Just finished my GMAT and got a 700 (Q49,V35). It is somewhere between not so great and no so bad. Thanks to BTG and all the members who have shared very useful suggestions and information.
The overall score is actually good, though I would have loved to see a 720. However, on the verbal, I am certainly disappointed. Sentence Correction, which was my strength in all the practice tests, was diificult on the real exam and as a result, my timing was all over the place. I struggled to finish the verbal section on time and literally had to pick random answer choices for the last three questions.
On the other hand, Maths was quite easy. I was ahead of time right from the start and because I took it easy in the middle of the section, I ran out of time for the last question. Also, I think I got the 36th one wrong as well. Other than that, it went really well and I have to say, it is way easier than Manhattan GMAT tests.
A quick question - how bad is a V35? I see that a 49-38 split gives a 710 which means, even if I improve Verbal score to 38, my overall score will increase only by 10 but ofcourse the verbal percentile will be a lot better. As of now, even though 700 translates to a 90 percentile, V35 is only 73 percentile and that bothers me.
Will write more on my preparation and practice tests a little later. Need some rest now.
Thanks again.
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700 - (Q49, V35) -- In a dilemma
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Here is the list of resources I used for my Quant preparation.
Kaplan Premier 2009
OG 12
OG11 Quantitative Review
MGMAT Number Properties Guide
MGMAT Inequalities Guide
GMATPrep CATs
MGMAT CATs
Kaplan GMAT800
Quantitative Aptitude by Arun Sharma --> used for the CAT exams in India. This book was recommended by someone from BTG and I am glad I purchased it.
Kaplan Premier is a basic and good resource to begin GMAT preparation.
OG 12 is the official guide and hence, a MUST have. This starts from low difficulty and scales up to 700 level questions towards the end. The truth is that the first half of both PS and DS are very simple and poses no trouble whatsoever. OG 11 Quantitative Review was even easier I thought. There weren't too many challenging questions.
The Manhattan Guides are real worth the money and come highly recommended. Number Properties was very helpful and so was the Inequalities guide. I purchased the Inequalities guide just a week before the test and regretted not buying it earlier. By the way, Inequalities was my weakest area in quant.
Manhattan GMAT CAT
On the MGMAT CATs, my personal experience was not all that good. The so called 700 level questions seemed like 800-900 level and I wondered how anyone could finish in 75 minutes without skipping questions!! After the first four tests, my highest was 680. Finally, for the fifth one, after increasing the time to 85 minutes, I got a 720. Agreed that it is foul play but couln't help it!
I believe that confidence is as important as preparation. MGMAT was seriously killing my confidence and I badly wanted to see a 700 in atleast one of the tests. hehe.
The Best Part of MGMAT CAT
When it comes to post-test analysis, MGMAT is the best. The level of granularity this software provides is unmatched. One can focus on any aspect of the performace with this kind of an anaylsis - topic wise, difficulty level wise and even based on time taken. Say, you tend to take too much time on Inequalities DS, you could probably make an educated guess on such questions and move on. Though the anaylsis is quite time consuming, it really helps.
The kaplan GMAT800 has a mix of moderate and high difficulty level questions and I found it to be very helpful towards the end when I wanted to practice a few problems from all topics.
Finally, the GMATPrep CATs are the official ones from GMAC and obviously they are quite good and more importantly, gave me a lot of confidence. The actual GMAT test was also not difficult and definitely a lot easier than Manhattan Tests as I already mentioned in my ealier post.
Kaplan Premier 2009
OG 12
OG11 Quantitative Review
MGMAT Number Properties Guide
MGMAT Inequalities Guide
GMATPrep CATs
MGMAT CATs
Kaplan GMAT800
Quantitative Aptitude by Arun Sharma --> used for the CAT exams in India. This book was recommended by someone from BTG and I am glad I purchased it.
Kaplan Premier is a basic and good resource to begin GMAT preparation.
OG 12 is the official guide and hence, a MUST have. This starts from low difficulty and scales up to 700 level questions towards the end. The truth is that the first half of both PS and DS are very simple and poses no trouble whatsoever. OG 11 Quantitative Review was even easier I thought. There weren't too many challenging questions.
The Manhattan Guides are real worth the money and come highly recommended. Number Properties was very helpful and so was the Inequalities guide. I purchased the Inequalities guide just a week before the test and regretted not buying it earlier. By the way, Inequalities was my weakest area in quant.
Manhattan GMAT CAT
On the MGMAT CATs, my personal experience was not all that good. The so called 700 level questions seemed like 800-900 level and I wondered how anyone could finish in 75 minutes without skipping questions!! After the first four tests, my highest was 680. Finally, for the fifth one, after increasing the time to 85 minutes, I got a 720. Agreed that it is foul play but couln't help it!
I believe that confidence is as important as preparation. MGMAT was seriously killing my confidence and I badly wanted to see a 700 in atleast one of the tests. hehe.
The Best Part of MGMAT CAT
When it comes to post-test analysis, MGMAT is the best. The level of granularity this software provides is unmatched. One can focus on any aspect of the performace with this kind of an anaylsis - topic wise, difficulty level wise and even based on time taken. Say, you tend to take too much time on Inequalities DS, you could probably make an educated guess on such questions and move on. Though the anaylsis is quite time consuming, it really helps.
The kaplan GMAT800 has a mix of moderate and high difficulty level questions and I found it to be very helpful towards the end when I wanted to practice a few problems from all topics.
Finally, the GMATPrep CATs are the official ones from GMAC and obviously they are quite good and more importantly, gave me a lot of confidence. The actual GMAT test was also not difficult and definitely a lot easier than Manhattan Tests as I already mentioned in my ealier post.
