I took a GMAT a few weeks ago and scored a 760 (99% pct.)

Find out how Beat The GMAT members tackled GMAT test prep with positive results. Get tips on GMAT test prep materials, online courses, study tips, and more.
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Quant - 50
Verbal - 44
AWA - 5.5
IR - 8

The forums here proved invaluable to me, mostly to help me understand questions that I couldn't otherwise have wrapped my head around.

In case anybody here would like my personal opinion on anything GMAT related, I'd be glad to oblige. So reply here, send me a PM, email me or whatever.

Cheers,

Arnav

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by Digvijay01 » Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:54 am
Congrats dude... but please share some strategy and the materials used by you in your prep time and any challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Also, please mention if this was your first attempt.

Regards
Digvijay

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by kackerarnav » Thu Feb 13, 2014 10:03 am
Yes, this was my first attempt.

Prep. time, I'd estimate to have been 1.5 months or so. Though, it was a bit of a ramp-up for the first 2 weeks to regular and intense study, which I then maintained for the remaining 4.

Material: I solved the GMAC, Manhattan and Kaplan free tests and additionally purchased the 6 extra Manhattan tests (Only managed to make time to solve 5 of those. Solved the 6th afetr my GMAT, for the heck of it.)

Additionally, for practice I used the official guide, the official verbal review and the official quant. review. That was more than sufficient. Did not want to drown in too much material or be spoiled for choice.

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by beatgmatny1 » Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:18 pm
Hello,

Can you please let me know your strategy on attacking verbal? I have all the resources that i need to prepare for Verbal. I've done practice problems from OG 12 and OG 13. For some reason, the SC questions seem a bit more difficult on the GMAT prep compared to OG. I am also doing fine on RC from OG. However, I felt that the RC passages on GMAT Prep are pretty difficult. Any advice that you can provide on how to improve my Verbal score is greatly appreciated. Even the CR seemed different on GMAT PREP. I scored V29 on the past two GMAT PREP tests.

Thanks!

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by kackerarnav » Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:09 am
Hey there,

To begin with, you should note that the GMATPrep will adjust for question level. In my case, I regularly found the average difficulty on the practice tests to be higher than in the OG. I figured this is because of the adaptive software adjusting the level to give me questions consistently challenging to me, rather than the OG which would essentially contain a random distribution of difficulty levels.

I struggled with CR and RC briefly because these are very GMAT specific topics with GMAT specific ways of understanding them. I would advise against referring to the Manhattan Strategy Guides for these topics because, awesome as the Manhattan tests are, the Strategy Guides overengineer the approaches to tackle CR and RC questions. Have a look at the Kaplan material, if you can get your hands on it. I read through it once and their points stuck with me. They're concise and effective. Follow what they say to the T and see if that boosts your score a bit. The answer options tend to be formulaic. If you figure out how to stay within scope and identify patterns in how they choose their answer options, you'll game the system easily. Therefore, read the Kaplan points, implement them verbatim and practice 150-200 questions and you should see some result. Thereafter, rinse, repeat.

For SC, I'm afraid I can't offer much useful guidance without knowing the level that your English is at. Being from India, I grew up speaking English as my first language and to me SC questions were rather intuitive and less application of rules. However, if you do need some help, the Kaplan material and the official GMAT Verbal Review have useful material you could peruse.

Hope that helps somewhat!

Cheers and good luck!

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by ANUJDATTA » Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:53 am
Hi Arnav

Well done. What an achievement. Well, I'm a working professional with 2 kids and was only able to study at 4am or late at night. Try as I might, I couldn't get beyond 650. First try was 630 and almost identical scores in the second try.

V-82%
Q- Went up from 46 to 56%
AWA- 5
IR- 6

Now this has gotten personal and I have to crack this. Any tips that you might have for me would be welcome. Having spent months on prep, these scores are obviously putting off...for me and the Univs that I have applied to.

I primarily used Manhattan 2009 and Kaplan 800 book. Thanks a ton in advance.

Anuj

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by kackerarnav » Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:38 am
Hi Anuj,

Could you, maybe, be a little specific about the exact areas that're proving to be your Achilles' heel(s)?

I might be able to make a few suggestion on how to practice or what to read on a more topic specific basis.

I did not have much time to prepare. I wanted to take the GMAT last year but my procrastination delayed me. Hence, I had to refer to bits and pieces from whichever source has a more concise approach to problem solving. I think that proved to work for me in terms of allowing for time to be saved. That time I could invest on reading more elaborate/detailed material on the specific topics that were troubling me (Permutations, Probability, Inference based CR etc.)

If you could highlight the weakest areas, I'll try to suggest how I would tackle them.

Cheers

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by ArunKumar83 » Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:05 pm
Hi Arnav,

I am happy to see that you have cracked the GMAT. I have a few questions for youand would love to hear your suggestions about the same.

