went to the office a few times in between. My appointment was at 1:15PM. I made sure that this was my peak study time through the two weeks. got into the mode of keeping my brains running at that duration of time.

Last 2 weeks were full of tests and the 1000 series. I also gave some Kaplan tests, but found the scoring to be demotivating and erratic, so stopped.

Rest is history. Started with the applications and b school essays now Smile

Last edited by anandr84 on Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:11 pm; edited 1 time in total
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maihuna
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PostWed Nov 18, 2009 11:52 am
humm...think u ftaog...congrats
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defeat accepted, I am tired, down and out, surprisingly it is quant that betrayed me all the times, and I know my limit for verbal, 47 37 690, yep %tile is changing with same raw.
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