I have not been active paricipant on this forum, but I have always drawn inspiration from reading positive de-briefs. So here goes my contribution....
The first time I thought of taking GMAT was in 2005. I had bought couple of books and took one practice PowerPrep too. But it was not meant to be then. My personal life took a nosedive. Alcohol and cigarettes took over pushing out GMAT prep.
Long story short..it took me 3 long years to pick myself up and dust myself up to fight again...
This kaiser commercial used to be my inspiration...
Things are looking up...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7O693mzp6M
I started prepping for GMAT around 4 months ago, spending 1-2 hours daily including weekends. I never spent more than 4 hours, except on the days I took test, and I took plenty of them (~15).
A lot has been written of lot of tests and books, but I would like to talk about GMATprep and OG, the most important ones.
OG11 and OG10 are excellent books that help to tune your ways of thinking to GMAT ways. I made a flashcard for each and every problem I got wrong. I didn't document the problem itself, but my thinking process that took me to the wrong answer. After doing lot of practice problems, you will see a pattern. Recognize this pattern and mend ways.
For example, in SC(weakest area) I found that I used to get bogged down too much into finding errors as per the rules, and consequently loose sight of the gist of the sentence. For hard clarity errors, its a must that you find the SUBJECT and MAIN VERB of the sentence. In fact, these should be the first things that you should look for.
Do not neglect Quant.I practiced lot of hard Quant problems in last couple of days before the test.
In my experience, GMAT problems are not computationally intensive. All hard problems have a clever way of solving them. Instead of directly jumping in to equations, think for few secs about the best approach to the problem, especially the hard ones.
GMATprep:
* Thanks to the advice of many people here, I took GMATprep 4 times. Please do that. This will help you understand the way GMAT test behaves. GMAT represents an accumulated knowledge about lot of people like us...it knows a lot about you. So you have to know it intimately. In fact, I had gotten to know the test so well, that I knew my 7-8 question will be a Hard DS and so will 20-21st question. It turned exactly the same way on actual GMAT.
*I found GMATprep harder than actual GMAT, especially SC and DS. I breezed thru my actual GMAT. That never happened during GMATprep. So if you are making lot of SC mistakes on GMATprep, don't fret. CR difficulty level seemed similar. RC was probably bit tougher in actual GMAR.
Practice Test scores:
PowerPrep 1: 690 (almost no preparation)
MGMAT: scores ranged from 690 to 750. I had scored 780 on last two tests, but they are very easy.
Kaplan diagnostic in the book: 700
Kaplan 2005: 640-660
GMATprep: I:710(Q49 V38), II:720(Q50, V37). Retakes: 770 and 790 respectively.
Actual GMAT: 760 (Q50, V41)
Actual Test:
* My actual test day experience was the best of all practice tests I had taken. I didn't feel drained at the end of the test at all.
Pre-plan the way you want do things before the test. My test was at 2PM.
I had relatively heavy protein-shake breakfast;protein provides you energy for longer periods. Just 3 hours before the exam, I had carb-rich lunch and then a coffee 30 mins before test. I had coffee during the breaks too (Take the breaks!). All this kept my away from energy starvation, especially at the end of exam. Listened to my favorite music(heavy metal) that let me pent-up nervous energy out.
*The seat height was at perfect level, monitors were excellent and the ear-plugs+headphones worked perfectly. Overall nice testing experiences.
*Lot of space for scratch work. The markers are not of very qood quality though.
*Do not think about how you are doing during the test. I followed this motto until the last 10 questions on verbal and then I made that mistake. My 31st question was RC and suddenly I realised that this is my only 3rd passage(which was not true, it was actually 4th), so I got little tensed thinking that I have two passages in last 10 questins. Because of this, I screwed-up that passage. If I had not thought about it, my verbal score would have been definetly little better.
*I saw couple of unusual probability questions(concepts of geometry in probability question, independent events etc). Probability is my strong point, so I navigated thru them easily.
*Lot of Assumption questions on CR+1-bold-faced question. Please use powerscore to get handle of hard assumption and method of reasoning questions. I did not find other chapters in powerscore as useful.
One more word for those who are little scared of standardised tests: know the beast, and you shall tame it. I didn't score this good in my previous standardised test,GRE. So don't consider your peformance on previous tests.
AWA:
I did not prepare for essays and I scored only 4.0. I'm not a disciplined writer who sticks to a specific format and message;I'm very prone to rhetorical flourish and going off message....and I paid the price.
This is one big concern for me right now. I dont know how much this will weigh against me in my application.
