I just Beat The GMAT!

Since there are some posts on here that helped me greatly (https://www.beatthegmat.com/770-50-q-46- ... 40093.html in particular), I figure its time to quit lurking and pay it forward.

First and foremost you need to be fully committed to writing this test. I was studying 2-4 hours a night on weeknights after work and 5-7 hours a day on weekends, and reading articles/doing flash cards whenever I could fit them in on top of that. That is partially my fault as I made a late in the game decision to apply to business schools this year and gave myself 10 weeks to study so I would have a chance to rewrite if necessary. That being said if you're not all in on this you'll hit a bump in the road (which is inevitable) and you will be in trouble. There are many steps to take on this exam and you will plateau multiple times and you need to find a way to keep climbing. As mentioned in the post above I think the best way to do this is to have your content down pat and then worry about speed, strategy etc at a later date.

First the messy details:

10/15/2014 Official GMAT 730 (Q49 V41 IR 8 AWA awaiting score)
10/13/2014 Practice GMAT 730 (Q47 V42)
10/11/2014 MGMAT CAT 6 710 (Q44 V42)
10/08/2014 Practice GMAT 740 (Q49 V41)
10/05/2014 MGMAT CAT 5 690 (Q44 V39)
09/28/2014 MGMAT CAT 4 630 (Q40 V36)
09/21/2014 MGMAT CAT 3 660 (Q44 V36)
09/15/2014 MGMAT CAT 2 640 (Q42 V35)
08/04/2014 MGMAT CAT 1 590 (Q36 V34)

I used Manhattan everything...online course and books alongside the GMAC books and problems/practice exams and that's about it. When I did my research trying to decide which program to use it seemed to me that the highest scorers were using MGMAT so I went with that one. Yes it is expensive, but so is business school and in the big picture this is peanuts, so spend the money and do it right. The books, as everyone has agreed upon, are very good, as is the course although I probably didn't get as much out of it as I should have given my compressed schedule. I would also advise anyone taking the exam to read everything Stacey Koprince writes; this article in particular changed my entire strategy on the exam https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/2012 ... -disguise/. Ron Purewal's advice to not worry about all the various terms in sentence correction and instead get a feel for the sentences was exactly what I needed to hear at that time and made a big difference to my verbal score. Lastly I greatly respect clarity of thought and Mitch Hunt's explanations on this site always stood out to me as both clear and creative.

Now to the process - I was of course devastated like everyone else when I didn't score 700+ on the diagnostic. The reality is you don't know how to write an exam like this the first time (and you're still trying to figure it out the ninth time in all likelihood). The number one most important thing I learned about this exam is that you must must must be willing to throw away problems that you can't answer in 2-3 minutes. If you spend one minute on it and you're still confused, that is a sunk cost, move on and forget about it. While Manhattan does a good job telling you this, if you're anything like me you don't want to hear it. As you learn more content, you become ever more sure that you should be able to answer every question and you get stubborn. You eventually get to problem #17, which you spend 4 minutes on, causing you to rush through the next ten problems in a panic, most of which you get wrong, and you end up with a 630 on your 4th CAT wondering if you're just too stupid to write this f@%#^$g test. It may be inevitable that everyone needs to go through this at some point, so just make sure that you get there eventually and realize you need to be willing to take a pass.

Which brings me back to commitment - I think no matter who you are there will be a point where this exam will really test your mental fortitude. No matter how frustrated you get with it you need to be able to compartmentalize and come back the next day ready to take another crack at it. I actually perversely enjoyed studying for this exam - it is not about rote memorisation (unlike oh say, the CFA), and it will challenge you constantly. If you're not up for that challenge daily, you should probably think about why you're taking the GMAT in the first place.

I will say to any non-quants (as we seem to be in the minority), DO NOT focus only on the quant. It is important to get your quant score up if you want to score 700+ and no doubt there are gains to be had there, but I think you can probably distinguish yourself more on this exam through a high verbal score. The distribution of verbal vs quant scores bears this out. I think this point actually applies no matter where your strength is; if you can get your stronger section absolutely nailed down it gives you a lot of latitude to focus on where your weakness is, and makes for a much more relaxed exam day if you're confident you have one of the sections under control.

I don't think I need to say too much about exam day, just do what you need to do and get there early. As evidenced by my scores, I found the GMAC quant to be easier that MGMAT (at least in the way I scored, it did not necessarily seem that way at that time). Verbal was a bit all over the place; I found the GMAC practice test verbal to be similar to perhaps slightly easier than MGMAT (CR I definitely found to be clearer on GMAC) but on the official test I thought the verbal was more difficult than what I had seen in the GMAC practice tests (probably because RC's were longer and on more esoteric topics). Obviously I wouldn't count on getting a higher score with GMAC than MGMAT but I would say MGMAT puts you in a good place and I'd be surprised if anyone scored lower on their official than they did on the Manhattan CATs.

I think that about covers it, happy to answer any questions and good luck all.

STL

Congrats)) Very nice article. Can you compare SC of mgmat and real exam? I agree that CR in manhattan is not so clear and some reading comprehension answers are controversial. I scored V40 in manhattan with one mistake in SC, so do you think I will be able to score more in official one with the same number of mistakes in SC?

Did you mean Manhattan?

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Yes, I mean manhattan

I would really not count on scoring differences between Manhattan and the actual GMAT. I was confident that the difficulty of MGMAT would mean that my last two MGMAT scores should be the lower range of possible GMAT scores but I think it is very dependent on the particular test, topic of RC paragraphs etc. I did not notice any material difference in SC between the two tests. It's a very dangerous mental trap to fall into allowing yourself to assume that you will score better on the GMAT than MGMAT CATs so I tried as much as possible to avoid that.

Congrats on an excellent score and thank you for an entertaining yet practical post! That moment at the 2 minute mark when you're thinking "Dude, I totally should be able to answer this question...wait what? It's 3 minutes already and I still don't have an answer?"

If at all possible, would you care to comment on the following:

1. During your prep, did you use the OG at all? And if you did, how would you rate the OG's (harder) questions, in terms of difficulty, as compared to those that you got on the actual test?

2. You mentioned that MGMT was on average more difficult than the actual test. Were you referring to the MGMT CAT questions? Or were you also referring to the questions they have in their books and question banks?

I've about 8 weeks till the test (I've completed content thus far). I'm using the OG currently and wondering if I should supplement MGMT material based on your post.

Avi

Avi-

1) I used the OG throughout, Manhattan's online course uses OG questions as a follow up to ram home the points made in their lessons. I think they are fairly representative of the actual GMAT, but there is such a range of 'hard' questions it is difficult to really say. I actually ran out of studying time and didn't finish all the questions in the OG and didn't touch the OG verbal or OG quant. I would say that the GMAC official practice exams are as close as you'll get to a representation of the real thing.

2) Yes I was referring to MGMAT CAT questions. For the most part all other questions they use are OG questions. The questions from the books vary in difficulty/structure and are hard to compare. I didn't make it to the question banks either so can't really comment on those.

I would say the OG guides are a worthwhile investment. They can be purchased on Amazon relatively inexpensively as a group or individually if there is something specific you want to work on. There are certainly some good strategies in there and their explanations are much clearer than the OG. They also identify the questions from the OG that are relevant to each subtopic, which really helped me nail down where my strengths/weaknesses were.

Good luck

Very inspiring story indeed. I am badly in need of reading such accounts to improve my morale and prepare myself for the next 1 month to come.