So I ended up scoring better on Q than I did in all the practice exams and worse on V than I did in all the practice exams. I think this had to do mostly with just running out of gas somewhere towards the end of the exam.
Since everyone focuses on study materials during their debriefs, I will try to take a different approach, focusing mostly on the psychology of the exam, and doing things the right way.
I took a course with Kaplan's affiliate here in Israel, called Kidum. They were fantastic. Materials were Kaplan's standard stuff (regular book, Kaplan 800) and OG. The course was geared for people with potential to get over 700. In order to get accepted you had to either score over 650 in a previous GMAT, or over 700 in the Psychometric Exam, which is the local equivalent of the SATS, and is out of 800.
We also got access to www.kaptest.com, to do practice exams online and to use their quiz bank. The Quiz Bank is a powerful tool, as will be explained shortly.
My main message is this: GMAT is a special exam. Knowing your stuff isn't enough. It is designed to make you lose your poise and confidence and to make people who succumb to nerves pay a price. Therefore, you need to make to to the actual exam as confident as you can possibly be!
Here are some pointers that helped me:
1. Don't believe nonsense.
No, GMAC did not make the verbal part harder due to the Scoretop issue. They have a mandate to give business schools an accurate measurement of the capabilities of applicants. If they made it so that anyone taking the test after a certain day would have a harder exam than a person who took it two days earlier, they would be failing in their main mission and would probably lose all credibility with the schools.
The web was filled with random rumors that got me and people around me nervous. Fortunately, I am a logical type of person, so I was able to convince myself none of them were true.
You should just accept certain things as absolute truth, regardless of some of the stuff you read on the web:
a. Unless there is an official GMAC message, the exam you are taking is just like the one they had yesterday. No one will make any changes in the exam overnight, without telling anyone.
b. GMATPREP is EXACTLY like the real thing. The only difference is that the people taking the real thing are nervous.
2. Set realistic goals
If you don't let your nerves get to you, you will score somewhere between 30 or 40 points from your average clean GMATPREP score. If you got a 650 on each GMATPREP test, don't expect to get a 700 on the real thing. It can happen, but it probably won't.
Once you've taken both GMATPREP tests, you will not be able to get a clean sample. The only thing you can do is deduct 30 points from the score you get and use that number as a reference.
The good news, is that you probably won't score a 600 either.
3. Provide yourself with statistical evidence that you can reach your realistic goal.
Since the exam is so stressful, you need to be able to tell yourself time and again: "I have surpassed this goal by 30 points in every previous exam". That's what kept me in the game when I was losing confidence during the real thing.
If the scores you are receiving cannot support statistical evidence of success in the exam (i.e., reaching your goal), you are probably not ready to take the exam yet.
4. Assume that you will take the test again.
Don't sign up for the last date available in order to make round 1 applications. Make sure you have additional opportunities. You should avoid taking the exam with a "knife on your neck" at all costs.
5. Study only what you need to.
I don't know if this is something GMAC or any of the prep companies like to acknowledge, because GMAT is supposed to be an exam you can't study for. Here's the cold hard truth: There is a limited amount of quantative question types on GMAT. I don't know if its 60 or 100, but the fact is you only need to know how to solve that limited amount of questions, and nothing else. I am deifnitely NOT a math person, never took calculus, went to lawschool where there is no math allowed:), and I got a 50!
Of course, make sure you have mastered the basic math skills necessary (exponents, number line, etc.). After that, you should spend almost all of your time on your weaker areas, and that is what Kaplan's quizbank is especially good for (I am sure other companies may have similar products). There were very few questions on my exam whose sisters I did not see on Quiz Bank.
You're probably asking yourself right now - fine, how am I supposed to study 100 different types of questions? Well, here's the cold hard truth - you already know how to solve many of them! If you are terrible at quants, you know 30. If you are good, you know 80.
I used the quiz bank to create small quizzes (all at the hardest level) on each subject, and then checked which question types were the ones I couldn't consistently solve I actually spent about a week solving about 150 questions a day in order to map out the areas I was weak in.
At the end of the day, I found about 15 types of questions that were always a problem for me. By test day, I had done at least 50 of each, and these became the easiest questions for me! Needless to say, many of these types appeared on my real exam!
This raised my Q grade from 40 in some exams to 50 on the real thing.
The same can be applied to sentence correction questions. There is a limited amount of errors they can make in a sentence without making it look too obvious. Get a good SC study guide and map out these errors. Start looking for those errors in every sentence you see. I have gotten to the point where I find them in songs I hear on the radio:) The worst by far is wonderwall by Oasis, by the way (no woman, no cry came in a close second...)
Regarding RC and CR - I honestly think that at the end of the day, these are a lot harder to improve, so I can't give much advice.
I hope my message makes sense and that it helps some of you in your studies. If anyone needs specific advice he is more than welcome to send me a private message.
