I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi,
decided to post my experience, hoping somebody might find it helpful.
If you are working in any consulting firm, then trust me and plan well in advance!
Now, the journey began 2 months back when because of some health issues i was on leave for good 3-4 weeks. At that moment i decided to give the exam which had been on my "to do list" since high school.

The first question that comes to one's mind as the journey begins is whether to go for a coaching class. Followed by what material to refer to and how much time to devote.
In my opinion, coaching classes should be opted for only if u are going to be regular and have that extra time to listen someone teach first and then put that into practice. Or just go through the material and learn on your own. I opted for the latter. The material that should be referred will actually very from person to person. Start with the OG, pay attention to why that book also starts with a practice test. :)I guess you must have got the clue by now.
I referred to the following in the below mentioned order.
1) OG 12
2) Manhattan SC 4th ed.
3) Manhattan CR 4th ed.
4) Verbal review 12th - 2nd ed. (whichever was the latest. whilst referring 2 & 3)
5) Manhattan SC 2nd ed.
6) OG 10 (whilst referring 5)
7) Aristotle SC Correction
8) Powerscore CR Bible
9) BTG verbal question for the day (Referred to BTG on few occasions)

While i practiced the problems from these books, i tracked the areas which needed improvement based on wrong answers out of total questions in the that section or error rate. The error rate for whichever sub section within a section showed me the least improvement i worked on that area first. Too complex !!..
For eg. A track sheet for SC section looked like 137 questions as 18/137 with majority of mistakes in idioms sub-section. So studied idioms list , made few notes which i referred to on the day before the exam.
This strategy was interspersed with 6 Manhattan & 4 Gmat-prep practice tests, which i feel are more than enough for the preparation. The exam score were always less than the actual Gmat score (710,650,720,680,730,720,710,710,700,720 in no particular order).
Anyways, that was it from the preparation point of view.

Few things which help overall are:
1) don't study anything on the day prior to the examination
2) if you have to, then go through few notes (which should be created by you based on your study approach).
3) read some book to pass time
4) don't eat anything out of ordinary. I had a chocolate before the exam to keep the energy level high.


Hope it helps. Goodluck and go BTG!
M

congrtz!!

thanks!

Congrats Big Pop! Your story seems almost similar to mine. I was also getting almost the same scores which you got in your practice CATs and even our actual GMAT scores are the same.

yea..had noticed the similarities while going through your post.
in my honest opinion, its about holding your nerves.
However, during the verbal section, i noticed that CR questions in particular weren't coming in the form which i had practiced generally.
As there were very few support / weaken questions. Also there was that flaw in reasoning / structure question which meant i was doing well. otherwise, i wasn't that much confident about the verbal section. finished it at the last minute

Congrats! When did you give your exam? How was the quant section compared to the GMATPrep? And did you notice any meaning based questions in SC?

Thanks! gave the exam on the 10th October.
The quant section was more in line with the GMAT Prep.
In verbal, SC section was as usual. I think it was more idiom based. Few questions were modifier and pronoun based. I don't seem to recall any meaning based question as such.
CR seemed trickier to me.

congrats big pop for such a brilliant score.today i gave a practice test 1 from gmat preparation software.i did not expected such a devastating score a mere 580.i want to improve my score by atleast 100 points and score somewhere around 90th percentile.i am very disappointed as i started preparing from my manhattan books for the past one month.what i carefully observed was that i could have done atleast 10 -15 questions right on the whole if i had properly managed my time.i messed up doing some easy questions wrong.now from where to start my preparation again so that i can improve my score.any suggestions form anyone would be of great help and specially improving verbal score.

Congrats!

congrats!!

thanks guys..
Sorry for the late reply, too much of office work these days.

Prashant,
it seems you need to work on your language skills. Additionally, you may start with few practice questions from the OG while referring the MGMAT books. This way you will be able to zero in on your weak areas and then improve them. There is no substitute for hardwork so the only way to imropve your time management problem is to work on the areas and then practice via such tests.
All the best.

Big Pop,
Congrats on the achievement.
I have both the Aristotle SC and Manhattan SC .Did you refer to any other material for SC apart from this ?

Thank you!
I had used the combination of Manhattan SC (version 2,3,4) with OG 10, 12 and Verbal Review 2 for SC practice.
Use the BTG's Verbal question of the day for better results.
ATB!

Gr8 work dude...very inspiring.

thanks man