I just Beat The GMAT!

All,

I got back from the test center a couple of hours ago and this is the story of my GMAT prep...

Part I

Background info et al
I am a 29 years old Indian guy from a non-engineering background. I had initially thought about taking the GMAT in September of 2007. However, a quick look at the material was enough to put me back in my boots, so to speak. The reasons why I was not motivated enough to take the GMAT at that time are:
1. I did not plan on doing an MBA (duh!)
2. It had only been slightly more than a year since I had started to work full time. Yes, I am one of those people who are students forever.
3. It looked like GMAT was going to be a tought nut to crack.
4. I was being shortsighted.

Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I finally decided to take the plunge this year.

Resources

Books (percent indicates how much I used the material):
1. Cliff GMAT CAT 8ed (90%)
2. NOVA's GMAT Prep Course 2004 (90%)
3. Kaplan's GMAT Premier Program 2008 ed (70%)
4. Arco's GMAT answers to the real GMAT essay questions 3rd ed (20%)
5. GMAT OG 11th ed (80%)
6. GMAT OG 10th ed (25%)

Software:
1. GMATPrep
2. 800 score

Online (a lot/sometimes/rarely):
1. https://www.beatthegmat.com (a lot - mainly for quant)
2. https://www.testmagic.com/gmat/ (sometimes)
3. https://www.gmat-success.com/gmat-sentence.html (rarely)
4. https://www.google.com (a lot, for everything)
5. https://www.kaptest.com (sometimes)

Time Spent
Approx 3 months

Part II including my strategies and suggestions will follow...

I am honored to be the first to congratulate you on your achievement. I wish you the best luck with the rest of your MBA journey.

Dude, Good work !!

Await Part II

Muzali,
Let me join the others in congratulating you on your excellent score.

Best of luck for the rest of the process. Thanks for the excellent questions that you posted on the QAUNT forum and your contribution towards other user posts.

Again good luck!

Regards,
Cramya

gr8 score muzali..


all the best for the application process..

Hey muzali congratulations on your brilliant score. Its really motivating to see when people whose second language is English kick some Verbal ass.

Good luck with your applications Im sure youll do well. Post part 2 quickly.

great score ! congrats !

Thank you all for your good wishes.

Part II

First montha.k.a. getting to know the exam

I am not from a math-based background, and English is not my native language - a situation that

needed to be properly addressed considering that succeeding on the GMAT is largely dependent on

one's mathematical and verbal abilities. Also, I work 5-6 days a week on an average for 10-12

hours a day. So I needed to be "gently" broken in.

I started out by devoting an hour a day on perusing Nova and Cliff's books that were mentioned in

Part I. These books are nicely divided topic-wise, especially for quant, and doing a session a

day is neither very time consuming, nor very taxing on the brain. I wanted to avoid getting

burnt out, so I stuck to just an hour a day Mon-Thurs, and did not touch anything related to the

GMAT during Fri-Sun.

Second montha.k.a. taking the preparation a notch higher

This was the time when I started flipping through the Kaplan book. I focussed on completing the

book in 4 weeks giving a week each to PS, DS, CR, SC and RC. Again, I tried to use an hour a day

from Mon-Thurs. The aim during for this week was to reinforce what I had learnt in the first month and trying to come up with strategies that will help me later. I also started to flip through Arco's essay book to get some idea on the AWA section.

Third montha.k.a. This is it

The first thing that I did in the beginning of this month was to get a test date. Without a date,

I was certain that my prepartion would not be anything worthwhile. I got Dec 22 @ 8:30 am as my

test day. As soon as I got the confirmation email, I took the diagnostic test given in OG 11th

ed. Of course, the diagnostic test was not really a true diagnostic test considering I was fairly

familiar with the material.
I started an Excel sheet that looked like this:

corr/tol time time/Q
V RC 16/17 30 1.76
CR 11/17 45 2.65
SC 14/18 31 1.72

Q PS 18/24 65 2.71
DS 17/24 33 1.38

This test showed me that I needed to do well on all sections except the RC to even have a decent

chance of getting above 700. I made myself another excel sheet with a detailed plan of attack

which included 2 testing sessions (from paper based tests) of 30 min each followed by a 30 min

session for a review of the tests . I would rotate between CR+DS and PS+SC on alternate days in

the first week. At the end of the week I took my first CAT (prepared by 800 Score) for the V and

Q sections.I also started regularly visiting this forum to sharpen my quant skills.