Good luck to everyone and thank you to Beat the Gmat for being there for me through this difficult time:)
Since everyone focuses on study materials during their debriefs, I will try to take a different approach, focusing mostly on the psychology of the exam, and doing things the right way.
I took a course with Kaplan's affiliate here in Israel, called Kidum. They were fantastic. Materials were Kaplan's standard stuff (regular book, Kaplan 800) and OG. The course was geared for people with potential to get over 700. In order to get accepted you had to either score over 650 in a previous GMAT, or over 700 in the Psychometric Exam, which is the local equivalent of the SATS, and is out of 800.
We also got access to www.kaptest.com, to do practice exams online and to use their quiz bank. The Quiz Bank is a powerful tool, as will be explained shortly.
My main message is this: GMAT is a special exam. Knowing your stuff isn't enough. It is designed to make you lose your poise and confidence and to make people who succumb to nerves pay a price. Therefore, you need to make to to the actual exam as confident as you can possibly be!
Here are some pointers that helped me:
1. Don't believe nonsense.
No, GMAC did not make the verbal part harder due to the Scoretop issue. They have a mandate to give business schools an accurate measurement of the capabilities of applicants. If they made it so that anyone taking the test after a certain day would have a harder exam than a person who took it two days earlier, they would be failing in their main mission and would probably lose all credibility with the schools.
The web was filled with random rumors that got me and people around me nervous. Fortunately, I am a logical type of person, so I was able to convince myself none of them were true.
You should just accept certain things as absolute truth, regardless of some of the stuff you read on the web:
a. Unless there is an official GMAC message, the exam you are taking is just like the one they had yesterday. No one will make any changes in the exam overnight, without telling anyone.
b. GMATPREP is EXACTLY like the real thing. The only difference is that the people taking the real thing are nervous.
2. Set realistic goals
If you don't let your nerves get to you, you will score somewhere between 30 or 40 points from your average clean GMATPREP score. If you got a 650 on each GMATPREP test, don't expect to get a 700 on the real thing. It can happen, but it probably won't.
Once you've taken both GMATPREP tests, you will not be able to get a clean sample. The only thing you can do is deduct 30 points from the score you get and use that number as a reference.
The good news, is that you probably won't score a 600 either.
3. Provide yourself with statistical evidence that you can reach your realistic goal.
Since the exam is so stressful, you need to be able to tell yourself time and again: "I have surpassed this goal by 30 points in every previous exam". That's what kept me in the game when I was losing confidence during the real thing.
If the scores you are receiving cannot support statistical evidence of success in the exam (i.e., reaching your goal), you are probably not ready to take the exam yet.
4. Assume that you will take the test again.
Don't sign up for the last date available in order to make round 1 applications. Make sure you have additional opportunities. You should avoid taking the exam with a "knife on your neck" at all costs.
5. Study only what you need to.
I don't know if this is something GMAC or any of the prep companies like to acknowledge, because GMAT is supposed to be an exam you can't study for. Here's the cold hard truth: There is a limited amount of quantative question types on GMAT. I don't know if its 60 or 100, but the fact is you only need to know how to solve that limited amount of questions, and nothing else. I am deifnitely NOT a math person, never took calculus, went to lawschool where there is no math allowed:), and I got a 50!
Of course, make sure you have mastered the basic math skills necessary (exponents, number line, etc.). After that, you should spend almost all of your time on your weaker areas, and that is what Kaplan's quizbank is especially good for (I am sure other companies may have similar products). There were very few questions on my exam whose sisters I did not see on Quiz Bank.
You're probably asking yourself right now - fine, how am I supposed to study 100 different types of questions? Well, here's the cold hard truth - you already know how to solve many of them! If you are terrible at quants, you know 30. If you are good, you know 80.
I used the quiz bank to create small quizzes (all at the hardest level) on each subject, and then checked which question types were the ones I couldn't consistently solve I actually spent about a week solving about 150 questions a day in order to map out the areas I was weak in.
At the end of the day, I found about 15 types of questions that were always a problem for me. By test day, I had done at least 50 of each, and these became the easiest questions for me! Needless to say, many of these types appeared on my real exam!
This raised my Q grade from 40 in some exams to 50 on the real thing.
The same can be applied to sentence correction questions. There is a limited amount of errors they can make in a sentence without making it look too obvious. Get a good SC study guide and map out these errors. Start looking for those errors in every sentence you see. I have gotten to the point where I find them in songs I hear on the radio:) The worst by far is wonderwall by Oasis, by the way (no woman, no cry came in a close second...)
Regarding RC and CR - I honestly think that at the end of the day, these are a lot harder to improve, so I can't give much advice.
I hope my message makes sense and that it helps some of you in your studies. If anyone needs specific advice he is more than welcome to send me a private message.
Good luck to everyone and thank you to Beat the Gmat for being there for me through this difficult time:)
...thanks a ton
