My Performance: 770 (50Q, 46V, 5.5 AWA) taken on 5/16/08
About Me:
Indian Male, born/raised in the US. I went to a top 5 undergrad business school. SAT: 1500, GPA 3:2. My final goal was a 780, but I was aiming at anything above a 750 (based on my practice exams)
My Strategy:
I started my preparation for the GMAT a good bit in advance of my test with an initial goal of 700+. I knew I wanted to apply for the 2009 or 2010 starting mba class so I figured that I should be done with my gmat by the end of May so that if I did poorly I could still take it again and have plenty of time to complete my applications. You will note that I really didn’t take any practice exams until I had finished quite a large amount of general studying. I put my reasoning behind this on the bottom of my post if you are interested. I also decided against a prep program. I have nothing against them, but if you can motivate yourself without them, I think you can perform just as well as anybody who has taken them. Below is a summary of how I prepared:
From mid December through Mid-January I probably spent about 10-15 hours perusing beatthegmat.com, reading the posts, figuring out if I wanted to do a prep course, making a list of resources I would need and most importantly, coming up with a general plan of action. I found the information here invaluable and used the postings/guides/resources throughout my studying.
I started my actual studying at the end of January (My friend gave me a B&N gift card for Christmas with which I sadly decided to buy my first set of books with). From Jan through late Feb I went through the Princeton review book cover to cover (every problem but not the practice exam). I made note of any types of questions I was getting consistently wrong and made sure to reread those sections the next time I studied. This took about 3 hours each week. I just studied 1-2 times a week.
During this time I also bought a pad that resembles the worksheets you get during the GMAT exam as well as the exact pen they give you from Amazon. I highly recommend shelling out the 20 dollars for this, even though its way overpriced. Getting used to the writing medium really helped me feel comfortable on the exam, and if you are willing to shell out 100k+ for grad school, what’s another $20 along the way. You can reuse the pad by wiping it clean with a damp cloth. My pen and pad lasted all 5 months of my studying (though my pen was starting to die the last day or two)
In March and the first week of april I went through the Kaplan premier book in the same method, but I also took the time to do all of the practice problems in the CD. This took about 5 hours a week
At this point I finally took my first practice exam on one Saturday. I used the gmat provided by the gmat people and scored a 700 flat. I booked my exam for mid may the same day and set a new goal to get a 750.
From early april until late april I went through the gmat 800 book in the same way. I took 2 more exams over three weeks from my Kaplan premier cd and scored a 660 and 670 (Kaplan exams are much harder then the real exam…just bump your score up 30-50 points to make it accurate). I stepped up my studying to 1-2 hours every other day for this
For the first 9 days of may I did the easy-medium difficulty problems from the OG (exactly the first half of every section)
Starting on May 9th, I actually took vacation from work until my exam and spent 7-9 hours a day studying with half days on that Sunday and the day before the exam. During this time I completed an exam every day but my two half days, and did (and reviewed) every remaining problem in the OG, OG: Math, and OG: Verbal. I stopped studying the evening of the 15th and decided to try for a 780 on my final exam based on my practice scores. The exams I took were:
May 9: Princeton Review- 740
May 10: Kaplan – 690
May 12- GMAT test 1 retake – 750
May 13 - GMAT test 2 – 760
May 14 – retake GMAT test 2 – 780
I did every exam so that I took it at around the same time I was taking the actual exam and I made sure to take all the breaks. I even set aside the same food and drink every day so that I could minimize anything unfamiliar. I did use earplugs for my practice and the test center allowed me to bring my own pair into the exam. During this time I also did some intensive studying of Sentence Correction Problems, as I found I hadn’t improved in it as much as I had in other subjects. I used a bunch of the resources from this website for this.
The Exam:
The night before the exam, I went to dinner with my friends and played some games, essentially to relax. I slept at my normal time (around 1:00 am) and got up the next morning nice and late at 10:30. I hung around the house and ate lunch/cleaned. At 1:00 pm I did a review of each section by redoing 5-6 problems from every section, reading over the Princeton review AWA guide and reading over the Kaplan 800 math review - just to serve as a warm up and keep important info on the top of my mind. I left my house at 3 and reached the Pearson center at 3:30 for a 4:00pm start.
The center let me start 10 minutes early and I worked through the exam like I had done at home. The exams are very very similar to the GMAT practices they provide on the mba.com website. My math was slightly on the harder side, with a few difficult problems. I also had a much larger than average number of sentence correction questions on my verbal section which made me a bit nervous, but I just went through them the best I could. I was very careful about my time and checked it constantly. I took about 7 minutes for each break during which I followed the routine I had practiced the week before (1/2 a snack bar, vitamin water and a bathroom break)
Result was a 770. Saturday morning I left for a week long vacation to unwind in the Caribbean
Notes:
So they were conducting demolition work in our building during our exam (the midtown NYC location) and we had announcements & fire alarms and an incessant beeping over the speakers for the last hour of the exam making it really hard to concentrate during my verbal section. I wrote a letter to Pearson and they offered to let me take the exam again for free, but they would report both scores. It seemed a bit silly for me to try again when I had already had a good score, so I politely declined the offer, but I am still rather peeved about it.
Why take a practice exam later:
Truthfully, I think taking an exam as your first step is counterproductive. You will often miss questions not because of any particular weakness but rather due to a lack of familiarity of the GMAT as a whole. Early on it is easy to confuse a real weakness with one based solely on your lack of experience with the exam. I also think it is helpful for everyone to become familiar with all of the GMAT questions regardless of whether they are stronger in math or verbal, so I don’t see studying all of the topics as a waste of time for anyone. Once you have developed a solid foundation of knowledge, taking exams can be a great tool to improve your endurance and find holes in your preparation.
I would be happy to answer any questions you might have
* edited for clarity, spelling and grammer
