I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi all,

I have been checking these forums since February of this year when I started my journey to a 700+ GMAT. Below is my experience on this whole ordeal:

Background
My native language is spanish, so logically the verbal section of the test was just plain hard. On top of that, I never had a formal education on the english language; everything I know about it was self-taught.

I work for a top-tier investment bank (Goldman, Morgan, Lehman) in the Equities Trading division and I have a strong quantitative background.

Preparation
I know everybody in this forum says that the OGs are the bible. I'm going to go ahead and reinforce this: OGs ARE THE BIBLE!!! I cannot stress this enough... I spent a lot of money on other books (Princeton, Kaplan, and MGMAT) and they were mostly useless because they were either too hard or too easy, while not being representative of the actual test questions.

With that said, my preparation consisted of 3 hours per day during the weekdays and 6 hours per day during the weekend, which is similar to the preparation of other people in this forum. For me, this was particularly difficult due to the fact that I have to work 12 to 13-hour days during the week and somehow find the time and motivation to spend 3 more hours solving abstract math problems and figuring out the intricacies of the english language.

Verbal
My study plan for verbal consisted on first learning all the concepts tested by the GMAT. This took me a short time (1-2 weeks) and I used the MGMAT books, which I think are the least crappy of all the books. Next, I setup a study plan which consisted of solving all the verbal questions in the OG twice, with an average of 100 per day... I know this may sound crazy but it was the best way to adapt myself to the question types. I looged all the responses along with the time it took me to answer them.

After finishing the OGs, I went through all the wrong answers again. Next, I went through all the questions where I exceeded the alloted time (90-120 secs depending on Q type). In the end, I was scoring a 90% success rate on verbal questions.

Quant
I consider myself skilled at math but the GMAT math just did not click in my brain, especially DS. My study plan for quant was similar to that of the verbal section. I started with an 80% success rate for PS but a 50-60% on DS, which was killing my quant scores. For me, the most important rule about quant is to DO A LOT OF PROBLEMS!!! Throughout my studies, I problably did thousands of problems (2-3k maybe?) and towards the end they all look the same to me... Everytime I saw a math problem, I knew exactly what they were asking and what pitfalls the GMAT writers used for that problem. So my advice to you: sit down each day and solve sets of 30-50 problems at once.

AWA
Yes, I know: who cares? Just have an essay template for each essay and fill in the blanks during the test. Argument is exactly the same as CR, just tear the argument apart. For issue, just take a position and defend it with your life, while acknowledging the other side.

Practice Tests
As mentioned before, I used all the materials provided by GMAC:

1. GMATPrep
2. GMAT Paper Tests (excellent source of problems not in the OGs nor in the GMATPrep tests)
3. GMATFocus (great source for additional quant questions)

I did all the tests above: GMATPrep (each test 4 times), Paper Tests (all once), GMAT Focus (6 times)

I did a couple of MGMAT and Kaplan, and they were not helpful at all. MGMAT quant section is too hard and focuses on the wrong topics such as Combinatorics, Geometry, and Word Problems. The GMAT focuses more on number prop, stats, linear geometry, and fraction/decimals/multiples(at least at the 700 level). Also, MGMAT verbal is annoyingly long; RC and CR go on forever...

Test Day
The day before the test, I did a small set of math and verbal problems to keep the brain in check. That night, I went to bed at a reasonable time (1:00am) and woke up the next day at around 9:30am fully refreshed.

My test was at 2pm, so I had a light breakfast (milk, bread, protein) and then a snack at 12 noon (almonds). I arrived at the test center 30 min early and took my time to prepare myself mentally for the next 3+ hours.

AWA
Again, who cares? Well, I still was a bit nervous but managed to write the essays with a good lenght and content. I expect to get a 5.0

Quant
My heart was racing at double the already high pace when I sat down for Quant. The first problem was of medium difficulty, and I took an additional 10-15 seconds to click the submit button because I was just so nervous. Once I got past the first questions, things went relatively smooth until 10-15 questions later where I got a weird std dev / combinatorics question. I didn't fully understand the question and based on my interpretations, I arrived at 2 answers. Both of my answers were possible answers in the screen and I just couldn't decide. It probably took me a good 8-10 minutes to take a gamble. The question was probably experimental, so I lost valuable time, which forced me to rush in the last 2-3 questions. In the end, I'm happy with my score in quant, although I know that wasting time during the experiemental question prevented me from getting a 51.

Verbal
This is where things got hairy. As soon as I started this section I was hit with a SC question regarding idioms. I had come a long way in terms of idioms but still felt linguistically challenged when I saw an unknown idiom. So what does the test do? Of course, test me on obscure idioms on effectively all SC questions. Everytime I saw an SC question, I just couldn't find a right answer, they all looked wrong to me. I felt like throughout the test I was just guessing on which SC was less wrong.

