I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi, congrats on the great score and thanks for the simulator. I've sent you an email, please send the input files so that I can try out the simulator.

congrats for the result buddy
and umpteen thanks for the simulator
love u

Wow!!..What a Debrief !! Fully planned and very well executed. I think its quite an example setting that you have done for other test takers.

I would like to benefit from your simulator too for my re-take. All the best for you Apps.

Hey Hardik... it was nice to meet u on the test center on 21st...

I was feeling really low... Infact talking to you itself was so helpful, kept up my spirits high... after the 670!

Wish u all the very best!! Talk to you....

I made sure that I knew all the basic stuff. Basically I wanted to make sure that I don't have difficulty in identifying the structure of sentence. I decided that I should know following things and I should be able to identify them in simple sentences: diff types of verbs, diff types of noun, diff types of phrases, diff types of clauses, diff types of modifiers, diff types of gerunds(eg: simple, complex). I decided until and unless I am able to recognize all the different components in a sentence, I wont try my hands on the actual GMAT SC questions. This strategy took some time but helped a lot.

How did you manage to do this ? Souce of learning ? Book, site ?

Thanks.

GMATMadeEasy wrote:
How did you manage to do this ? Souce of learning ? Book, site ?

Thanks.

Please find attached my notes..
This particular site was very helpful: https://www.chompchomp.com/terms.htm

Best of luck..

arora007 wrote:Hey Hardik... it was nice to meet u on the test center on 21st...

I was feeling really low... Infact talking to you itself was so helpful, kept up my spirits high... after the 670!

Wish u all the very best!! Talk to you....

It was nice to meet you Nishant.. As I said at the test center, 670 is not at all a bad score. Lot of people fail to touch 670.. plus 670 is within the range of most b-school. If you want to retake, then I suggest you take 3-4 weeks off (preferably the whole September).. Start writing essays in the mean while.. this will take your mind off GMAT.. Once most of your essays are ready and you feel ready to have a second go, you can pick up your GMAT preparation again. Give your self 2-3 months time for the preparation. You can write GMAT again in Dec or Jan.. You will be able to meet the 2nd round deadlines for the most schools as your essays will be ready by then. This time around focus on verbal more.. try to write as many full length CATs as possible.. Remember, writing AWA and quant section before the verbal section does effect your verbal performance. Practicing lot of full length CATs does help a lot here.. I am 110% percent sure that 720+ score is within your reach..

If you need any help, feel free to get in touch with me anytime you want..

Best of Luck..

Congrats Hardik!

Could you tell me how can I work on my RC speed and accuracy, as I am currently taking hell lot of time ,and thus screw my score in verbal in whatever test I take. As I fail to finish test everytime I take.

Thanks in advance!

jgdjgd wrote:Congrats Hardik!

Could you tell me how can I work on my RC speed and accuracy, as I am currently taking hell lot of time ,and thus screw my score in verbal in whatever test I take. As I fail to finish test everytime I take.

Thanks in advance!

Hello jgdjgd,

I was a slow reader like yourself, but I never had problem in comprehending any passage. To increase my reading speed, I started practicing timed reading. I used 1000 RC document, LSAT Test Papers and OG. I used to create verbal tests consisting of all RC questions(30 to 40 questions) and use my simulator to practice timed reading. Basically your goal should be to use max 6:30 mins (5:30 mins ideally) to answer an RC having 3 questions and 8:00 mins (7:20 mins ideally) to answer an RC having 4 questions. The extra time you are using to answer RC questions should recovered while answering SC questions.

I felt that passages in 1000RC and LSAT Test Papers were similar to the real GMAT passages in terms of length and wide variety topics. When you are reading any passage, look out for following details - Author's tone, function of each paragraph in the passage and author's purpose for writing that passage. Practicing LSAT CR also helped me in improving my reading speed. LSAT CRs have comparatively longer passages and they ask tough questions, so to reduce your average speed in CRs you'll be forced to read the passage fast and look for minor details in the passage.

Test Day
I had four passages on GMAT. 3 passages were of medium size and had 3 questions each, and one passage was really long and had 4 questions. The good thing about the long passage was that out of 4 questions, 3 questions were about highlighted texts. So you need not read the passage in so much detail. You just need to get the basic idea of the passage and later read the lines around the highlighted text to answer the question. I was comfortable with highlighted text question types. I read one debrief here on this forum, where it was said that GMAT is asking more and more highlighted text questions in RC. I saw 4-5 questions during my GMAT.

Hope that helps..

Thanks a lot Hardik for your kind reply!

I will try your approach and hope it would help me.

Good luck for ur applications.

Your debrief is proving to be useful to many of us really.Thank you very much .

While doing LSAT RC section, how did you time yourself for reading the passage and answering the questions ? Was it the same as 2 minutes per question ? Could you share on LSAT part please.

Thanks.

GMATMadeEasy wrote:Your debrief is proving to be useful to many of us really.Thank you very much .

While doing LSAT RC section, how did you time yourself for reading the passage and answering the questions ? Was it the same as 2 minutes per question ? Could you share on LSAT part please.

Thanks.

Many LSAT RCs are longer than GMAT, so it is relatively difficult to remember the structure of LSAT passages than it is for the shorter GMAT passages. So I personally feel they are good for practice. LSAT RC passages also have more questions to answer than GMAT passages. But basically the idea is same, 1:50 mins per question. So if the passage has 6 questions, then you should try to finish the RC in 6*110 secs. You can spend 50-55% of the time in reading the passage and rest in answering the questions.

For GMAT passages, I used to take around 3 to 3.5 mins to read the passage and around 1 min to answer each questions. Some questions did force me to go back to the passage. These questions took more than 1 min. But mostly, I didn't have to read the passage again.

Word of caution: Don't rely heavily on LSAT material, your primary goal should be to practice with GMAT material only. When you feel you are running out of material or you want to challenge yourself, then only move on to LSAT material.

Hello Hardik,

Where did you get LSAT stuff from?
Can you share resources that would be of great help to us?

Thanks in advance!

jgdjgd wrote:Hello Hardik,

Where did you get LSAT stuff from?
Can you share resources that would be of great help to us?

Thanks in advance!

Contact me over email..

Hi Hardik

Many Congratulations on a very good score.

Can you please suggest some way to go about Quants preparation?

I am doing MGMAT's Quants books and their corresponding questions from OG.

By the time i finish these quant books i will be through with the OG quant.

what do you say should i search for difficult questions from forums or rely on the quant problems from gmatprep & MGMAT cats?

Your response will be very helpful.