800 Score CAT
V 39 81(%)
Q 41 85(%)

The second week my routine was like this:
Mon OGCR1 OGPS1 MSC
Tue OGRC1 OGPS2 MSC
Wed OGSC1 OGDS1 MSC
Thurs OGCR2 OGPS3 MSC
Fri OGRC2 OGPS4 MSC
Sat test
I would do 20-25 questions from two of the sections of the OG and do a section of the Manhattan

Sentence Correction (MSC) on every day. Total time devoted was about 2-2.5 hours. I took this

prep approach like that of a person who needs to concentrate on training certain muscles groups a

day as opposed to training all of them every day.
At the end of the week, I took a test again, this time from Powerprep.

Powerprep 1
V 28 48(%)
Q 48 90(%)
Total 640 (81%)
I realized that although my math skills were somewhat improving, I still sucked at all parts of

the verbal section. This result was even more demoralising when I read on this forum about people

using Powerprep to boost their morale - that is the scores obtained on this test are "inflated".

In the third week I revised my strategy and realised that I needed to cut down on sleep (I could

not cut back from my long days at work) and devote atleast 3 hours a day on this prep. My new

strategy included doing 20-25 questions from each section of the OG 11th ed so that I am not out

of touch of any section in particular. (Note: I did not do much of RC because I was good at it

since my GRE days eons ago). I also doubled my test taking frequency and started devoting more

time on analysing my tests.
I brought forward my test date from Dec 22 @ 8:30 am to Dec 20 at 12:30 pm (I am not an early

morning person)

Powerprep 2
V 40 90(%)
Q 47 86(%)
Total 710 (95%)....this was a score that led me to believe that I can hit 700+

Kaplan Online test
V 31/41 39 89% 650(83%)
Q 31/37 43 90%
I realised I should not take Kaplan tests at this test because 1. They are not GMATPrep/Powerprep

people, that is they are not the test makers, so their tests are not the true test of my

abilities anyway, and, 2. I did not want a sore like 650 to dampen my spirits.

Forth week
I finished the OG and concentrated on doing as much quant from this forum as possible. I took

more tests and tried raising my confidence.

GMATprep 1
V 40
Q 48
Total 720


GMATprep 2
V 36
Q 50
Total 710

I also did the practice questions from the GMATprep CD.

Lessons learnt/ Strategies formulated:

General (for ALL sections)
1. Read the question properly and ask yourself what it is asking
Trust me on this, a lot of people who are really good at anything don't actually do well on such

tests becaue they have misread the question.
2. Look at the answer choices

PS:

1. Get your basics straight - easier said than done.
I always looked at Logitech and Cramya's posts on quant because Logitech offered a lot of out-of

-the-bix solutions and Cramya showed the error-free most methodical approach for solving any

question. More so, these guys often sifted and cited the postings from instructors like Stuart,

Ron, Ian etc which saved my time in looking for other unique solutions or explanations. I only

have people on this forum to thank for clarifying my doubts on absolute values, inequalities and

probability.

2. Avoid silly mistakes - again easier said than done.
The way around this is practice, practice and practice. Keep in mind that >90% of the GMAT

problems are solvable within 1-1.5 min. So if you are not getting a question right in that time,

you are missing the point!

3. Recheck your calculations - this is easy to do
Become paranoid if you are a person like me who is prone to making errors like 2+3 =6

DS:
1. In addtion to the General tips and PS tips, a good strategy that I found (thanks to people on

this forum) for doing a lot of DS questions is to simplify the question root. For example, if the

question is: Is ab-bc>0, one can simplify it to b(a-c)>0 and of course the Statements would be

Stm1: b>0; Stm2: a>c. This was a simple exaple, but a lot of seemingly complex questions can be

simplified and their answers be found very easily.
2. Make sure you solve the DS by using one Statement at a time, i.e, do not take info from Stm1

in solving Stm2. This sounds obvious, but it is not. SO watch out for this.

