I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi friends,

I was happy with the 730, but disappointing about the Quant section. I was scoring above 45-49 consistently in my practice tests. Any input on how the top grad schools view this type of dispersion is appreciated..

Advice:

I studied with MGMAT to get the basics down. After about a month, I had gotten down the basics of math and verbal. Then I got tired of MGMAT's overcomplicated problems and moved onto the OG and GMATPrep software. I took the exams about 6 times total, and feel this was the best prep especially to get your timing down. I do not see the point of waiting until the last week or two to take these tests, when you can take it multiple times and still get a good variety of questions. If you want, just keep retaking Test 1, then when you take Test 2 you will get 100% new questions. If you are rushed in Quant you will miss the easy ones (like I did in the actual test), but if you have time then you get the easy problems correct and maybe solve some harder ones. Just skip the problems you do not know how to do - never spend more than 3 minutes on a problem, it will throw your timing off and make you panic. For Verbal I think it is possible to solve every problem, but if you are stuck just guess between 2 or 3 choices and move on.

So my quant was not so strong because I was thrown off by my timing and maybe because I had not put as much time coming up to the test date into quant, compared to verbal. Quant has some simple rules that you must know, beyond that you just have to stay calm and it will go okay.

Verbal has many more rules to learn, so I spent more time at the end of my prep and it paid off with a 99% percentile ranking. I felt that this was time well spent and easily attainable. I suggest really focusing on how to attack these problems, the grammar rules, and how to block out the common errors in the CR and RC. Once you learn how the test tries to trick you and what they are looking for, these sections are easy, as long as you have enough time! So pace yourself well, and go through the SC a bit quicker to give plenty of time on RC and CR. I had 10 minutes to do my last 2 problems which is perfect.

Good luck all and remember to focus on the Verbal, take the GMATPrep many times and pace yourself with the Quant section. Any input on the 44 Q 68% as to how MBA programs view it is appreciated.

the split is important but it depends on the school..as per my personal experience INSEAD and wharton look into the splits..other schools i am not sure
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nice score! how did you prepare for verbal? especially SC and CR?

Thanks skins!

SC:

I did all of the OG12 SC problems once over. I marked down the tough ones - the problems that I could not figure out and where I did not know the underlying rule. There were maybe 30 or so such problems. I reviewed these almost daily and went through them about 2 - 3 times. Then the week before the exam I just started doing all the SC problems again, finished at like 100 then took the exam. It might seem like a lot of prep, but basically I did not care about how many problems that I did, just that I was learning as many concepts that I could. After you do a bunch of SC problems, you begin to get intuitive about the rules. That is when you know you are set. In the practice tests in GMATPrep, I would miss about 5 in all the Verbal section. I only missed one or two CR or RC problem which makes for a strong score.

CR:

You should aim to get 100% correct on these problems because there are no "rules" to memorize. If you have enough time, you will solve each problem correctly. I went through all the OG 12 problems and marked down the tough ones that I got wrong. There were only about 15 and after reviewing them a couple of times, I began to see the mistakes I was making. A common mistake was to assume an answer is correct because it sounds right and brings in outside info or assumptions, but you cannot use any outside assumptions and ALWAYS should go with a more conservative answer that involves less of a leap of faith. You are allowed to make only very small assumptions in CR, for example never assume that because of a solution to a problem is presented a certain outcome will occur which is not stated in the passage.

CR and RC both involve getting down the basics and learning how the exam wants you to think. If you do the OG 12 problems, you will begin to understand this. SC you need to learn the rules and the only way to do this is to do problems. Really once you get down parallelism, some idioms and proper tenses you will know how to do 90% of SC problems and that is good enough for a great score.

Good luck! Let me know if you need anything else, skins.

1- thanks for the great advice. So in your mind is it enough to do just the OG problems to do well on the Verbal?

Yes. I got the MGMAT materials and went through them, but really did not like their ideas on the Verbal. They had things in there like paraphrasing the RC and CR while taking the test, which is not something that I found useful. Their SC content had so many rules in there, it was almost impossible to keep it all straight. I only read the SC MGMAT book once and then I went over it a couple of times to just read the example sentences they gave. I did not do the questions in the MGMAT SC guide.

The OG is enough for the Verbal, as long as you understand the questions and answer explanations. If you need clarification of a rule, then you will need outside help. But in general if you are a native speaker and get a few rules down, you will be okay.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to be calm and give yourself plenty of time on the Verbal questions. If you do this you will be able to solve most of the very difficult problems. If you are rushed, you will miss even the easy ones. The reason I did so well was because I had plenty of time to go through and think about my answers. I picked up some extra time on the SC questions, which tend to take up less time. For me 2 minutes per questions is plenty to finish on time, but keep in mind that I probably spent about 3-4 minutes on some very difficult questions and on the longer RC passages.

One more thing, the 2 of the 3 RC problems were very long - over 3 paragraphs and more than one screen worth of text. For these problems, see what you are asked before you go on to read the whole thing. Sometimes you are only asked about one part of the passage and can just focus on one paragraph. This really helped me and I did not spend too much time reading the entire passage when it was not necessary. But a heads up because they were much longer than the GMATPrep passages. Do not forget to do the practice GMATPrep tests multiple times and review the Verbal questions that you made a mistake on. Soon you will see the patterns of your mistakes. If you get a real funky practice question, just move on since you probably will not get such a vague question on the exam.

thanks for that! I will take your advice. Any suggestions for math? Is it enough to do the OG questions. I have OG 11 and I am doing all the problems for that.

I think you need MGMAT for the Quant - too many topics with nuances in there. But OG might be enough if you know the basics.

thanks!

1uponGMAT wrote:Hi friends,

I was happy with the 730, but disappointing about the Quant section. I was scoring above 45-49 consistently in my practice tests. Any input on how the top grad schools view this type of dispersion is appreciated..

Advice:

I studied with MGMAT to get the basics down. After about a month, I had gotten down the basics of math and verbal. Then I got tired of MGMAT's overcomplicated problems and moved onto the OG and GMATPrep software. I took the exams about 6 times total, and feel this was the best prep especially to get your timing down. I do not see the point of waiting until the last week or two to take these tests, when you can take it multiple times and still get a good variety of questions. If you want, just keep retaking Test 1, then when you take Test 2 you will get 100% new questions. If you are rushed in Quant you will miss the easy ones (like I did in the actual test), but if you have time then you get the easy problems correct and maybe solve some harder ones. Just skip the problems you do not know how to do - never spend more than 3 minutes on a problem, it will throw your timing off and make you panic. For Verbal I think it is possible to solve every problem, but if you are stuck just guess between 2 or 3 choices and move on.

So my quant was not so strong because I was thrown off by my timing and maybe because I had not put as much time coming up to the test date into quant, compared to verbal. Quant has some simple rules that you must know, beyond that you just have to stay calm and it will go okay.

Verbal has many more rules to learn, so I spent more time at the end of my prep and it paid off with a 99% percentile ranking. I felt that this was time well spent and easily attainable. I suggest really focusing on how to attack these problems, the grammar rules, and how to block out the common errors in the CR and RC. Once you learn how the test tries to trick you and what they are looking for, these sections are easy, as long as you have enough time! So pace yourself well, and go through the SC a bit quicker to give plenty of time on RC and CR. I had 10 minutes to do my last 2 problems which is perfect.

Good luck all and remember to focus on the Verbal, take the GMATPrep many times and pace yourself with the Quant section. Any input on the 44 Q 68% as to how MBA programs view it is appreciated.

awesome score!!! based on what i hear, you should be very happy with 730...i've heard that bschools prefer even splits rather than lopsided splits. hope i do as well