Hey All,
I just finished writing the GMAT and im pretty pleased with my 640 Score (75% Percentile).
The breakdown was Quant 45 (72%) and Verbal 33 (66%).
Dana advised me to do a baseline GMAT prep in Late May and I recieved only a 490, with reasonable Quant and low Verbal. It became evident to me that I need to work on my verbal.
Books I used over that 10week period... OG, Kaplan Math Review, Kaplan Verbal Review, Manhattan SC & RC, PowerScore CR. ... as you can see I put a lot of work on the verbal side and it paid off as I increased my verbal mark from around 20 to 33 on the actual.
In the final 2 weeks leading up to today I score between 620 and 650 on the 2nd GMAT prep and 5 Manhattan prep exams. Review Review Review those Manhattan exam explainations whether you get them right or wrong. I highly highly recommend Manhattan prep exams, tho I will not advocate it over others that I have not tried.
I greatly increased my SC ability... tho I actually attribute the increase to me starting a guide of common GMAT comparisons (that are given in the OG and in the Manhattan prep exam explainations). For example... I memorized things like "not only A but also B" ... "neither Q or Y, nor J", "not by R... but by P", "being" is a signal for redundant, considered typically stands alone with no "to be" or "as", "rooted in X and Y" .... etc etc..... this greatly improved my speed and accuracy. The reason for this is since I knew the root of how a sentence should look, when I did a SC question, I immediately eliminated answer choices that did not fit the "mold". Quite frequently I would eliminate 2 or 3 choices, and be left with 2 possibilties... which only then I actually read the 2 possibilites.
For CR ..... this can only be improved by practice and recognizing patterns in questions. You must find the argument in a question. 75% of the time the correct answer deals with the argument/critic of the question steam.
RC ... Was never good at this, and was always a slow reader... I did a strategy where I completely guessed on the 3rd passage (not even reading the essay and guessed on the 3-4 questions associated with it). This allowed me to dedicate more time to attempting to max out my SC and CR questions throughout the entire exam. This saved me roughly 7-8 mins overall to ensure I performed strongly on other aspects of the test. I would only advocate this strategy if you not looking for 90 Percentile and your extremely weak on RC and much better on SC and CR.
AWA .... if you finish writing your essays and you have a bit of time left before the 30min ticker ends... dont click next, use that extra time to start writing notes on your scratch pad for quants or helpful tips for you to use on your verbal. For example I wrote down a couple relationships that assisted me both on Quants and Verbal Sections.
Quants.... I find that when dealing with HARD questions and simulateously your falling behind on time... it pays more to blindly guess on the HARD PS question then the HARD DS question. HARD PS question answer choices typically vary only slightly (an example is like .... a) 16 b) 16 + 16(root2) c) 8 + 32(root2) d) 16(root2) e) 8 + 3(root3) ) .... whereas a DS follows the typical answers... and you could narrow down a few answer choices even if you dont understand the question, or 1 or both given statements..... maybe you can narrow it down to the "A/D" or "B/C/E" grouping.
The rush to complete the GMAT asap was because, the B-School I applied to "late" (July 2010) already has my entire application aside from a GMAT score, and they asked me to email them my unofficial GMAT Report for me to possibily enter this September. I had a strong GPA around 3.7 at the same school, good extra-curricular, and I beleive my essay and references was above average.
Any questions, I'll definitely do my best to answer
I just finished writing the GMAT and im pretty pleased with my 640 Score (75% Percentile).
The breakdown was Quant 45 (72%) and Verbal 33 (66%).
Dana advised me to do a baseline GMAT prep in Late May and I recieved only a 490, with reasonable Quant and low Verbal. It became evident to me that I need to work on my verbal.
Books I used over that 10week period... OG, Kaplan Math Review, Kaplan Verbal Review, Manhattan SC & RC, PowerScore CR. ... as you can see I put a lot of work on the verbal side and it paid off as I increased my verbal mark from around 20 to 33 on the actual.
In the final 2 weeks leading up to today I score between 620 and 650 on the 2nd GMAT prep and 5 Manhattan prep exams. Review Review Review those Manhattan exam explainations whether you get them right or wrong. I highly highly recommend Manhattan prep exams, tho I will not advocate it over others that I have not tried.
I greatly increased my SC ability... tho I actually attribute the increase to me starting a guide of common GMAT comparisons (that are given in the OG and in the Manhattan prep exam explainations). For example... I memorized things like "not only A but also B" ... "neither Q or Y, nor J", "not by R... but by P", "being" is a signal for redundant, considered typically stands alone with no "to be" or "as", "rooted in X and Y" .... etc etc..... this greatly improved my speed and accuracy. The reason for this is since I knew the root of how a sentence should look, when I did a SC question, I immediately eliminated answer choices that did not fit the "mold". Quite frequently I would eliminate 2 or 3 choices, and be left with 2 possibilties... which only then I actually read the 2 possibilites.
For CR ..... this can only be improved by practice and recognizing patterns in questions. You must find the argument in a question. 75% of the time the correct answer deals with the argument/critic of the question steam.
RC ... Was never good at this, and was always a slow reader... I did a strategy where I completely guessed on the 3rd passage (not even reading the essay and guessed on the 3-4 questions associated with it). This allowed me to dedicate more time to attempting to max out my SC and CR questions throughout the entire exam. This saved me roughly 7-8 mins overall to ensure I performed strongly on other aspects of the test. I would only advocate this strategy if you not looking for 90 Percentile and your extremely weak on RC and much better on SC and CR.
AWA .... if you finish writing your essays and you have a bit of time left before the 30min ticker ends... dont click next, use that extra time to start writing notes on your scratch pad for quants or helpful tips for you to use on your verbal. For example I wrote down a couple relationships that assisted me both on Quants and Verbal Sections.
Quants.... I find that when dealing with HARD questions and simulateously your falling behind on time... it pays more to blindly guess on the HARD PS question then the HARD DS question. HARD PS question answer choices typically vary only slightly (an example is like .... a) 16 b) 16 + 16(root2) c) 8 + 32(root2) d) 16(root2) e) 8 + 3(root3) ) .... whereas a DS follows the typical answers... and you could narrow down a few answer choices even if you dont understand the question, or 1 or both given statements..... maybe you can narrow it down to the "A/D" or "B/C/E" grouping.
The rush to complete the GMAT asap was because, the B-School I applied to "late" (July 2010) already has my entire application aside from a GMAT score, and they asked me to email them my unofficial GMAT Report for me to possibily enter this September. I had a strong GPA around 3.7 at the same school, good extra-curricular, and I beleive my essay and references was above average.
Any questions, I'll definitely do my best to answer
Last edited by The Duke on Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
