I just Beat The GMAT!

hullo! official scores in - 6.0 AWA! oh hell yeah!

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one thing ive learned through mgmat is that its not the answers that are important, but the process in which you get the answer.
when there are OG problems i see again, there are three things i want to make sure of:
1. do i know why every wrong answer is wrong?
2. double check for tricks and short cuts.
3. if something in the stem was changed, would i still know how to solve the problem? this is something they did a lot in the mgmat classes. they take an OG problem and change it slightly, (change a pos int to a neg int, use fractions, zero, etc.) and then it becomes not about the answer but about the make-up of the question.
if you can do those three for an OG problem, youre done with it - and youll be able to solve anything even similar to it on the real test.

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10+ hours a day. i didnt break down what i needed to do by the hour, just by the day. and it was never 10 hours of just solving questions. that wouldnt help anyone. the biggest chunk of time went to actually following the mgmat curriculum - reading the books and solving the problems, watching the 3 hour classes, rereading things i didnt fully understand, and then it was solving problems. and i would do easy/medium/hard ones every day from every type of problem... so there was enough non-difficult stuff in there to keep it "fun". and for the problems i got wrong, i spent a good 5 to 10 minutes on them to make sure i knew it in and out.

that said, it should be noted that such a day is a high-focus day. when you dont have friends or facebook, you get bored. hence wearing a ballgown dress around the house and decorating my GMAT cave under the dining room table. i had to take it step by step. the daily schedule i made was tinkered with throughout the day, changed, modified, scrapped entirely - some days i was mentally tired and couldnt look at my books - and, instead, ran away to take a long, long bath. other days i wanted to make love to them because they made me feel so smart. some days, i really couldnt think so i just watched bollywood movies and played farmville ALL DAY, making up the work little by little over the next three days. take it day by day. when things got bad, i got back onto the forums and read all the great posts to encourage myself.

you know yourself best - listen to what your body and mind says. and when its time to study, FOCUS. dont waste your time half-assing it. either you are focused or you walk away from the work and come back in fifteen minutes when you are ready. you should have only two types of modes: high-focus or decompressing. if you dont feel yourself ALL there, go smoke a cigarette, take a nap, take a shower, eat a snack, watch an episode of glee (i watched all the episodes while in the gmat cave), stay away from GMAT stuff until youve fully recharged. then go for it.

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CRs: CRs were hell for me. even after i went through all the mgmat material, i didnt really grasp CRs until maybe doing 75% of all the OG CR problems. and the only reason why i started to understand what was going on was because i had just done so many and reviewed so many and gone over WHY each wrong answer was wrong so many times. this was the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place - and it happened about 5 days before i went to take the test.

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mgmat cat verbal: ill attached the pictures of my verbal sections because i dont know exactly what youre looking for.

(screenshots moved to this entry)

Oh wow thanks !!..this is really helpful..I can actually compare the progress now with how a native approaches a verbal section.!

What I see is you are giving very little time in RC reading i guess maybe max 1.5 mins how are you giving 1.5 mins to some plus 60 line passages!......and all the CR are below 1.50 mins!.This is actually how one should do the verbal i guess...I'm still stuck at 32-34-32-34 and I know now that verbal makes or break a proper GMAT score!

I'm getting better at SC with some practice but still loosing time on CR prob 3:00 to 2:00 min .(MGCAT CR are also so %^# weird)..did you use any marking as you go, checking or crossing or just randomly selected answers without noting anything down...when i go by ticking correct or incorrect I usually get 4 or 3 questions wrong in the end due to lack of time. total 12 or 14 wrong.

I have practically used up all OG12 and practically remember the answers even...so guess its not much useful at the moment.iam hell bent with MGMAT CAT's though..have to bring the verbal above 40 here!!

...gown-- bollywood movies!..hehe

i wouldnt say that im a traditional RC solver or verbal gmat taker - i speed read. and ive been doing it for most of my life naturally.
even in the 1.5 minutes for a CR problem, ive probably read the passage and all the answer choices at least 3 times. including written any notes that i feel may be necessary (very rare).

for all problems (especially verbal), i start from the top and cross out as i go along. this has been VERY important in saving time. and i only cross out once i know that it is definitely the wrong answer. i also always had about 10 minutes left over in the verbal section for every practice test ive ever taken. so i probably cant really help you with pointers because theres so much i do without being "taught" it or having to "practice" a method... =[

another thing...for just 5 wrong (of 700-800 level) you get 42....so ppl who get 47..do they get less than 5 like 2 or 3 wrong??

shrug. no idea how that works.

as requested by aslan, the quant sections:

(screenshots moved to this entry)

for those who need some pacing guidance on the test.
mgmat includes a frikken stopwatch with their materials.
timing is THAT important. see my CAT #3 to see how important.
anyway. this is something mgmat teaches to help with time management.
you memorize it and write it down on your scrap during the test.
this was super important for me.
i wrote this down every time i started a new scrap page.
if i was ahead, i gave myself an extra minute to solve a tricky problem or to reread the answer choices.
if i was behind, i made an educated guess or limited myself to 1.5 minutes max

at what time you should be at around what question:

QUANT SECTION
time remaining - question you should be at (its multiples of 7+1)
1:15 #1-2
1:00 #7-8
0:45 #14-15
0:30 #21-22
0:15 #28-29

VERBAL SECTION
time remaining - question you should be at (its multiples of 8+1)
1:15 #1-2
1:00 #8-9
0:45 #16-17
0:30 #24-25
0:15 #32-33[/url]

Hey Congrats!!! I am really happy for your awesome achievement! I was wondering what advice do you give in regards to studying for SC? It seems to be my worst section by FAR and I just don't know what I should do to get better. In addition, was wondering if you could share the error log file you got from MGMAT.

not sure if you read the previous posts in this thread but i dont have much advice to give people on the verbal section... except for one thing: use the mgmat guides. the SC guide they make is phenomenal.

as mentioned previously, ive always been a grammar nazi, so SCs were always my easiest type of problem out of the entire test.

hey @extrapages - congrats on your hard work!
one thing - your test snapshots seem to be cut off at question 17 and jump to 32 or a higher #.
could you please provide me the one for Verbal cat6.

Thanks a ton!

@sashish007
not really sure what you mean... i see all the screenshots with every question intact.

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after im done with these apps, i promise to come back and clean up that first post. i know its kind of all over the place but i was just so excited and still high off my score. my apologies. will return to make it more useful!

extrapages wrote:@sashish007
not really sure what you mean... i see all the screenshots with every question intact.

for instance, in the snapshot for mgmat cat 6 quant (Q46 720) - after question #13 DS i see question # 28 PS, i.e. 14-27 are not visible in the image.

just trying to get a feel of the percentile progression.

hmm! took a look, and you're right...!
are they ALL like that?
let me retake those screenshots.

ooookay - so here are the corrected screenshots for all 6 CATs.
hope it helps. still not sure how it does - id rather study than use the time spent on looking over someone else's scores, but to each their own.

@extrapages - thanks! that was nice of you

i wasn't expecting you to re-paste, but just wanted to build confidence in MGMAT cats when compared with Gprep cats as i was seeing large variations in scoring on both.

sorry, but engineer by birth.

extrapages wrote:ooookay - so here are the corrected screenshots for all 6 CATs.
hope it helps. still not sure how it does - id rather study than use the time spent on looking over someone else's scores, but to each their own.

agreed, and i like your attitude!

Hey Extrapages,

can you tell me why did u choose the Case Western Reserve MBA as i got the admission from this scholl and i am deciding whether to join or not.


Thanks...