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 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.
