I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi everybody,

I took my GMAT today and got a hopeless 660 with 29 in verbal. I am an engineer from India with 4 years of experience. I took sabbatical and prepared for about three months dedicatedly.

During my preparation I studied from:
OG - 10,12,Verbal
Kaplan Premier and Kaplan CD Test
Manhattan verbal guides and CATs
Couple of LSAT papers and Powerscore CR bible
800.com and princeton review CATs and almost all free tests available online

Honestly admitting I was getting score in mid-30s in all verbal practice tests. By the end when I took GMAT Prep, I got V34, V33 and V37 (repeat). Thereafter, I downloaded all SC,CR and RC questions of GMAT prep and did them over last 10 days. I was able to get decent accuracy of around 80%-85% in CR,RC and of 70%-80% in SC in those questions. I was expecting somewhere around 35 in verbal (with a variance of 2) in real GMAT but then "no comments".

Another point I would like to highlight that I was not able to sleep the night before my GMAT due to obvious anxiety and nervousness. My exam was scheduled at 2 pm and I slept for hardly an hour the whole night. I believe this would have also retarded my performance as I have read it in quite few places.

Overall to summarize my experience about GMAT preparation, I have found that SC questions in GMAT prep and in real GMAT are no where close to what other study materials offer. Though OGs are somewhat representative but still the real SCs are quite different. CR and RC were same as in GMAT prep, though I found CR to be more vague and RC to be bit lengthy from GMAT prep. But undoubtedly the real GMAT is THE real GMAT.

Reading my debrief could someone please suggest that how should I prepare for retake as I have studied almost all well proclaimed material. I am really clueless whether I should join online course for some prep. company or I should take a break for 2-3 months. I have to apply for next year fall session; so by all means I ought to take GMAT before mid november. The question is whether I should put a halt to my preparation for a couple of months so as to avoid burnout and loss of interest or I should prepare in a go without letting the fresh learning to fade away. Also please suggest study material which I could cover this time.

Thanks,
Harry

I believe 660 is not a bad score at all, though it can be low to your standards ...I do understand that you did well in gmat prep but in the real gmat verbal broke down, it happens may test anxiety or it can different as well...

If you think you can really make a big difference like 40 50 ponts more..then you should really go for it.. if not you still have a good score...

Focus on your profile, SOP, LOR , Essays etc....

Approach the verbal section logically. You need to improve in all three subsections. Practice a lot. Analyse why the right answers are right and why the wrong are wrong. Analyse why you are marking the wrong answers. Go through each and every explanation of OG.

when you say..SC are different.. can you explain what exactly is the difference?

Length..! hard !

You score, including the breakdown, exactly matches mine in my first attempt. I'm not sure to what extent you studied OG and GMATPrep vs. prep tests from test prep companies. But if you feel that you were pretty much heavier towards the latter, you might want to take a look at the following post.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-660-qua ... tml#399459

You are not the only one who feels that the verbal section in real GMAT somehow comes in different style from the type of verbal questions you studied in any preparation materials. Having said so, you wouldn't disagree that verbal questions in OG and GMATPrep have the closest style matching those questions you saw in real GMAT test. That's why you want to get as familiar as possible to questions in the OG and GMATPrep.

Another valuable tip I found circulating in many forums is, when you take the second test, you might want to take some sweet snacks during the break between Quant and Verbal. I initially ignored such advice as I didn't care so much on such small thing. However, I did try eating something sweet during the break, and it helped me with my verbal. Usually, test centre provides some snacks for test takers.

@prateek_guy2004: Thanks for the suggestions. I do plan to retake and aim to target 750. Lets see how it rolls.

@prodizy: I did OG at least thrice (SC even more) and did analyze carefully both wrong and right choices. But still I guess something was lacking somewhere. Yet to figure that out.

@HSPA: ronaldramlan answered your question perfectly.

@ronalramlan: I did practice and revision only from OG material and GMAT prep during last 20 days of my exam. So those patterns were very much fresh I believe. Moreover, I totally agree with your logic; in fact that is really a good suggestion to not indulge to much in other comp. prep material especially during the last lap of preparation. As far as the snack tip is concerned I messed it up by taking red bull which aggravated my anxiety to the level that I could hear my erratic heart beat.

But my concern is that practicing again from OG and GMAT prep material wouldn't help me gauge my improvement and accuracy as I would remember most of the patterns if not answers. This way I would never get to know my progress and readiness for the exam. Please suggest on this from where should I study this time. I was thinking of starting with 1000 SC,CR and RC as they contain real retarded GMAT questions which I precluded from my preparation.

gmattaker20 wrote: But my concern is that practicing again from OG and GMAT prep material wouldn't help me gauge my improvement and accuracy as I would remember most of the patterns if not answers. This way I would never get to know my progress and readiness for the exam. Please suggest on this from where should I study this time. I was thinking of starting with 1000 SC,CR and RC as they contain real retarded GMAT questions which I precluded from my preparation.

You may have a look at those sources, although I know that one test prep company refuses to discuss questions as it questions the validity of the questions from 1000 SC/CR/RC. You need to be careful of the explanations given by the sources you mentioned since they can sometimes be misleading.

Another thing that you should analyse is whether your problem lies on the lack of mastery in the strategy and concepts used to attack each type of questions, or on the lack of practice. It is important to discern one from the other as each requires different approach.