RC:
Read the passage as attentively as possible the first time. It might seem that it is a waste of

time, but once I properly read a passage, I would spend ~ 30 seconds in answering its questions.

Very importantly, reading the passage properly allows you to literally nail the "inference"/

"tone" type questions in less that 10 seconds flat. - A huge time saver!

CR:
I always read the question beforehand and repeated in my mind that I was looking for something

that would weaken/strengthen/assume etc or be on the look out for LEAST weaken/weaken EXCEPT type

of questions. More than anything else, this strategy helped me be alert on CR questions. When I

started out I would take 4-5 minutes on any given CR question and my accuracy was <40%. After

doing the CR questions from the OG, I realised that the faster I read, the better my

comprehension was and the clearer my mind was. This reflected in my average time taken for doing

the CR coming down to 1.5-2 min per question with a >90% hit rate.

SC:
Alas, this was a section in which I started off with a 65-70% hit rate and did not improve much,

in fact I rather dipped in my performance for this section. Manhattan SC is a fine book, but I

guess the most important thing to nail it by reading a proper grammar book (remember my point

about getting your basics staright?). I can guarantee that especially for non-native ENglish

speakers, a good grammar book like Wren and Martin would sky rocket your SC hit rate.


Part III - my test experience will follow

Nice Score!

Part II

First montha.k.a. getting to know the exam

I am not from a math-based background, and English is not my native language - a situation that

needed to be properly addressed considering that succeeding on the GMAT is largely dependent on

one's mathematical and verbal abilities. Also, I work 5-6 days a week on an average for 10-12

hours a day. So I needed to be "gently" broken in.

I started out by devoting an hour a day on perusing Nova and Cliff's books that were mentioned in

Part I. These books are nicely divided topic-wise, especially for quant, and doing a session a

day is neither very time consuming, nor very taxing on the brain. I wanted to avoid getting

burnt out, so I stuck to just an hour a day Mon-Thurs, and did not touch anything related to the

GMAT during Fri-Sun.

Second montha.k.a. taking the preparation a notch higher

This was the time when I started flipping through the Kaplan book. I focussed on completing the

book in 4 weeks giving a week each to PS, DS, CR, SC and RC. Again, I tried to use an hour a day

from Mon-Thurs. The aim during for this week was to reinforce what I had learnt in the first month and trying to come up with strategies that will help me later. I also started to flip through Arco's essay book to get some idea on the AWA section.

Third montha.k.a. This is it

The first thing that I did in the beginning of this month was to get a test date. Without a date,

I was certain that my prepartion would not be anything worthwhile. I got Dec 22 @ 8:30 am as my

test day. As soon as I got the confirmation email, I took the diagnostic test given in OG 11th

ed. Of course, the diagnostic test was not really a true diagnostic test considering I was fairly

familiar with the material.
I started an Excel sheet that looked like this:

corr/tol time time/Q
V RC 16/17 30 1.76
CR 11/17 45 2.65
SC 14/18 31 1.72

Q PS 18/24 65 2.71
DS 17/24 33 1.38

This test showed me that I needed to do well on all sections except the RC to even have a decent

chance of getting above 700. I made myself another excel sheet with a detailed plan of attack

which included 2 testing sessions (from paper based tests) of 30 min each followed by a 30 min

session for a review of the tests . I would rotate between CR+DS and PS+SC on alternate days in

the first week. At the end of the week I took my first CAT (prepared by 800 Score) for the V and

Q sections.I also started regularly visiting this forum to sharpen my quant skills.

