I just Beat The GMAT!

Yes, this is not one of those success stories where the GMAT is beaten in 2 weeks, 1 month or even 3 months. It took me almost a year from my first attempt to reach my target score. It took a lot of hard work, time and $. My motto during the preparation was taken from the italian training ship Vespucci: "It is not those who start but those who have the perseverance to finish" (tried to translate to the best of my abilities).

1st Attempt
My first attempt was a year ago - end of Sept 2012 and it did not go as I expected. A 570 (Q47 V23) that shattered all my self-esteem. The preparation for that exam was very approximate and my somehow good quant skills tricked me into thinking I was ready. As seen in many posts here, the GMAT is not a 100mt race, it's a marathon and you have to be prepared for the whole duration of it. Lesson number one for me: There is no shortcut to this exam. From this point on I knew it would require extensive efforts to achieve my target score.
I was studying on and off for the next 4 months. Since I saw no real progress, I decided to take a preparation course. There was the second lesson for me: Admit my limits and use a professional service. This helped a lot in closing the verbal gap. Additional steps that helped with the verbal part were: reading a lot of recommended magazines/books; forcing myself to speed-up the reading process; trying to achieve active reading even on "non-interesting" pieces; trying different approaches on all types of verbal questions (i.e. RC - taking notes while reading - found out the one that worked better for me was to take notes after reading a whole paragraph; CR - write down only the conclusion).

During the preparation i used the following resources:
MGMAT - all 8 books + Advanced Quant
OG13
OG - Verbal review 2nd edition
Beatthegmat - daily verbal question
Ron's videos
7 MGMAT Cats
2 GMATPrep Cats
The 9 Cats were very helpful in a lot of ways: Build-up stamina; Provide insights on my weaknesses; Correct any timing problems.

The day of the exam
On the day of the exam, I did what most people in this forum would not do - get to the testing centre only 10' before the exam without even having had breakfast. Luckily, I was allowed to have a bite before going in. During the test, as on the 9 previous cats, the first hour served as a warm-up. Essay was relatively easy as I could relate to the argument. IR, as some people have mentioned in the forum, is easier than MGMAT IR. Following everyone's advice, I took my 8 min break and used 10 of them. Went back to quant and the time had already started. Here is my best piece of advice to all: Timing has to be on point. I finished quant with 12 min to spare and used the additional minutes to calm myself. Considering the amount of time left and the score on my previous cats, I think I left 20pts on the quant section. However, this allowed me to attack the verbal section with almost 20' of relaxing time - a luxury for this exam. This time was also useful to organize the notebook for the verbal section - usually I use two pages for verbal: 1 allocated to SC (1/4 page)and RC (3/4 page) and 1 allocated to CR (16 rectangles with ABCDE on the top-left side). On the verbal, I did get 4RC questions and this is the only part I remember
At the end of my marathon the 710 magic number appeared on the screen I've read multiple times people describing this particular moment and it was the same sensation - I almost jumped off the seat. Yesterday went out to celebrate and today I'm here to share my story. Hopefully you enjoy it and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Hi,

It is really an inspiring story that would motivate others.

Please share the books referred by you for CR and any particular strategies that would be helpful.

Hi,

Thank you for the kind words. I used mostly the MGMAT CR along with Ron's videos. As mentioned before I tried different approaches to each type of question on the test. For CR in particular, I tried writing down every sentence (with abbreviations) in my own words, not taking any notes at all and writing down the conclusion. This last method seemed to be the most beneficial for me as it did not take too much time and still gave me a good level of understanding the argument. The format that I used the most was "Concl. b/c premise/s". The questions that I had the most trouble with were assumption and inference questions. On assumption questions I tried to keep in mind three details: 1 - it is necessary! 2 - use the negation technique 3 - assumptions can make the argument stronger or defend it from attacks.
Hope this small details will help.

congrats!!!!!..wat prep course did u sign in for?

Hi Red217,

Thank you! I used the Manhattan GMAT in person classes (9 sessions). If you need to focus only on the verbal part, I would suggest to look for other test prep classes. The Manhattan GMAT has an excellent program, but it's more for students who need a well rounded preparation. In retrospect I would've chosen a different prep course.

oh great. i do have the mgmat guides and currently i am going through the quant guides, thats the area where i need most improvement.
i enrolled into veritas live online couse but unfortunately did not find it much helpful. recently ive heard empower gmat is good.
ill have to figure out which one to go for.

thanks

Hi, It looks like you were in a similar situation as i am in right now. even i also got the same score (570) in my first attempt. Are you from india? can you please send me your contact information? Please email me your contact # to [email protected]. I would like to have a personal talk with you regarding your score improvement. Thanks in advance.

-J

V23 to V39 is a long journey. Well done!

Thank you sureshcpa. It was the highest score I ever got on the verbal section. In the previous 9 CATs I had reached v38, averaging v35. I guess the 20' of downtime between the quant and verbal section helped me concentrate more.