I got 780 today

Lorenzo · Guest

Thank you all, this forum has been an invaluable resource for me...time to give something, even if admittedly very little, back!

my story in brief:
m, 23y.o., BSc Economics, amazon.com sent me kaplan+princetonVb Workout+OG11th in January and I started to figure out what it was all about..my OG's diganostic test was quite bad, and I remember that it rated me as average..this got me mad Twisted Evil

, and I decided that I had to beat the damn thing!!. Seriously, I think that a driven (NOT obsessed) attitude matters....

in the following months I went slowly (I never managed to study more than 1h per day, and I had to stop for weeks...) through these books, paying special attention to the OG and spending a lot of time correcting the practice quizzes I took. I think this is crucial: i would strongly advice to go through the questions of the official guide until you have mastered the exact, often banal, way in which you are supposed to answer. NEVER practice without spending time on your errors and guesses: it's almost useless. However, I managed to really focus on the test, studying/practicing for 5-6hrs/day just about two weeks ago. If you can afford it, in my opinion nothing works better than an intensive and short prep, both in terms of effectiveness and of psychological drive.

Sentence correction puzzled me at first (as I think it happens with many non-native speakers of English), but ended up being one of my strongest points: princeton verbal workout helped a lot in this. I never had major problems with cr or rc questions. Being a subscriber of the economist and reading it from cover to cover every week also helped a lot with the verbal section and the AWA. Be careful: it can make your happy hour conversation unbearable for all except the nerdiest girls Cool

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About the AWA: I cannot express myself in good written english, as you may easily infer from this post. Given the unavoidable time constraint, I decided to consider the AWA marginal and didn't write more than 20 practice essays. My score is likely to be mediocre, 4 at best...I don't care at all.

The quant section requires perfect, and I mean PERFECT and TOTAL knowledge and understanding of the basics of math the OG lists in its review section. After this, in probelm solving it's crucial to figure out the method to solve problems. Never ever start writing down numbers right after you read the question, always think about the way you want to use to solve the problem first!! The whole thing is about solving apparently hard problems with simple methods, always remember this.
Even if I personally despise step by step methods, with which kaplan et al inundate us, since I like to do things my way, I have to surrender when it comes to data sufficiency questions. Seriously, just follow the method, slowly and carefully, again minding about the way you are supposed to solve the problem, and the answer will come (most of the time, at least).

About the quant section but also the verbal, you can find plenty of hard quizzes on kaplan800 and elsewhere. If you have fun playing with numbers, nonsensical,foolish and inintelligible pseudo-academic passages or inelegant english grammar, go and enjoy. Otherwise just know that they are very very far from the real thing: in fact, thay can also harm you. Don't let these bastard depress you, ever!! I repeat fo the nth time (if 5, 78239 and 38497597593 are all prime factors of n, what's the bilionth digit of n???????
Very Happy

just joking, my brain hasn't reported permanent damage Very Happy

) that the OG should be your bible, and powerprep tests the ONLY predictors of your score. My example should tell something: Kaplan tests 710, 700, 600 (got sleepy on this one), 700; PWRprep 760, 780 [all taken less than one week before the test].

Another word about my personal and questionable view on the book by Kaplan (premier program 2007): it provides a lot of practice material [on the cd and online], albeit of the kind I have mentioned above, but the rest is very very cheap talk ( I have already talked about my attitute about the uncountable-award-winning, handsomely-best-selling, renowned-industry-leader, best-since-1654bc step by step method--I cannot ). My advice is: go for princeton workbooks if you really need to learn something. They will also sometimes bother you with some insulse steps, but at least there's some beef man!.

Bottomline: with some considerable luck I got 780 (sorry I already don't remember section scores), and I'm no rocket scientist. Try to focus and prepare following the basic guidelines this forum suggests, and that I have repeated again, and you'll do your best.

Thanks to all the wise guys here, good luck to all of you...I hope we meet in Wharton/ChicagoGSB/LBS in a couple of years....

Greetings from Italy,
Lorenzo

axisymmetric · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject:

780 is awesome. Congratulations!!!

Hope to see you at Wharton Very Happy

wow! · Guest

First of all, CONGRATS! Very Happy

It may be a too broad question, but I hope you can give me some tips.
I actually have a GMAT test next week, but as the day gets closer I'm
getting seized with panic.

What do you think is an effective 1-week strategy overall?

I'm just planning to review the flashcards I made,
and to go over the preps several times (I didn't try them a lot.)

Wheew, it's hard for a non-native to prepare GMAT in
2-3 months- all the things are getting scrambled suddenly. Crying or Very sad

Lorenzo · Guest

x wow!

try to have a complete test every day, and thoroughly correct it afterwards. Then review in depth any topic in which you made mistakes, to build confidence...and about confidence again: dont let any bad score demoralize you, esp. from kaplan's mock tests and the like...

good luck, kill it!!
Lorenzo

btw my score was 48V-50Q-5.0AWA

cooldude · Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:49 am Post subject:

CONGRATS!!!!!!!! Smile

AWESOME ACHIEVMENT! Wink

best wishes for future career