800 Score CAT
V 39 81(%)
Q 41 85(%)

The second week my routine was like this:
Mon OGCR1 OGPS1 MSC
Tue OGRC1 OGPS2 MSC
Wed OGSC1 OGDS1 MSC
Thurs OGCR2 OGPS3 MSC
Fri OGRC2 OGPS4 MSC
Sat test
I would do 20-25 questions from two of the sections of the OG and do a section of the Manhattan

Sentence Correction (MSC) on every day. Total time devoted was about 2-2.5 hours. I took this

prep approach like that of a person who needs to concentrate on training certain muscles groups a

day as opposed to training all of them every day.
At the end of the week, I took a test again, this time from Powerprep.

Powerprep 1
V 28 48(%)
Q 48 90(%)
Total 640 (81%)
I realized that although my math skills were somewhat improving, I still sucked at all parts of

the verbal section. This result was even more demoralising when I read on this forum about people

using Powerprep to boost their morale - that is the scores obtained on this test are "inflated".

In the third week I revised my strategy and realised that I needed to cut down on sleep (I could

not cut back from my long days at work) and devote atleast 3 hours a day on this prep. My new

strategy included doing 20-25 questions from each section of the OG 11th ed so that I am not out

of touch of any section in particular. (Note: I did not do much of RC because I was good at it

since my GRE days eons ago). I also doubled my test taking frequency and started devoting more

time on analysing my tests.
I brought forward my test date from Dec 22 @ 8:30 am to Dec 20 at 12:30 pm (I am not an early

morning person)

Powerprep 2
V 40 90(%)
Q 47 86(%)
Total 710 (95%)....this was a score that led me to believe that I can hit 700+

Kaplan Online test
V 31/41 39 89% 650(83%)
Q 31/37 43 90%
I realised I should not take Kaplan tests at this test because 1. They are not GMATPrep/Powerprep

people, that is they are not the test makers, so their tests are not the true test of my

abilities anyway, and, 2. I did not want a sore like 650 to dampen my spirits.

Forth week
I finished the OG and concentrated on doing as much quant from this forum as possible. I took

more tests and tried raising my confidence.

GMATprep 1
V 40
Q 48
Total 720


GMATprep 2
V 36
Q 50
Total 710

I also did the practice questions from the GMATprep CD.

Lessons learnt/ Strategies formulated:

General (for ALL sections)
1. Read the question properly and ask yourself what it is asking
Trust me on this, a lot of people who are really good at anything don't actually do well on such

tests becaue they have misread the question.
2. Look at the answer choices

PS:

1. Get your basics straight - easier said than done.
I always looked at Logitech and Cramya's posts on quant because Logitech offered a lot of out-of

-the-bix solutions and Cramya showed the error-free most methodical approach for solving any

question. More so, these guys often sifted and cited the postings from instructors like Stuart,

Ron, Ian etc which saved my time in looking for other unique solutions or explanations. I only

have people on this forum to thank for clarifying my doubts on absolute values, inequalities and

probability.

2. Avoid silly mistakes - again easier said than done.
The way around this is practice, practice and practice. Keep in mind that >90% of the GMAT

problems are solvable within 1-1.5 min. So if you are not getting a question right in that time,

you are missing the point!

3. Recheck your calculations - this is easy to do
Become paranoid if you are a person like me who is prone to making errors like 2+3 =6

DS:
1. In addtion to the General tips and PS tips, a good strategy that I found (thanks to people on

this forum) for doing a lot of DS questions is to simplify the question root. For example, if the

question is: Is ab-bc>0, one can simplify it to b(a-c)>0 and of course the Statements would be

Stm1: b>0; Stm2: a>c. This was a simple exaple, but a lot of seemingly complex questions can be

simplified and their answers be found very easily.
2. Make sure you solve the DS by using one Statement at a time, i.e, do not take info from Stm1

in solving Stm2. This sounds obvious, but it is not. SO watch out for this.

RC:
Read the passage as attentively as possible the first time. It might seem that it is a waste of

time, but once I properly read a passage, I would spend ~ 30 seconds in answering its questions.

Very importantly, reading the passage properly allows you to literally nail the "inference"/

"tone" type questions in less that 10 seconds flat. - A huge time saver!