Thanks for reading
Ashish
The first time I thought of taking GMAT was in 2005. I had bought couple of books and took one practice PowerPrep too. But it was not meant to be then. My personal life took a nosedive. Alcohol and cigarettes took over pushing out GMAT prep.
Long story short..it took me 3 long years to pick myself up and dust myself up to fight again...
This kaiser commercial used to be my inspiration...
Things are looking up...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7O693mzp6M
I started prepping for GMAT around 4 months ago, spending 1-2 hours daily including weekends. I never spent more than 4 hours, except on the days I took test, and I took plenty of them (~15).
A lot has been written of lot of tests and books, but I would like to talk about GMATprep and OG, the most important ones.
OG11 and OG10 are excellent books that help to tune your ways of thinking to GMAT ways. I made a flashcard for each and every problem I got wrong. I didn't document the problem itself, but my thinking process that took me to the wrong answer. After doing lot of practice problems, you will see a pattern. Recognize this pattern and mend ways.
For example, in SC(weakest area) I found that I used to get bogged down too much into finding errors as per the rules, and consequently loose sight of the gist of the sentence. For hard clarity errors, its a must that you find the SUBJECT and MAIN VERB of the sentence. In fact, these should be the first things that you should look for.
Do not neglect Quant.I practiced lot of hard Quant problems in last couple of days before the test.
In my experience, GMAT problems are not computationally intensive. All hard problems have a clever way of solving them. Instead of directly jumping in to equations, think for few secs about the best approach to the problem, especially the hard ones.
GMATprep:
* Thanks to the advice of many people here, I took GMATprep 4 times. Please do that. This will help you understand the way GMAT test behaves. GMAT represents an accumulated knowledge about lot of people like us...it knows a lot about you. So you have to know it intimately. In fact, I had gotten to know the test so well, that I knew my 7-8 question will be a Hard DS and so will 20-21st question. It turned exactly the same way on actual GMAT.
*I found GMATprep harder than actual GMAT, especially SC and DS. I breezed thru my actual GMAT. That never happened during GMATprep. So if you are making lot of SC mistakes on GMATprep, don't fret. CR difficulty level seemed similar. RC was probably bit tougher in actual GMAR.
Practice Test scores:
PowerPrep 1: 690 (almost no preparation)
MGMAT: scores ranged from 690 to 750. I had scored 780 on last two tests, but they are very easy.
Kaplan diagnostic in the book: 700
Kaplan 2005: 640-660
GMATprep: I:710(Q49 V38), II:720(Q50, V37). Retakes: 770 and 790 respectively.
Actual GMAT: 760 (Q50, V41)
Actual Test:
* My actual test day experience was the best of all practice tests I had taken. I didn't feel drained at the end of the test at all.
Pre-plan the way you want do things before the test. My test was at 2PM.
I had relatively heavy protein-shake breakfast;protein provides you energy for longer periods. Just 3 hours before the exam, I had carb-rich lunch and then a coffee 30 mins before test. I had coffee during the breaks too (Take the breaks!). All this kept my away from energy starvation, especially at the end of exam. Listened to my favorite music(heavy metal) that let me pent-up nervous energy out.
*The seat height was at perfect level, monitors were excellent and the ear-plugs+headphones worked perfectly. Overall nice testing experiences.
*Lot of space for scratch work. The markers are not of very qood quality though.
*Do not think about how you are doing during the test. I followed this motto until the last 10 questions on verbal and then I made that mistake. My 31st question was RC and suddenly I realised that this is my only 3rd passage(which was not true, it was actually 4th), so I got little tensed thinking that I have two passages in last 10 questins. Because of this, I screwed-up that passage. If I had not thought about it, my verbal score would have been definetly little better.
*I saw couple of unusual probability questions(concepts of geometry in probability question, independent events etc). Probability is my strong point, so I navigated thru them easily.
*Lot of Assumption questions on CR+1-bold-faced question. Please use powerscore to get handle of hard assumption and method of reasoning questions. I did not find other chapters in powerscore as useful.
One more word for those who are little scared of standardised tests: know the beast, and you shall tame it. I didn't score this good in my previous standardised test,GRE. So don't consider your peformance on previous tests.
AWA:
I did not prepare for essays and I scored only 4.0. I'm not a disciplined writer who sticks to a specific format and message;I'm very prone to rhetorical flourish and going off message....and I paid the price.
This is one big concern for me right now. I dont know how much this will weigh against me in my application.
Thanks for reading
Ashish
