I have been planning to write this post for a long time now. I owe beatthegmat community a lot. I took GMAT on Aug 10, 2010 and scored 740 (Q51, V39, AWA 6.0). The B-School that I intend to apply has 720 as the average GMAT score of the incoming batch. So 740 is a bit of a relief. In this debrief, apart from the usual what-questions-to-solve-what-tests-to-take questions, I hope to highlight some other factors which I feel helped/hampered me in my GMAT journey.
A little background about me - I am an Indian Female, a techie with 3 yrs of work-ex, little bored of my job now, want to move to business.
I started preparing for GMAT from June first week. Covered OG 11, and took the diagnostic tests and scored a 600. Even 720 appeared almost unattainable at that time. I found my weak areas were Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, Reading comprehension and Data Sufficiency. GMAT was no longer an-aptitude-test. My attitude was about to be put to litmus tests. For this exam I had to virtually start studying every section from scratch. I knew I had to revisit even the tiniest concepts, because, well, I didn't remember them anymore.
The conviction to crack the GMAT at any cost didn't stem from self-motivation, or perseverance, or other character strengths. The reason I wanted to do well was I knew that I have to get an MBA by next year, that I have to get it from this college, and that I do not have a star studded profile. I am sure, there are millions of girls out there, like me, who have just done their job well, are leaders in their own spheres, have an average job profile, read, cook, shop and are so happy in their families that they'd not want to go away to study for 2 years. If we decide to apply to a B-School, and with all the profile talk already sinking our hopes, what will give us an added benefit. I would say a good GMAT score. I am not sure whether GMAT score even qualifies as an addition to the profile, still the very knowledge kept me going.
I decided to break my study plan into two phases. Phase one - Cement the concepts, Phase two- Practice.
GMAT problem solving was my strong area (Mechanical engineering helped). And for DS I couldn't get hold of any good material. So I just practiced DS a lot. In my experience, GMAT Math is tricky in that it requires us to be constantly alert about the current question and not be influenced by the past few questions. That is, if we keep getting easy questions, it's quite probable that our mind goes into the "easy question paper" mode, for all we know, the next one might be very tricky.
For verbal, I initially focused on concepts, solved questions and read and reread wrong answer options (Yep, wrong answer options). I found Manhattan GMAT's and Kaplan's Verbal questions quite close to my actual GMAT.
These are the books that I referred -
-> Manhattan SC Guide
-> Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible.
-> OG 10, 11,12
-> Old GMAT Test Papers.
-> Career Launcher's Maths material for CAT ("Common Aptitude Test". This can be substituted by any other CAT prep material. Just referred to the Concepts and solved easier questions)
-> beatthegmat's free resources. And those numerous posts I went through for researching the answers.
Tests:
-> Kaplan's Higher score On the GMAT (Took 4 tests, score ranging from 590 to 670)
-> Score800's 8 sectional and 4 Full length tests. (score ranging from 610 - 800)
-> GMAT Powerprep (although I got a lot of questions repeated from the OG, still it was good to get acquainted with the actual screens that appear on the GMAT)
-> Manhattan's free online CAT (620 or 630, don't remember)
About AWA, I found a great link here on beatthegmat.com. And that is all I did for AWA. I ended up getting a 6.0 AWA score. My responses reflected very basic common sense ideas and no fancy stuff. Although I made sure that I wrote 5 paragraphs with 4-5 short sentences written in active voice, no jargon (I can write only plain simple english), no spelling mistakes and no grammatical mistakes. Because I didn't rake my brain a lot to write revolutionary stuff and wrote simple ideas, I got time for presenting them well. I also got 6-7 mins for proofreading my responses and that really helped. I wasn't all that into General Knowledge and World news at that time, so I chose to write citing my everyday on the job experiences. I had come across some totally unwritable-in-30-mins essays in a lot of reputable GMAT prep books, so I was worrying maybe my AWA will remain low. But that didn't happen. According to me, AWA is a test of how well you present/defend/critique an argument or an idea.
There are two big mistakes that I committed during my GMAT test and preparation -
1- Not paying attention to RC : I knew I was weak in understanding passages with economic or philosophical flavors. And the moment I started practicing them, I would yawn or end up watching a good movie instead. Big mistake. Some of you can learn lessons from me.
2- Not practicing full length tests at one go: I'd write quant section in the morning, and write verbal in the evening. That stopped me from having an actual feel of the GMAT. On the G day, while I wrote my verbal section, I experienced throbbing pain in my head and this severely hampered my comprehension. As I went through an especially tough RC, I could sense my mind thinking about the movie Inception
(Dont't blame me, the movie was just awesome) GMAT instilled in me a sense of alertness and made me more patient. I learnt quite a few things about me, my thinking process and my judgement. I often heard people say, listen to your heart, listen to what your mind says, visualize your dream and you'll succeed. It all makes sense now. Because that's what I did.... I visualised my dream.
Good luck to all the test takers!
All the best!! Do not forget to take a photocopy of your passport because they ask for it, although not mentioned in the appointment letter, for some quality measures, and they do not have a copier. On the whole, the center is good.