CR:
I always read the question beforehand and repeated in my mind that I was looking for something

that would weaken/strengthen/assume etc or be on the look out for LEAST weaken/weaken EXCEPT type

of questions. More than anything else, this strategy helped me be alert on CR questions. When I

started out I would take 4-5 minutes on any given CR question and my accuracy was <40%. After

doing the CR questions from the OG, I realised that the faster I read, the better my

comprehension was and the clearer my mind was. This reflected in my average time taken for doing

the CR coming down to 1.5-2 min per question with a >90% hit rate.

SC:
Alas, this was a section in which I started off with a 65-70% hit rate and did not improve much,

in fact I rather dipped in my performance for this section. Manhattan SC is a fine book, but I

guess the most important thing to nail it by reading a proper grammar book (remember my point

about getting your basics staright?). I can guarantee that especially for non-native ENglish

speakers, a good grammar book like Wren and Martin would sky rocket your SC hit rate.


Part III - my test experience will follow[/quote]

Congrats Muzali. Are you applying for 2009? If yes, which schools are you planning to apply to?

Thanx muzali for ur reply...

Take Care

As promised earlier, I am posting part III, my test day experience

Part III

I took my test on December 20, 2009 in Oregon.

The night before, I had about 5-6 mixed alcoholic drinks, ate pizza and watched Rocky on dvd. I was so nervous that getting drunk was the only way I could go to sleep. In retrospect, this was a bad thing to do. The following morning I had dysentery and had to consume a lot of meds before my exam. Note to self: Don't get drunk before an exam!

I was scheduled to take the test at 12:30 pm. However, those of you who live here know how bad the driving conditions have been with all the snow and freezing rain. I called up the test center at ~ 9 am and confirmed that they were open. They also told me that in light of so many cancellations due to weather, I could come in any time to take my test. So I drove to the test center with my wife and reached there by 11:00 am. (I had visited the restroom 7 times in the morning already - thanks to my stupid idea of getting drunk and eating pizza).

After showing me the disclosure, privacy notice etc, I was let into the testing room.

Essays:
Both the essay topics that I got were pretty simple, but my hands froze up while typing. I could not think very clearly and could not articulate things the way I wanted to. I thought this is a bad start and my mind was wandering in the direction of how I will retake the GMAT. Anyway, the hour ended pretty soon and I came out for my first break. My wife had packed in a protein shake and some bananas. I took a few bites from a banana, sipped some of the protein shake and went to the restroom again! I came back in time for the quant section.

Quant:
I had read a few posts on this forum and else where that the GMAT quant was found to be several notches tougher than the GMATPrep qaunt. So I was nervous about starting the quant section. The first question itself was slightly wordy and took me about 4 minutes to solve. Not a a good start again. Suddenly the questions became very easy after the first five questions and when I looked at the clock at question 36, I still had tewnty minutes remaining. I knew I had messed it up becasue I have always virtually fell short of time in quant, and the last twenty questions very extremely simple. Now I was certain that I would have to retake the test. Nevertheless, I finished quant and took my second break which was identical to the first break in all respect.

Verbal:
I started off with a Sc question which was followed by few more SC questions. Surprisingly all the SC questions seemed a lot easier than the OG/ GMATPrep level. I knew that I have bombed my tests, and I kind of gave up. I looked at the clock at question 20 and I had twenty minutes left. Unbeleivable! I had somehow lost control of the time, and now I had just about a minute to finish off the section. This is was a time when I started reading at a tremendous speed. A lot more RC questions came which made my life simple. Finally, I finished the test with a minute to spare.

I clicked through the next few screens to see my score and my heart rose and sank at the same time....a 710. This meant I was not doing badly on the exam, but I could have done much better had I not started thinking that I was doing to retake the GMAT.

