I just Beat The GMAT!

richwang,

Can you suggest some tips for RC?

brentbackow89 wrote:Hello,

Congratulations on your great score. I am wondering, how did you
go about the study guides? Did you mix them up (so many pages
of each a day), or just focus on one study guide until you completed it?
Also, how far were you into the study guides during your first test?

Best regards and thanks for providing your strategy!

Thanks!

I did about 3-4 chapters of each guide per day, focusing on one study guide at a time. My first MGMAT CAT was around guide 3 or 4, so I didn't even hit verbal when I started CATting. My timing for this was unavoidable as I wanted to give myself 1 week in between each CAT and didn't have enough time to get through all the guides before starting the CATs. HTH!

selango wrote:richwang,

Can you suggest some tips for RC?

RC.. let me think of 3 things that I gleaned from my studies.

1. I didn't take notes while I read - I just focused on trying to understand the topic at hand. I didn't even read the first question before checking out the passage. As many have said, making yourself believe you are interested in the topic helps greatly (I love science, but social passages were tough to love )

2. For some questions about author intent in the "overall context of the passage", you have to keep in mind the underlying meaning of the passage. There are going to be answers that are definitely true (and some even explicitly stated next to the sentence in question), but if they do not relate to what the author's trying to do with the entire passage, it is most likely wrong.

3. It's helpful sometimes to identify the type of question they are asking. Sometimes in an RC, they'll sneak in a CR question, which you can then use your CR toolset to crack it. For example, they might ask "Proponents of [Statement X] would be greatest challenged if which of the following were true?" You can see that as a Weaken the Conclusion type question for CR, and solve accordingly.

Hope this helps

Valuable suggestions..Thanks

Congrats man!!!!!

After seeing your CAT scores, I know you were wishing to see such a great score and you did it. Congrats again.

Hello again,

Thanks for the great information you're providing us. I was also wondering,
between the Manhattan Study Guides or the OG Verbal / Quant review, which
ones would you start with first? (Or which one maybe starts out with more
basic questions rather)

Thanks again.

richwang,

Excellent score!

Couple of questions regarding prep (my test is in 2 weeks ):

1.) Did you get any Combinatorics and/or Probability questions in Quant (for Q50)? If so, about how many? I'm just curious because I've heard some people never got combinatorics questions and others who got them in the first five questions?!

2.) Regarding Verbal, would you say SC was the hardest? CR is tough for me right now but RC & SC is almost mathematical in approach.

I too have the MGMAT guides (SC/CR/VIC/WT) -- didn't buy Number Properties or RC guide from MGMAT -- and I've heard that the actual Verbal on the GMAT is MUCH tougher than the MGMAT CATs. Is this true?

brentbackow89 wrote:Hello again,

Thanks for the great information you're providing us. I was also wondering,
between the Manhattan Study Guides or the OG Verbal / Quant review, which
ones would you start with first? (Or which one maybe starts out with more
basic questions rather)

Thanks again.

Glad to help Brent.

I'd start with MGMAT study guides. The way that MGMAT guides are worded (if you haven't gotten a chance to take a look yet) is each lesson is combined with some simple problems at the end of each lesson to test your understanding of the concepts. These problems are super straightforward and are NOT GMAT-format questions (usually). They are things like "What is the probability of drawing 4 hearts in a row in a deck of 52 cards?" without providing you any answer choices. This allows you to think harder and draw up your solution without having the ability to refer to other answer choices.

That being said, the first 20-30 OG questions are also very straight forward. If you have the time, possibly doing the beginning of OG in conjunction with the MGMAT guides would be my best suggestion. Good luck in your prep!

Purusha wrote:richwang,

Excellent score!

Couple of questions regarding prep (my test is in 2 weeks ):

1.) Did you get any Combinatorics and/or Probability questions in Quant (for Q50)? If so, about how many? I'm just curious because I've heard some people never got combinatorics questions and others who got them in the first five questions?!