CR questions were more like the OGs' and I think I did well on those.

And lastly RC. The long passages felt like they were 100-pages long, including an encyclopedia of terms and numbers (yes, numbers). I got a passage on cost accounting that actually required me to perform not 1 but 3 calculations to compare the volume, cost ratio, and profit margin of 3 products!!! WTF!!! I have never seen a passage like this before. Then, I got a science passage, which again was eternal... My 2 short passages were about social issues and while actually short, they were as ambiguous at they can get... Every answer was so vague that I wasn't sure which one was correct.

At the end, I knew that I did poorly on verbal. On the practice test I was scoring 40-44 in verbal but in the actual test it went down to 37.

Once everything was done, I held down to my chair and waited for the score to pop up. Once I saw that I got a 710 I felt like I was released from prison after 6 months of hard time!!!

Last words (sorry for the long and painful post)
I failed to mention that this was my third time taking the test. Below are my scores:

1st: 580 - Q42, V28 (not sure on V score)
2nd: 650 - Q47, V32 (not sure on V score)
3rd: 710 - Q50, V37 (my holy grail)

I just want to convey to anyone taking the test in the future that you CAN improve your score from 500 to 700. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise!!! It is going to be a hard road ahead but it is totally possible. You can increase 150 points in this test but you will need to commit to it and be determined.

Thanks for all the people sharing their experiences and making this forum really helpful.

Signing off,
Alvaro

Dude,

What you have done and achieved is comendable.

I gave my exam few days back and got 650 (49q, 30v)....not sure if u have read my entry already

Anyhow, your blog is an inspiration to me and a proof that hard work does pay off....it has re ignighted fire inside me to push for round 2 with GMAT.

Reading your blog, i could sense they we share (in your case, used to share) a similar problem of low verbal score....let me know, if you have any other tips, apart from OG and practising general available material

Thanks a ton for this encouraging blog and wish you lot of luck
SM

nice post, congrats !

Well Done!!! I do agree that improvement is possible on GMAT provided
the individual is committed

Can you use REGAIN and BACK in a same sentence ?

Congrats man! Good luck!

Your note about not being a native spaker caught my eye...your English is amazing and if you never said anything I would take you for a native speaker. Even more impressive if you never had formal English classes.

Nice score...I noticed your piece about recognizing both sides on the AWA and that also caught my eye. I got my AWA score back today and realize I never did this. However, I still got a 6.0 on them. I think essay writing has always just been 'my thing' so I never even studied this other than read what OG suggested I consider. I am sure your AWA will be great by the looks of your command of English. I wish my overall score was even close to yours though!

NICE WORK!

HI can u please tell me waht material did u use for Quant, i m using OG only,OG-10 is that enough?

Thanks to everybody for your comments.

To emrahercan: You are absolutely right! I cannot use REGAINED and BACK in the same statement (redundant) hahaha you just prove my lack of knowledge on idioms! (I corrected the subject of this thread)

For the person who asked which material to use for Quant, I recommend to use everything that GMAC provides: OGs, Paper Tests, and GMATFocus. They are all retired questions and VERY similar to the actual test.

You should master them to the point of knowing exactly how to solve them and what are the tricks. I say this because the solutions and tricks are transferable to similar questions that you'll most likely see in the actual exam.

Hope that helps.
Alvaro

i m using Gmat paper,kaplan and Mgmat for paaper test but what is this Gmat focus,????? is it realy required ?,, i hve appeared for gmat on 19th aug and scored 37 in quant ,and planning to reaapear this month so please advice for quant

ajguerre,

Thank you for such a lengthy post ( what patience you have !)

I want to know if the GMATFocus tests are worth the $$. Are they good ? I mean are they helpful enough ?

And one more thing .. The paper tests, did you take them as full length tests or did you just use them for practice (like OG)

Thank you ajguerre

To dilipbobby and myt

GMATFocus is a web-based diagnostic tool for Quant provided by GMAC (owners of GMAT). You can buy a set of 3 diagnostic tests for $69 bucks at mba.com

The diagnostic is computer-adaptive and consists of 24 quant questions. At the end of the diagnostic you get a report detailing you timing, success rate, and "predicted" quant scaled score with an 80% confidence. To be honest, I did it mostly to practice with fresh questions that I had not seen before. But the detailed report is a nice feature.

For the paper tests, I would suggest you do them exactly as directed. Even though the paper test is obviously not adaptive, it will give you a surprisingly accurate score. Also, I found the timing constraints in the paper tests to be tigher than the actual computer test, thus improving your time management.

too good....a nice motivation.i scored a poor 530......aiming for 700+........all the best