740 (V-40, Q-50 total 98%tile)

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740 (V-40, Q-50 total 98%tile)

by venkb » Wed Jan 24, 2007 3:55 pm
hi,

i just gave my gmat today. got a score of 740. i am happy. i would like to thank all the members of this who have contributed to my score.

i have one more exam of this saturday. i will send a detailed mail this weekend.

till then bye

regards,
venkb

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Re: 740 (V-40, Q-50 total 98%tile)

by beatthegmat » Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:24 pm
venkb wrote:hi,

i just gave my gmat today. got a score of 740. i am happy. i would like to thank all the members of this who have contributed to my score.

i have one more exam of this saturday. i will send a detailed mail this weekend.

till then bye

regards,
venkb
Amazing work, venkb! It's a very well deserved score.

Thanks so much for your contributions to this community over the last few months. I wish you all the best in your applications.

I can't wait to see your full debrief!
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by aim-wsc » Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:18 pm
many congratulations :)

you deserve it

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by gmat_enthus » Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:20 am
Congratulations!
My 760 | GMAT Preparation Suggestion


destination 760! completed!

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by venkb » Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:37 pm
as i said i am debriefing my preparation strategy and exam day experiences.

Prep strategy:

Quant and DS:

I didnt have any issues with the problem solving questions as such but did make some silly and careless mistakes. So from PS perspective my aim was to reduce the above two issues. The best way to avoid careless mistakes is to read the question once more to see whether the answer is what the questions asks for.As far as the basic problem solving questions.
Some usual mistakes i did, the questions mentions money is cents and dollars and asks the result in dollars. So i usually forget to convert cents to dollars. So giving more attention to such details helped me reduce the errors in PS.

DS was very tricky. Almost the most adept makes atleast one or two mistakes in it. Many people have outlined the strategies to overcome the usual errors. That is more that sufficient to get accuracy in this section. One additional tip from my side is not to loose concentration in DS and never consider a question as tough ie dont have a tough expression about DS question. always think that the question is easy and you can easily solve it. this combined with immense concentration can get you through ds. a way to increase concentration is to due more ds questions at a single say 30 odd questions, you will see your concentration dipping as you go beyond 15 or 20. initially you will see concentration dipping around question # 20. after practising you will realise that you are still intact even after completing 30 odd questions. try this method. if you are not comfortable with this revert back to the technique you are comfortable. but please note that it is not compulsory to get 100% accuracy in ds. but if you are able to get 12 to 13 questions correct in every 15 you are on track.

so strategy is make ps error free and minimize the errors in ds.

verbal:

this is the toughest part in gmat.

sc: this is a nightmare for people whose native language is not english. the best part as every body else mentioned, gmat tests only around 8-9 rules. first thing you would want is manhattan sc. if you read and understand this you can get almost all the questions in sc. i can almost reproduce this book :) the next thing is to apply these rules appropriately. try to spot what the sentence is trying to test. for example in the choice you see its or their, so it must strike to you that subject-verb agreement is tested here. identify subject and you are through. in the initial stages you will find it difficult but as you practise subconsciously you will identify these errors. simple isnt it. digest the rules and practisel. i used the questions in og11, og10 (almost same as og 11), 1000sc, questions from kaplan. try sticking to these because they usually test these rules. the worst thing is to face a question and realise that it isnt testing any of the rules and having a feeling that you wasted your time studying the rules. gmat tests only most of these rules. there might a question or two that comes from other part. but if you get 12 to 13 out of 15 you are in the 700 belt.

cr:
the best method to tackle the cr question is to identify the conclusion. if you do that you can solve almost most types of question like stenghtening, weakening etc.
take a cr question and try identifying the conclusion.
the way to tackle the inference question is to ensure that you stay within the scope. dont be smart enough to infer too much. just stick to the scope.
then read all the choices, dont be in a hurry. use scratch paper. strike out the ones that doesnt seem good in the first go itself. then try to eliminate the remaining. in most of the cases you can narrow down to 2. from here you can eliminate the other by looking for keywords in the stem. take my word you can indeed. there will surely be one that eliminates the one. it is just because of the pressure you fail to figure that. in most of the sample tests, when i did analysis i was able to easily eliminate the wrong ones.
i used og11, og10,kaplan, CR1000. but i prefered the first three. i was not happy with some of the answers of the cr1000. last thing i wanted to do was to loose confidence.

rc:
this is a section which i didnt prepare much. when i took my gmat prep i found that i was able to answer most of the questions correctly. so i thought let me leave it to the exam ;) in fact in other tests i was indeed making many mistakes but since i didnt make any in gmat prep i didnt practise.
but the method i followed was to read the passage throughly by spending 3-5 minutes based on the toughness and difficulty of the passage. i usually took 8-10 minutes for 3-4 questions for rc. i was able to spend this much because sc i did in a min or 2.

my advice take gmat prep couple of times. in theexam i saw 2 cr's from gmat prep ;)

my scores in some of the exams:

gmat prep 1 and prep2 = 700
i took gmate prep many more time i beleive 3 more times. i got a 750, 730 and 710.

kaplan: i never crossed 700 :( usual range was 650 -690.

manhattan: the highest i got was 720. but again the range was 650 to 720.

study materials:

kaplan, princeton review (maths basics), manhattan guide sc, og 11, og 10,
1000 SC, 1000 CR.


Exam day:

i reached the center 1 hr before the scheduled time. she examiner asked if i wanted to write straightaway. i couldnt resist myself. the issue and argument were straightforward. didnt have much issues.

ps was also fine. i could see the toughness increasing from the 5th onwards. i really enjoyed solving some of the questions. there was one prob question which was really interesting. i finished my quant section 1 min b4 the scheduled time. i was sure that i would get 49+.

next was the toughest part. first 3 were sc, they simple , then couple of cr. but rc was a bomber. i felt all the four passages were tough. 2 short and 2 long ones. i took most of the time in rc. i am sure i made more mistakes than i expected :( anyway at one point of time i was sure that i will cross 700 mark. during the last part of the exam my concentration was really dipping. please ensure that this doesnt happen. i could have scored 20-30 more if i avoided that. anyway i was happy to get 740. i just wanted to get more than 700. didnt want to write it one more time.

another way to boost confidence is to browse through the experience of the people in this forum. please read the exp of whose score was more that 700 or 720. their words will surely throw words of confidence. read only the exam exp, not the prep strategy, because the last thing you want to do is to feel that you didnt follow their strategy. boost your confidence as much as possible and goto the exam saying that you are easily going to cross 700.

all the best to people who are writing the gmat in the near future.

i had one small question, what should i do next. can anybody guide me through how to select schools and application related activities. what mark do the top us universities look for.

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by beatthegmat » Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:49 am
Awesome debrief, venkb! Really great reflection of your experience...
venkb wrote: i had one small question, what should i do next. can anybody guide me through how to select schools and application related activities. what mark do the top us universities look for.
In terms of next steps, I would ask Stacy for advice. You have gotten over one big hurdle successfully--the GMAT!
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by aim-wsc » Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:54 pm
thats a great debrief!
thanks for the detailed post venkb


would you just try to answer the question i asked in following thread
https://www.beatthegmat.com/viewtopic.php?p=4828#4828

thank you