I just Beat The GMAT!

hi guys,

i practiced on maybe half the qns in the OG book, but i did sign up for a prep course which was useful in telling me the strategy to answer questions for DS and SC. I'm sure I could have got that info online, but in the past month I've also been working full-time and doing my MBA applications from scratch so that I can meet the R1 deadlines. in short i did almost no practice for the GMAT.

anyway, got 770 Q50 V44. The only thing I did was to do 3 full length powerprep tests in the four days leading up to the exam, all at the same time (1pm) and with the same 10 mins breaks in between. I discovered that drinking small amts of water, and having a light snack each time, was good. I also learnt that it was better to feel tired at the start of each section, so that I'd be more alert at the end. I know, weird points, but the key for me was to learn how to be 'on my game'.

Leading up to the test, I got 740, 780, 780 for the 3 practice tests. I probably could have done better this time (i failed to finish Q, and by the time I got to V I was so tired I finished the whole thing with 30 mins to spare). But overall, it was fine. I'm also a college senior, and I've found that makes the math concepts + reading the esoteric comprehension passages much easier.

Summary: 2 key learnings
1) train yourself to be on your game by simulating test conditions
2) if you're in college, do it before you start work because you'll be better trained to do it

EDIT: I got 6.0 for AWA too, although it was the first time I was doing it and I had not looked at a single topic. Clearly there's something to this method of following a strict structure.

Congrats! That is a great score!

Best of luck on your apps!

So you hardly studied and pretty close to maxed all the tests too! I bow to thee! But i think it is all an inherent gift, u either have it or u dont....But taking 4 tests in stipulated conditions probably doesnt work for many...

Really excited for you though and it gives us hopefuls the motivation, especially me since I am workign (long hrs) and studying at the same time and dont have much overall time to take it.

actually I'm procrastinating on doing my applications, so I decided to provide more details on those bells and whistles I'm talking about.

1) For the quant section,
a) ESPECIALLY data sufficiency: why do they give the specific values that they are giving you? why x<1, for instance, and not x<0? *WHAT CHANGES AT X=1?*
b) again, data sufficiency. E and C occur a lot less frequently than you think they do. If you think the answer is E or C, look carefully again at whether (1) or (2) alone is sufficient.
c) for problem solving, some people have recommended first doing the question without looking at any of the options. I did that, but I was also always on the look-out for traps. ask yourself this: how would someone arrive at the different options? Are you falling into a trap?

2) for verbal section, i found reading comprehension much more easily tackled by skimming quickly through first, to force yourself to skip the unimportant details and quickly understand the 'big picture', what the passage is talking about, and what its aim is.

3) for sentence correction,
a) always identify what is being tested. to do this obviously you need to first begin with knowing what concepts CAN be tested, which i think any good prep book will tell you. then, one easy way is to tell what's being tested is to see how many different 3-2 splits there are. Each 3-2 split normally indicates one concept being tested. Choose the right 3-2 split for each of these concepts, and your answers are usually narrowed down in a hurry.

b) my prep course gave me a list of idioms to remember. and although they did not harp on it, they mentioned the story of a non-native speaker from china who took their course online, memorised the entire idiom list, and basically breezed through all the sentence correction questions by simply identifying the right idioms. This is incredibly helpful. I found that most SC questions were actually 1-1-1-1-1 splits rather than 3-2 splits with regards to what's the right idiom to use. And again, if a non-native speaker from China can do it, surely you can? (ie, this really isn't about how good your english is)

4) for AWA, my prep course also gave me a simple structure to follow and assured me that keeping to it was all that mattered. I did, and though i haven't gotten my score back yet I'm not worried. So you should find a structure that you can follow, stick to it, and don't worry about flair/style. This is the GMAT, not your admissions essay.

5) in general, always think about a question for at least 2-3 seconds before clicking confirm the second time. That gives you time to get closure, and makes sure that you stop thinking abt the previous question and instead move on.

Hope this helps! Unlike most people here I did not have copious amounts of preparation or practice, so these tips REALLY helped me a lot.

EDIT: two more tips i forgot.

1) for RC, when they say 'what is implied' or 'what is suggested', it means that the answer CANNOT be something that is found in the passage. it's easy to get tricked by this.

2) for RC whenever they ask u to suggest a title, don't pick the best out of the 5 immediately. rather, see if each title individually fits the passage before confirming your choice by seeing if it's the best out of the 5. I've had instances picking the 'best choice', only to realise that if i'd seen that article with that title, it would have made no sense to me.

What do you mean by 3-2 split and 1-1-1-1-1 split?

Just a little confused, as I have not heard someone mention this before.

optimisticsam wrote:What do you mean by 3-2 split and 1-1-1-1-1 split?

Just a little confused, as I have not heard someone mention this before.

a 3-2 split is when the set of 5 options settles neatly into a pattern that may go something like this:

a) which was because xxxx
b) which was because xxxx
c) which were because xxxx
d) which were because xxxx
e) which was because xxxx

As you can see, options A,B and E all have similar answers for one part of the question (was vs were) and C and D also have similar answers. That's the famous 3-2 split. On the other hand a 1-1-1-1-1 split is something like:

a) which were xxx
b) which was xxx
c) which are xxx
d) which is xxx
e) which might be xxx

In this case, all the options are different in one specific section, and if you can choose the right one you immediately have the right answer. In contrast the 3-2 split just makes your chances improve from 20% to either 33% or 50% if you choose the right part of the split.

Hope this helps!

well i think ur a genius..cos studyin less than a month n gettin 770 is fantastic..congrats..i ve been studyin from d past 2 mnths but no use..i m just not gettin the hang of Math concepts..