I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi all,

I took my GMAT today and scored 710 (Quant - 49, Verbal - 38). I wrote both essays fairly well (scores awaited).

Here's how I prepared:

I did my preparation through self-study. Being an engineer, I am good at quant skills. I only had to improve my verbal skills both for verbal section and the two essays.

I started my preparation in March. I subscribed to BTG's two-month study plan although my GMAT was scheduled three months later. I kept the last month as a buffer. I finished my preparation for Quant section in March (first month) so that I can concentrate on improving my verbal ability. I followed these books:

- OG 12th Edition
- Kaplan GMAT Premiere 2011
- Manhattan Strategy guides for: Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension & Critical Reasoning

OG is without doubt the best book. It gives you a glimpse of the kind of questions one should expect in GMAT. I think everyone knows how important OG is, so I'll not elaborate on this. Kaplan GMAT 2011 was ok. I didn't find the text much useful. But the online resources - 6 online tests + videos were great. I highly recommend Manhattan GMAT's strategy guides for SC and CR to people who think their verbal skills are poor. I found them a lot more useful than Kaplan's text. I could see a drastic improvement in my mock SC and CR tests. Also, you get 6 MGMATs with these books. Their analysis after each MGMAT is quite informative and lets you keep track of your weak areas.

I followed these books religiously for the rest of the two months I had while tracking my progress in BTG's gmat-progress-chart.xls and gmat-error-log.xls spreadsheets. After completing my second month of preparation, I focused on AWAs for about two weeks (half of the third month). I thank Myohmy for suggesting a template for the argument essay. I prepared the template for the issue essay by myself. For the rest of the third month, I gave several online GMAT exams (Manhattan + Kaplan) and practiced GMATPrep too. I strongly believe that your GMATPrep scores are strong indicators of your real GMAT score. Check out my scores below to reason out why:

GMATPrep 1 - 1st time: Q49,V35 - 700
GMATPrep 1 - 2nd time: Q51,V30 - 680
GMATPrep 1 - 3rd time: Q50,V39 - 740
Kaplan GMAT 1: Q50,V29 - 590
Manhattan GMAT 1: Q51,V35 - 700
Manhattan GMAT 2: Q49,V41 - 730
Manhattan GMAT 3: Q49,V45 - 760
GMAT Prep 2: Q50,V39 - 730

I stopped taking Kaplan GMAT mocks after getting a low score and figuring out from several forums that Kaplan's GMATs are tougher than the real GMAT. I was looking for tests that can simulate GMAT as accurately as possible.

Some suggestions:

- Always keep track of your progress by taking mock GMATs
- Always attempt essay sections in mock GMATs. This will help you keep focussed on the test for 4 hrs on G-Day.
- After attempting questions on OG, go through all questions (correct+incorrect) so that you don't miss explanations to questions. Who knows? Your "correct" answer could be a lucky guess or there could be more efficient way of solving/thinking.
- Leave your books on the day before the exam. Just Relax.
- Carry something to eat during the 8-minute break in the exam. Yes! the break is not for 10 minutes, it's for 8 minutes.

Having said that, I have a question to my readers: Is it good enough to get into a decent b-school?

Here's my background:

I am an Indian working in Bangalore for a major IT company that's in the tech news almost all the time.

Work experience - 2 years
School education - very good
College - very good (with 3.6 GPA from IIT)

Thanks.