4 attempts, an year's struggle and finally got 700 !

Hi All,

I wrote my GMAT exam on 10th Nov 2011 and got 700 (Q-49 & V-36). I would like to thank each and every one of you who shared their GMAT experiences on this forum and helped people like me to achieve the dream score. Special thanks to Eric for creating such a wonderful forum for aspiring b-school candidates. This forum was very useful to me during my GMAT preparation and its even useful now in my applications. I would also like to thank Payal and Rajat of E-gmat team for helping me improve my verbal score from 27 to 36. The e-gmat course proved to be very effective in improving my verbal score. Special thanks to Ron for providing very good insights and sharing useful tips in his study hall. Finally, i would like to thank my GMAT instructor Mr. Nagesh (Quant Faculty of Manhattan Review, Hyderabad) who inspired me to retake the GMAT and gave me very useful tips which helped me in achieving my dream score.

This was my fourth GMAT attempt and was expected to be the last whether or not i got the expected score as i was already vexed with preparing for GMAT since many months. I got 560 in my two attempts in November & December last year.
The main reasons for my low score were :
1. I could not time the test properly
2. I was not using the methods suggested for solving SC & CR. But i used my own strategies to solve these problems
3. I focused on practicing volumes of problems but didn't try to understand what is being tested, how is this tested and what is the strategy to solve the problems.
4. I wasn't perfect with the basics in grammar
5. I didn't practice enough practice tests and questions in OG
6. I just prepared for the last 10 days before the exam
7. I could not identify my areas of weakness and I did not work on it
8. I didn't maintain an error log
9. I practiced only OG 12 for both these attempts and the level of quant was not sufficient for GMAT

Though i purchased 5 MGMAT strategy guides (Number Properties, FDP, SC, CR, RC), i didn't review them completely in my first 2 attempts. In my third attempt, i purchased the other 3 MGMAT strategy guides also and started reviewing them. I spent about 7 days to review these guides as i already reviewed few topics in my earlier attempts. During the same period, i started practicing problems from GMAT sets (old ETS paper based tests). I timed these tests to replicate the actual test scenario and gave the full length tests only for quant (Though verbal was my weak area i thought of strengthening quant first and then move to verbal and this was a big mistake that i made). I finished about 15 to 20 quant sets in few days time and though the questions were repetitive my confidence in quant increased drastically as i was able to solve the problems within 2 mins. With this practice i was also able to identify different types of problems in quant and the method that can be used to solve them.

I was left with only 5 days before the test when i started my preparation for verbal. As i revised the strategy guides a week ago, i was not able to recollect the concepts and had to go through every concept again while solving problems. A key take away here is that we should not study all the concepts first and then start solving the problems. By doing this we tend to forget the concepts and hence we have to refer back to them when solving problems later. I was getting in between 600 to 650 in the practice tests and was planning to reschedule the exam. But, could not do so as i had to submit my score to Babson.(I applied to babson with 560 and was put in waiting list because of low GMAT score). I tried solving few GMAT verbal sets in the last few days but they were not useful as i could not review my mistakes.

I gave my 3 rd attempt on July 5th 2011. To my surprise, most of the questions in quant were of similar model or type that i encountered while practicing GMAT sets. I was able to solve the first 20 questions in quant within 35 mins and was very happy with my progress. But, suddendly i got a difficult question and spent more than 5 mins on it. Then i noticed that i was losing time and will not be able to finish remaining questions. I quickly guessed the next question and then got few easy questions and solved the remaining questions in time. I was left with 4 mins for the last question in quant. I thought that i did good in quant and if i give the same performane in verbal then i can cross 650. But, things turned out to be different, i was able to solve the first 20 questions in time. But spent more time on the next two RC passages and was left with only 10 mins for the last 10 ques in Verbal. I was panicked and was not able to understand what was happening. I quickly guessed the next few questions and completed the test in time. I got a score of 620 (Q-48 , V-27)

I submitted my score to Babson later but I was not selected. The admissions team suggested me to retake GMAT if i could improve my score by 40 to 50 points. i had good academics and profile and always felt that i deserve a score of 700 so i though of giving a final attempt. I booked my slot for Nov 10th 2011 on Oct 10th. I had about a months time for preparation. I took off for 3 weeks and started preparing for the exam. As verbal was my area of weakness, i started preparing for verbal.

