I just Beat The GMAT!

Hello Everyone,

I just took the GMAT today and I feel that I should write about my experience since I used this forum extensively during my preparation. This might be a little long please bare with me

Background: Undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering. I have five years of consulting experience. I took the GMAT a few years ago and scored a 590.

Two years ago when I started to study I took Kaplan GMAT prep. I found that the prep for Kaplan was useless. The teacher probably scored well on the GMAT but she couldn't convey the topics and theory properly. She just read from her course book most of the time. Further, the quality of the prep classes, in part, in my opinion (no matter which one you take), is dependent on the kinds of students which comprise the course. If you have students with a varied background and skill set your course will go slowly and may cover redundant material for those who know the basic concepts. Although my undergraduate major was engineering I had not worked a math problem since I left school 3 years back and working in consulting does not really hone your math or verbal skills.

I lost my job 2 months ago so felt it best to start studying for the dreaded GMAT again. This time around, again, I took a prep course (powerscore). The course started out slow because of the mix of students in the class but the material was better. Furthermore the teacher was outstanding he would meet after class to answer questions and took a genuine interest in our work. While taking the course I ordered the manhattan GMAT 8 book set. Along with the OG and the supplementary OG guides the Manhattan books were essential!!! While the course honed my basic skills I felt I was still missing some theory. I studied 6-8 hours a day for 2 months and took some of the weekends off in the beginning.

I felt that the MGMAT NUMBER PROPERTIES book and SENTENCE CORRECTION book was essential. The MGMAT inequalities book and the world problem book was also very helpful. On top of that I worked every question in the OG (including CR and RC) as well as the supplementary OG verbal and math book. Towards the end of my study I started taking a GMAT every other day except weekends. I took two MGMAT tests which I felt were a little useless. The math was hard (though their scaling makes up for it)! I got a 710 on test one and 650 on test 2. I felt the verbal was far too easy as well. I decided at that point to stick with the GMAT Prep 1 and 2. GMAT prep1 about 4 weeks ago was a 650 (i think 44Q 35V). I took that test two weeks later after going through the MGMAT sentence correction book and number prop book and scored a 690. I think taking the gmat prep twice is fine after that its really skewed though for the most part you get new questions. The third time I took prep1 I got a 760. Last friday I took GMAT prep 2 and scored a 680. I took GMAT prep 2 again this week and got a 710 (48Q 40V). Meanwhile the days in between I reviewed my test errors and tried to learn from them. I felt that an area I was still lagging behind in was the DS weighted avg problems. Fortunately it is well covered online in this forum and the MGMAT forum.

The last few days I was stressing about how accurate the GMAT prep is when compared to the actual GMAT. Let me tell you it is a really really good indicator. Today taking the GMAT I felt the problems were harder than the GMAT prep. I don't know if that is just perception or not but then I figured that 10 questions or so in each section are experimental. Getting my score today was bitter sweet I got a 48q and 38V. I felt I could have gotten a 40V as that is what I scored in the GMAT prep which may have given me 10 more points. I feel that in the end I was still weak on my SC! Overall I am happy with the score and am hoping that it will help strengthen my application to schools.

I think, that 590 to 700 is a big improvement. The GMAT is not about how smart you are it's about how hard you work and how much you practice. Believe me, in the last two years I have not gotten any smarter. Anyone can score well on the GMAT! The truth is that someone who smart may have to study for 2 months straight to get a 700 while a very smart person may have to only study 3 weeks to get a 700+ score.

I know this is a long debrief but I wanted to thank everyone for contributing to this forum. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

I would like to congratulate you and wish u best for your applications!!!!


I have one question, how much close(similar) were the questions to OG-12?
Was difficulty same overall or different big time?

Cheers!!

Thank you! I think that the OG questions are far easier than the GMAT. However it is a good base to start your prep so you know you have your basics down. The GMAT prep tests have questions of similar difficulty. Take the GMAT prep tests 3 or 4 times (but don't put much stock into the score the third or fourth time you take it as it will be skewed). By taking it so many times you will get quite a few new questions and hopefully because you got the repeat questions right the new questions be the harder ones in the pool.

Thanks a lot!

One more question, so which is the best material for verbal to bank on, in order to gauge the difficulty level of questions thrown at us by GMAT?

For the verbal I did all of the OG questions including CR and RC as well as the purple supplementary book. My CR and RC were about 99% correct. My biggest issue was sentence correction. In order to do better on SC get the Manhattan GMAT book. Read it through but more than anything go through all the idioms in the latter part for the book. Most of the GMAT questions I believe are based on idiomatic expression. You will see that even in the GMAT prep that the questions are based on idioms. If I were to do it again I would take the time to memorize all the idioms that are listed in the mgmat book.

wow great score! how did you prepare for quant and verbal? what books did you use?

I studied all the MGMAT books primarily number props and sentence correction. Also I did all the OG's the maroon book, green, and purple.

Congrats Man....That's a big improvement

Congratulations. That's a big improvement.

What was your strategy for RC ? Time taken to read the short and long passage ? Any tips you would like to share for RC ?

Thanks everyone! RC wasn't really too much of an issue for me for the most part I would get them all right less 1 or 2. To try and improve I went through all the reading passages and questions in the OG and the purple book. Usually I take a few notes on every paragraph so I know that I fully understand what the author is saying and it also helps me remember the essays when I go through questions.

thanks for sharing and congrats! i did the mgmat as well but i also took the 9 week course. i took the gmat last weekend, and did terrible on the quant. i do feel that number properties is the essential guide.

what test do you recommend to better gauge my score? i took a practice test the same week and there was a huge difference, for the worse.

Congrats! I'm in a similar situation. I took the GMAT in May 2010 and scored a 600. I also took the Kaplan course, which I felt was not that helpful. I don't think the homework was useful as it doesn't teach you the fundamentals. I began studying again in early August and am using the 8 Manhattan GMAT strategy guides (very good), the OG, and supplements. I recently scored a 670 on a Kaplan CAT exam, so I feel like I'm making progress. I'm taking the test in a month, so just wanted to get your advice on how you spent the last few weeks preparing. I work so I can't study for more than a couple hours a night during the week. Thanks!

For the last few weeks I just took practice tests. Can you take three tests a week? I took the MGMAT tests (1 and 2) and then Gmat prep a few times. I found the Gmat Prep to be slightly more helpful.

MCBROWN, to gauge your scores take the GMAT prep at least once. 2nd can you work through the OG quant with out issues?

Congratulations and impressive improvement from 590 to 700, I have a 620 and taking the GMAT in 4 weeks.....My Verbal scores were very good, I have been studying Manhattan GMAT Quant books (Number Proper, Equations, and Word Translations) for the past month and been doing OG 10 and 12 problems while doing Kaplan and Manhattan Practice tests intermittantly. Do you think I can bump up my score to around 680-700?