Non Native > 2 weeks prep > 700

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Non Native > 2 weeks prep > 700

by ducvy » Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:06 am
I wanna thank all the people here who try to help us to get through this, and my first post here is my preparation strategy that i want to share with you hoping that it would help. I'm not telling that you guys will get 700 doing the same as I did but here is just the strategy that works best for me (actually, with the time left, i didnt try that much strategies though)

Materials:
OG review 11th
Kaplan Gmat Premier Program 2008 with its Cd-Rom

I bought these book 3 months ago but I didnt start my preparation until 2 weeks ago, just after my internship ended. i took the test yesterday and got 700 (Q48, V37) and I needed 600.
If you guys dont have time to study at least 8h a day for 2 full weeks, i dont really think this strategy will fit you.

So here is how i started: i took the diagnosis test of the OG and saw what i had to practice most, which were sentence correction and reading comprehension.
But i decided to focus on sections i believe are the ones you can really improve by practicing real questions.

It may seem surprising but i merely touched the Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasonning sections. Instead i brought with me everywhere a book that i enjoyed reading and whenever i had few minutes free (in my bed, waiting at the metro station, go to the toilets...) i took it out and read it. It helped a lot to improve my reading speed thus to be more efficient on the RC and the CR sections.
Furthermore when I woke up every day (at 8:00) I didnt start directly with questions but i went online to read some fresh worldwide news. Everytime i saw an interesting headline i read the whole article but i was careful to spread my interests and tried to read something else than the sports news everyday.
>> i think it is the best way to improve its RC and CR sections without being 24/24 on the prep book, i would have driven crazy otherwise...

For the PR, DS and SC sections i did the questions from the OG book and every 2 days, after doing a decent number of questions from these sections i did one real test from the Kaplan Cd-rom to gauge my progression.
after doing the questions, i read all the explanations of my wrong answers and wrote them down and before i started a section i read all the explanations of the previous questions i got wrong, i can tell you that at the end you will remember your mistakes even before you start reading the question

dont worry if you see that your kaplan test scores are far below what you expected, it is normal, they are not scaled as the real ones
i read in the forum that the 2 Gmatprep are the best to practice with real scores range so i kept them for the last 2 days and i was very confident for the test day > no need to worry about the kaplan scores, if you dont put some extra stress, you will do great on the test day as you did the 2 days before

i hope this will help some of you

so as we say here, bon courage à vous tous et bonne chance!

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by beatthegmat » Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:06 pm
Thanks for sharing this great strategy, and congrats!
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