One easy way to spot a lack of mastery in the concepts is, identify whether you are able to tell not only why the correct answer is correct, but also why the incorrect answers are wrong. I learn this from a GMAT expert. So, when you are faced with an SC question, you probably scan the answer choices and find D as the correct one. But before you click "Confirm", you need to be sure why A,B,C and E are incorrect.
This is one thing I did when I practiced with OG and GMATPrep. Everytime I made mistakes, I make sure that I understand not only why correct answers are correct, but also why incorrect answers are incorrect. Very often you will learn more from being able to tell why incorrect answers are incorrect than from being able to tell why correct answers are simply correct. I understand that the explanations in the OG and GMATPrep are extremely minimum. You can actually paste the questions you see on OG and GMATPrep on Google search and click on explanations given in MGMAT forum. I find the explanations given in MGMAT forum very useful. You may then compare both explanations from OG and MGMAT forum.

If you think that you would be able to absorb more concepts and strategy, I suggest that you check out this link. If you have known it, just ignore this.
https://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

Finally, you feel that you have learned every concept and strategy you need to know to attack any types of questions, it is just a matter of applying what you know into practice. In this case, you may use sources other than OG and GMATPrep so long as doing so does not disrupt the pattern and carry you away with questions styles you'll never see on real GMAT.

This is the third times I edit this post as I keep remembering new things after clicking "Submit".. LOL
One thing came up in mind ... when you take GMATPrep or any full simulated practice tests, it is important that you DO NOT skip the essays. You may think that skipping the essays won't affect your score, and you'll get 8-min break anyway that you can come back fresh to the quant and verbal. I thought so too, but then I realized that I was wrong. When you take simulation tests, you want to ensure that the situation that you are in would be the same as that in real GMAT test. Otherwise, you simulation test scores would be artificially inflated.

@gmattaker20 Have you tried approaching the SC section logically. What I mean is that don't try to decide basing on hundreds of rules. Keep the most important rules at hand and try logically eliminating the options - basing on what the author is trying to say. May be the meaning was not clear, the meaning might altogether changing etc. Try to ELIMINATE the options - DON'T CHOOSE the right answer.

@gmattaker20 by most important rules I mean subject verb agreement, pronoun ambiguity/agreement, modifiers etc.

gmattaker20 wrote:Hi everybody,


Overall to summarize my experience about GMAT preparation, I have found that SC questions in GMAT prep and in real GMAT are no where close to what other study materials offer. Though OGs are somewhat representative but still the real SCs are quite different. CR and RC were same as in GMAT prep, though I found CR to be more vague and RC to be bit lengthy from GMAT prep. But undoubtedly the real GMAT is THE real GMAT.


Thanks,
Harry

hey harry
i took my gmat (retake)

my lowest mock test score was 680 and highest 3 days before was 720 (49/40 split)

even i also agree that CR and RC were somewhere close to Gmatprep pattern
but SC was completely different
and i was blew off by the pattern

4-5 were deadly shorter on (in which only 2-3 words were underlined)

i am really looking for the stuff from which i can be confident in realgmat

@ronaldramlan: Firstly, thanks a lot for such understanding suggestions. However, reading your suggestions scares me even more because during my preparation i almost followed all your advices. I used to deeply dwell into the wrong choices for each question I attempted and not only that I also used google the question for MGMAT explanations (which are far detailed and better than OG's). Lack of stamina and concentration due to additional hour (by missing AWA) wouldn't have been a concern for me as I never skipped AWA during my last 5-6 practice tests.

Again I guess I have to spend some more time analyzing what went wrong and what new strategy should I adopt for the retake.

@prodizy: Your idea makes sense. Although when stuck between last two choices I used to look for logical flow, this time onwards I will start looking out for it more often. But still I think for most of the SCs logical order wouldn't make much sense especially ones in which few (two or three) words are highlighted.

@Warlock007: Did you recently take GMAT ? What was your score in verbal ?

Guys, just wanted to ask has anyone tried (or have an idea about) any prep company's course. I don't mind enrolling for some online course (say Knewton) which can assure some decent success and good material as I have already exhausted most of official material.

Thanks,
Harry

Well i dont believe in prep course mate........

I have no intention to discourage you even more, but I took Knewton during my prep for my 2nd attempt, which gave me exactly the same score as my 1st attempt (660). Eventually, I claimed my money back.

Don't misunderstand, Knewton offered a good learning experience.

gmattaker20 wrote:
@Warlock007: Did you recently take GMAT ? What was your score in verbal ?

Guys, just wanted to ask has anyone tried (or have an idea about) any prep company's course. I don't mind enrolling for some online course (say Knewton) which can assure some decent success and good material as I have already exhausted most of official material.

Thanks,
Harry

Hey Harry
my verbal was pathetic 27
i can tell you 3 things

1 SC was entirely different from all prep material 4-5 were short ones
2 because is was not confident about this SC i took more time and had to do last 10 in 10 minutes
3 CR & RC were at par with what we have seen in GMATPrep

please tell me what strategy i should employ now for a 700

Dude, I can understand from where you are coming. SC is a nemesis for the non native speakers.
I am in the same boat as you but haven't given the GMAT. The problem with Manhattan GMAT/OG is the number of problems are just too less to drive home the concepts. For an analogy in GMAT can a person coming from a humanities background ace quant just by using Manhattan and - OG 2,3 or even 5 times. No dude no. He needs to practise probably 1000-1500 quant problems to truly get some grip on the subject. A number of things like inequality, sign scheme, modulus, geometry etc are assumed which are bread and butter of engineers.

Similarly we need to ace verbal by practising probably 1000-1500 problems. There are a few good resources that come to my mind - Grockit has 1000 verbal questions with explanations which are similar to OG problems. There are some other resources like e GMAT which has 500+ SC problems.
I have heard that Master GMAT also tends to summarise SC concepts well which are scatterred in MHSC.
Regarding Knewton I can say its good for practise but again it has all the SC lesson lumped in one which may or may not be good,