2.) Regarding Verbal, would you say SC was the hardest? CR is tough for me right now but RC & SC is almost mathematical in approach.

I too have the MGMAT guides (SC/CR/VIC/WT) -- didn't buy Number Properties or RC guide from MGMAT -- and I've heard that the actual Verbal on the GMAT is MUCH tougher than the MGMAT CATs. Is this true?

Hi Purusha:

Thanks so much! I appreciate the kudos.

1. I got only 1 combinatorics/probability problem, and if I recall correctly, it was a DS problem. Pretty tricky..!

2. You know, it changed for me. At first it was SC by a LONG shot! I think it was because I initially tried to rely on my "native English ear", which anyone on these boards will (rightfully) tell you is often incorrect. After learning the rules of WRONG grammar, I changed my SC strategy to crossing out answer choices that I knew was wrong only based on 1 or 2 of the main rules (S-V agreement, Tense, Parallelism, etc...) You are right about it being mathematical! At the end of my prep, CR was my lowest hit rate, so for each tough CR I would have to hunker down and really think about which part of the conclusion the answer choices really addressed. That helped me a lot.

3. The MGMAT verbal in my experience was right around the same difficulty as the real thing, if not harder. I would consistently score in the V40-45 range for my 710+ GMAT scores, with only 1 or 2 that I remember hitting V46. The RC MGMAT guide I would not recommend, since I couldn't even find any notes to write down after reading it word for word! However, the number properties MGMAT I found invaluable.

Good luck in 2 weeks! There are some great articles on this site regarding the last 14 days and the last 72 hours before your test. You'll do great!

Hi richwang

First of all congrats for such a gr8 score.

A glimpse of advice is needed and will be appreciated:
I just gave my GMAT a day ago and got 680, verbal(32) shattered my dreams.
As of now am thinking of preparing and appearing within upcming 2 months I dunt know which material I should use for preparing SC and RC.Moreover, am familier with most of OG questions so it wont be a real deal to try those questions again and again.

Some sources for practising RC and SC.

Thanks

First, Congratulations on obviously very well deserved score. I am sorry if this sounds stupid but I have spent over a week just trying to figure out which books to get!!!

From your debriefing, it seems that you didn't touch any Kaplan book, Princeton, etc. I understand that this is in no way a negative reflection on those books, but I am still wondering that would that mean that one set of books suffice? If one opts for MGMAT sets, chances are they should be good enough??

Getting yourself ready in 4 weeks is amazing! Good luck for the future. I know that getting the score is just the tip of the iceberg...

uhsa.

That's really great congratulation!! Really inspiring for person like me who have just started about GMAT. Can you elaborate your strategies for Verbal section.. being non native to english, i am really looking to focus more and more on it to maximize my score.

BR/Naren

Hi Probably it would seems stupid, can you please suggest, where should i start from i would like to start with basic, since its being almost 15 years since i am away from basics ...which books should i start for building the basic first then moving into the advanced and more into test cracking.

r/naren

narendrasingh wrote:Hi Probably it would seems stupid, can you please suggest, where should i start from i would like to start with basic, since its being almost 15 years since i am away from basics ...which books should i start for building the basic first then moving into the advanced and more into test cracking.

r/naren

I think Kaplan is a great starting source for you.

czarczar wrote:Hi richwang

First of all congrats for such a gr8 score.

A glimpse of advice is needed and will be appreciated:
I just gave my GMAT a day ago and got 680, verbal(32) shattered my dreams.
As of now am thinking of preparing and appearing within upcming 2 months I dunt know which material I should use for preparing SC and RC.Moreover, am familier with most of OG questions so it wont be a real deal to try those questions again and again.

Some sources for practising RC and SC.

Thanks

Thanks! I'm sorry you didnt get your ideal score. Did you use OG12 only? I also bought OGVerbal and OGQuant (separate books of about 100 q's each) which helped. I've heard that Kaplan 800 is also a decent source of practice questions.