Beat The GMAT

hemantsood · Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 2:24 pm Post subject: Yes, I did it !!! 760(Q50, V42)

Hey Guys,

I can't tell you how long I waited to start a thread in this section. Finally I got my moment Smile

, but before I write anything I want to thank Logitech and Lee(Mayonnai5e) and a special thank to Jose( Knewton.com)

This was my second attempt. In my first attempt I scored dismal 570(Q49, V19) on 08/29/08. It would still take some time to forget that day. I will not say that I was not prepared earlier but there was something else that let me down. I was struggling during verbal part, somehow I wanted my test to get over. And finally when it got over it left me with a score of 570 I was so depressed during that I never wanted to talk about it. It took me 4 months to get over it and here came the New Year.

One of my New Year resolutions was to get more than 720 in GMAT with more than 85+ percentile in both the sections. I started my prep again. Since I wanted to check where I stand so I tried GMAT prep 1. I scored 600(Q37, V25), I hope you can understand what my situation would be after seeing that score, but somehow I controlled myself. I started my preparation again. This time I focused only on RC. I never had any trouble in reading, but there was a mental block somewhere that this section is not for me.

I did most of the passages of LSAT and those were so gruesome that GMAT passages look relatively easy in front of them. Months went by and I kept on preparing for GMAT. I remember during March I was fed up with my preparation and I felt GMAT is not my cup of tea. However, somehow I managed to motivate myself thru this bad time. This was time when I stumbled upon soni's blog, which also served as motivation for me. I never wanted GMAT to be the rejection criterion in application process.

Here came April'09 and I told myself that time has come to try my skills at GMAT prep software, but then on the second thought I persuaded myself to keep it for the last month. My plan from April' 09 was to focus on tests on weekends and prepare whatever was possible on weekdays with one day off.
I planned that I will schedule GMAT once I score 3 continuous 700 scores. With this thought I started with MGMAT tests (These were the only tests that I felt close to GMAT).

MGMAT 1-620(Q47, V29) -04/25/09
MGMAT 2-640(Q48, V31) -05/10/09
MGMAT 3-700(Q51, V35) -05/16/09
MGMAT 4-700(Q51, V35) -05/23/09
Prep1 -730(Q51, V38)-05/30/09
MGMAT 5-730(Q50, V40) -05/31/09
05/31 was the day when I booked for real GMAT. After this day I gave all my exams in library to get a hang of giving test in public place.

Prep2 - 710(Q51, V34)-06/06/09�There was reason for low score here.
Prep2 Retake- 760(Q51, V40)-06/13/09
Prep1Retake-770(Q50, V44)- 06/20/09( For the first time mistakes in verbal were less than Quanta)

Final GMAT 760(Q50, V42)-06/27/09
Q- 94 percentile
V-95 percentile
Overall- 99 percentile Wink

About the exam:
Today questions were really good specially. In RC I got 4 passages total; 2 were really big with too much complexity while moderate one and small one were ok, but still I had to look carefully to find the correct answer. CR was ok more or less like OG 11.

Day before the exam I woke up at 5 am in the morning and reviewed all the questions from MGMAT and GMAT prep. I also reviewed all the questions that I got wrong in GMATclub tests. I tried to sleep early as my test was at 8 am in the morning, but couldn't get sleep whole night.
I remember in Feb'09 my paper test scores were between 650 and 680. And I was quite frustrated. I attended webinar with knewton.com where I told my story that somehow I am able to go past 680 and Jose said he doesn't believe that someone can be stagnant at 680 and he asked me join knewton.com. I was seriously thinking about it, but NYC is like 2 hours drive from my place so it was not possible for me. However, his reply really made me think and done the trick for me Smile

( That's why special thanks to Jose Smile

)

I also remember one of my friends who scored 740 couple of years back telling me 2 things
1. He told me I know this does not reflect your true potential and I know next time gonna just flip the first 2 digits. He also gave me example of his friend who scored 660 in his first attempt and a month after 750. This guy is matriculating from NYU.

2. Second thing, which I feel I will remember for long time

He said "Some guys are born geniuses who do not require any study for GMAT and score 780-790, some are lucky like me (he scored 740) while some are like you who have to go through some tough time."
Now, I think that had I gone for just 700 earlier, I wouldn't have achieved this score.

Thanks for reading guys. i know this post in not coherent but this is what came to my mind while writing this post. For any question/clarification I am always here.

mike22629 · Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 7:22 pm Post subject:

Well done my man! Can't do much better than that! Good luck with the applications.

BlindVision · Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 8:30 pm Post subject:

Amazing score & amazing improvement!

You definitely proved that "giving-up" is not an option; achievement is the only option.

bluementor · Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 12:03 am Post subject:

hemant, congratulations and thanks for the inspiring debrief.

best of luck with your applications.

-BM-

aj5105 · Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 1:16 am Post subject:

760 is a great score! Very respectable score! Well done.

Cheers,
AJ

BrianSmith · Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 4:15 am Post subject:

Wow, man - great score!

I'm just starting to take the GMAT seriously now - thanks for showing us it can be done!

AceofSpades · Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 4:47 am Post subject:

Congrats Hemant! 760 is an awesome score. Thanks for sharing your experience with us!

crazy4gmat · Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 10:00 am Post subject:

Your story is really inspiring..Hats off to you.

gmat_dest · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 3:55 am Post subject:

A salute to you , dude....

hoping to repeat something similar...had given 2 months to myself to improve score, 1 month is gone, another 2 go!

dendude · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:14 am Post subject:

Amazing Improvement.
You should be real proud of yourself. Great Show!!
Good luck on your app'ing stage!

nitya34 · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 10:00 am Post subject:

amazing score!!

hope you remember me
we did lots of RCs together in some other forums:oops:
you were always accurate and very fast in grasping LSAT RCs

awesome man!!

760 is 99 percentile:)

indir0ver · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:07 pm Post subject:

570 <==tilted==>750+10 = 760!

Congratulations.

Please shed some light on verbal. Handy tips/tricks appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

varunkh70 · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:51 pm Post subject: Repeating MGMAT tests

Hello!

Could you please let me know if its possible to take the same mgmat cat test more than once(like gmatprep)?

Regards,
Varun

ManSab · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 7:58 pm Post subject:

Congratulations hemantsood..!!!
Very inspiring debrief. I could easily find myself in some of your lines.

hemantsood · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:46 am Post subject: Re: Repeating MGMAT tests

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