My profile:

Prep Time Till date: 2 months
Gmat Registered test date: Arpril 21st/2014 ( 60 days to go)
Official GMAT Mock Score 2: 640 (Most recent score- took test last Monday)
Quant 49 ( 9 incorrect 6- Careless mistakes 3- Unable to solve)
Verbal 27 ( 16 incorrect - 8 SC ,2 CR, 6 RC)
Test Completion time ( 68 mins quant, 70 mins verbal)

Official GMAT Mock Score 2: 640
Quant 48 Verbal 32

Week areas:
Quants:
1) Statistics 2) Inequality 3)Prob and Combo 4) Co-ordinate Planes

Verbal:
1) SC 2)RC

My Target Score: 730+

Material Used:
1)MGMAT Complete set of Books ( Read SC but that is too much of info for me to remember - I am a non Native but I am not bad at English)
2)OG 12/13, Official Quant/Verbal review, Official Qpack 1 and purchased official mock test 3 and 4
3) Princeton Review 1037 problem
4) E-GMAT course work.

I have revisited my stratergy on SC and started following E-GMAT course work and I see what mistakes I do.

Questions to you.,
1)Did you prepare for IR section in GMAT?
2)How did you handle RC any suggestions?
3)When you solved SC what was your approach?
4) Whats your advice for Quants? I find inequality- Data sufficiency problems hard
5) Any general advice/ specific advice for Verbal section ?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Arun

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by kackerarnav » Thu Feb 20, 2014 4:46 am
Hi Arun,

Clearly, your quant is fine and your need to focus on verbal.

As far as SC goes, I'm sorry but I can't offer much help. I grew up in Bombay and was raised with English as a first language, in addition to which I read a lot. I got through SC purely on instinct.

RC and CR were more strategic and formulaic. I couldn't adopt Manhattan's approach to verbal. I felt they over-engineered everything in their strategy guides to the point that I couldn't use it. I found Kaplan's advice way simpler to follow and I did. It definitely boosted my verbal score after I started implementing their approach to it but it ought also be mentioned that nothing can replace a keen assessment of where you are going wrong and spotting patterns. That's probably where your instinct is conflicting with GMAT's approach. Watch out for it.

Inequalities can be tricky, especially in DS. They were my nightmare right up to test day. However, I did find these two articles helpful:

https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... er-part-1/

and

https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... er-part-2/


Hope this helps,

Arnav

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by ArunKumar83 » Thu Feb 20, 2014 6:04 am
Arnav,

Thanks a lot for the advice. Can you please let me know what was your stratergy on RC?

With CR my only concern is with "Logically Completes" type questions. Any advice for that?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Arun

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by kackerarnav » Thu Feb 20, 2014 9:32 am
Hi Arun,

I can only state personal opinions. But mine is one case while Manhattan and Kaplan and others have analyzed thousands of cases from diverse backgrounds and come up with lowest common denominator solutions. I'd suggest their recommendations would have greater chance of helping you than my case-specific one.

So, while I can't tell you what the optimal strategy for specific question types is (what worked for me might not work for you), I can advise you to find a strategy from books, see if it makes sense, internalize it and practice 70-100 questions with it. If it shows 20-25% boost in your performance, it's working; if not, it's not and you have to look for a new one.

Cheers

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by ANUJDATTA » Mon Apr 07, 2014 11:56 am
Hi Arnav

Am back. Having taken my chances with 650 and failed, I took a break and cleared my head. Now I have to start preparing from a completely fresh perspective. My Quant score is clearly what I need to work upon. The problem is I can't really identify problem areas. I would be really good at a certain problem and a little while later get flummoxed by a similar question.

What would you suggest to somebody who was starting to prepare for the GMAT? What material should I use? Do I go in for prep classes (Delhi) or online perhaps? I have to go from 650 to 750. Less than that, I understand now, just doesn't cut it. Pls help.

Waiting anxiously for your reply.

Best regards

Anuj

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by [email protected] » Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:57 pm
Hi Anuj,

Improving from a 650 to 750 is really about precision, meaning that you can't afford to make silly mistakes. By your own admission, you're having trouble identifying questions and how you successfully dealt with similar questions in the past. You MUST fix that problem. It also sounds like you're probably doing too much work "in your head" and not taking enough notes.

What practice materials did you use the first time you studied? Were you working primarily with books or did you include any online/computer-based materials?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
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by ANUJDATTA » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:14 am
Hi Rich

Thanks for your reply.

I went through the Manhattan GMAT Prep (RC, SC, Geo, CR, Number Prop, Equalities/Ineq), Kaplan 800, Beat The GMAT App. Manhattan took a world of a time. Didn't use any online tests till the very end. And even those were broken up and taken section wise as I couldn't get away for four hours in one go with work and kids.

In my first attempt I had 630 and in the second 650. And everything went up almost proportionately. It's Quant that I have to crack and go from less than 70 to more than 90 percentile. Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks a ton.

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by [email protected] » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:08 pm
Hi Anuj,

What were your Quant and Scaled Scores on each of your Official GMATs?

You've described one of your primary challenges: you need to find a way to take realistic CATs ALL IN ONE SITTING, so that you can define how you perform at various stages of the exam (when do you get tired, how do you re-focus, how do you perform at the end of the Test, etc.). If you haven't trained enough for the full GMAT "experience", it will be difficult to score at a much higher level.

For the Quant section, you're probably going to need some extra reps in DS. Beyond that, you also have to learn (and use) Quant tactics beyond "the math" approach. GMAT Quant questions can usually be solved with a variety of approaches. If you're really only using one approach, then that could help to explain why you might be stuck at a particular scoring level.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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