Many people say that we have to get more RC questions right though we get SC and CR questions wrong. I practically experienced this in one of my GMAT prep tests where i got only 2 SC and 5 CR right and all the RC questions right and got 28. As my RC strike rate was comparatively good, i started with SC. I used OG 10 for SC and CR problems as i already did OG 12 more than 3 times during the last 3 attempts and most of the answers were known to me. OG 10 has more number of questions and even the variety of questions offered is good. I started solving CR and SC questions 10 at a time and reviewed the answers. I tried to understand what is being tested in the question, why a particular answer was right and why a particular answer was wrong. I maintained an error log for all the mistakes and regularly reviewed the error log before every test to ensure that i don't repeat the same mistake again. But even after doing this my verbal score did not improve much and i was getting only 30 or 31 in my tests.

Just 2 weeks before the test, i found few people recommending e-gmat for verbal on beatthegmat forums. I registered for SC course of E-GMAT. I completed the concepts in 5 days time and then worked on advanced questions and UGE files. The advantage in E-GMAT is that the course starts with basic level and moves to advanced level once you gain proficiency in the basic level. The topics are classified accordingly to the level of difficulty. Another major advantage that i found useful was that audio visual files in the e-gmat course give you a clear picture of the concept and the concept directly sits in your mind whereas in MGMAT strategy guides, all the areas are on the same level and the concepts are not supported by enough examples as most of the examples seem to be pretty easy and not actual GMAT like questions. I strictly followed the e-gmat process for getting maximum results out of the course.

Use the following method to gain effective results:
1. Review a concept
2. Practice few OG questions related to the concept
3. Review your mistakes and make a error log (Preparing an error log is a time taking activity but its worth the effort)
4. Review the concept in which you made mistakes
5. Practice more problems in the areas that you made mistakes in
6. Once you are confident, move on to the next concept
7. Repeat steps 2 to 5

Within 3 days, i was able to observe a drastic change in my way of approach to SC questions. As GMAT SC questions now deal with meaning issues, we have to get a clear idea on what the sentence conveys before approaching the problem and the e-gmat approach for solving SC problems does just this.
1. Understand the meaning of the sentence
2. Identify the errors in the original sentence
3. Eliminate answer choices

Using this approach, i was able to solve most of the SC questions within a minute. I used the excess time for solving CR and RC passages. For CR, i referred powerscore CR bible but it was not that useful though. i referred to few concepts in CR bible, few in MGMAT CR strategy guide and i also enrolled for e-gmat CR course. Though i could not review all the concept files in e-gmat CR course, it helped me a lot in eliminating wrong answer choices and identifying the correct answers.
For RC, i recommend MGMAT RC strategy guide and RON's study halls (Manhattan GMAT) - excellent for identifying main point.

I dedicated the last one week exclusively for practise tests and revising error logs and concepts. I practiced few GMAT prep tests and few MGMAT CAT codes. The quant level in MGMAT tests is quite high and this will prepare you for the tougher ques in GMAT exam. I also suggest to take every test in GMAT prep atleast thrice. The more the number of GMAT prep tests you take, the more new GMAT questions you can explore. This will help you in dealing with questions that you might have not seen earlier.

On the test day - Nov 10th 2011, i was lagging behind time in quant as i wasted more time on few difficult questions. So i guessed few questions and moved on to next questions. This saved me some time for the remaining questions. Key takeaway: Never try to solve every problem in the exam. Some problems cannot be solved in 2mins and in such case, guess and move on. Always have sufficient time for the first 5 questions and the last 5 questions. This will improve your quant score drastically. Also never make consecutive mistakes in quant as this is drop your score drastically.

For verbal, i was in a same situation in the exam - left with 10 mins for 10 questions. But this time as i learned few techniques from e-gmat and could solve the SC ques in less than 1 min, this saved time. I got a six SC questions out of the last 10 ad the remaining 4 were CR. I saved time from SC and used it in CR. Overall my performance was good. I prayed to god that i have to get 700 and finally the screen popped up stating that my score is 700. I was surprised and cannot describe how i felt at that time. All my struggle since the last couple of months paid off. Now, i can relax and apply to b-schools.

I hope this post will be useful to people who are going through the same phase that i went though last year. Never lose hope and try until you succeed.

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