Lessons learnt:

1. GMATPrep is a true representation of the real GMAT exam in every sense.
2. The quant section of the real GMAT is NOT tougher than the GMATPrep level. Infact, if one does nothing but the quant questions on this forum, the quant section can still be aced.
3. If you see easy questions, it does not mean that you are not doing well. So stop thinking about retaking the GMAT, and focus all your efforts on the task at hand.
4. Manage your time well.
5. Watching Rocky before the exam is a good idea. It really pumps you up.
6. Most importantly, don't get drunk and don't eat crappy food the night before the exam.

Peace out.

Many many thanx muzali.....
Take good care

muzali wrote:As promised earlier, I am posting part III, my test day experience

Part III

I took my test on December 20, 2009 in Oregon.

The night before, I had about 5-6 mixed alcoholic drinks, ate pizza and watched Rocky on dvd. I was so nervous that getting drunk was the only way I could go to sleep. In retrospect, this was a bad thing to do. The following morning I had dysentery and had to consume a lot of meds before my exam. Note to self: Don't get drunk before an exam!

I was scheduled to take the test at 12:30 pm. However, those of you who live here know how bad the driving conditions have been with all the snow and freezing rain. I called up the test center at ~ 9 am and confirmed that they were open. They also told me that in light of so many cancellations due to weather, I could come in any time to take my test. So I drove to the test center with my wife and reached there by 11:00 am. (I had visited the restroom 7 times in the morning already - thanks to my stupid idea of getting drunk and eating pizza).

After showing me the disclosure, privacy notice etc, I was let into the testing room.

Essays:
Both the essay topics that I got were pretty simple, but my hands froze up while typing. I could not think very clearly and could not articulate things the way I wanted to. I thought this is a bad start and my mind was wandering in the direction of how I will retake the GMAT. Anyway, the hour ended pretty soon and I came out for my first break. My wife had packed in a protein shake and some bananas. I took a few bites from a banana, sipped some of the protein shake and went to the restroom again! I came back in time for the quant section.

Quant:
I had read a few posts on this forum and else where that the GMAT quant was found to be several notches tougher than the GMATPrep qaunt. So I was nervous about starting the quant section. The first question itself was slightly wordy and took me about 4 minutes to solve. Not a a good start again. Suddenly the questions became very easy after the first five questions and when I looked at the clock at question 36, I still had tewnty minutes remaining. I knew I had messed it up becasue I have always virtually fell short of time in quant, and the last twenty questions very extremely simple. Now I was certain that I would have to retake the test. Nevertheless, I finished quant and took my second break which was identical to the first break in all respect.

Verbal:
I started off with a Sc question which was followed by few more SC questions. Surprisingly all the SC questions seemed a lot easier than the OG/ GMATPrep level. I knew that I have bombed my tests, and I kind of gave up. I looked at the clock at question 20 and I had twenty minutes left. Unbeleivable! I had somehow lost control of the time, and now I had just about a minute to finish off the section. This is was a time when I started reading at a tremendous speed. A lot more RC questions came which made my life simple. Finally, I finished the test with a minute to spare.

I clicked through the next few screens to see my score and my heart rose and sank at the same time....a 710. This meant I was not doing badly on the exam, but I could have done much better had I not started thinking that I was doing to retake the GMAT.

Lessons learnt:

1. GMATPrep is a true representation of the real GMAT exam in every sense.
2. The quant section of the real GMAT is NOT tougher than the GMATPrep level. Infact, if one does nothing but the quant questions on this forum, the quant section can still be aced.
3. If you see easy questions, it does not mean that you are not doing well. So stop thinking about retaking the GMAT, and focus all your efforts on the task at hand.
4. Manage your time well.
5. Watching Rocky before the exam is a good idea. It really pumps you up.
6. Most importantly, don't get drunk and don't eat crappy food the night before the exam.

Peace out.

3. If you see easy questions, it does not mean that you are not doing well. So stop thinking about retaking the GMAT, and focus all your efforts on the task at hand

Point well made!

I also read an other post where the user who had completed GMAT with more than 700 score suggest that we take this this test with a free / uncluttered mind (IMO definitely possible once we make up our minds)

Stay away from booze on the night before the exam - > Tip of the day/year/century....

Thanks Muzali!