Nice Score!
Part II
First montha.k.a. getting to know the exam
I am not from a math-based background, and English is not my native language - a situation that
needed to be properly addressed considering that succeeding on the GMAT is largely dependent on
one's mathematical and verbal abilities. Also, I work 5-6 days a week on an average for 10-12
hours a day. So I needed to be "gently" broken in.
I started out by devoting an hour a day on perusing Nova and Cliff's books that were mentioned in
Part I. These books are nicely divided topic-wise, especially for quant, and doing a session a
day is neither very time consuming, nor very taxing on the brain. I wanted to avoid getting
burnt out, so I stuck to just an hour a day Mon-Thurs, and did not touch anything related to the
GMAT during Fri-Sun.
Second montha.k.a. taking the preparation a notch higher
This was the time when I started flipping through the Kaplan book. I focussed on completing the
book in 4 weeks giving a week each to PS, DS, CR, SC and RC. Again, I tried to use an hour a day
from Mon-Thurs. The aim during for this week was to reinforce what I had learnt in the first month and trying to come up with strategies that will help me later. I also started to flip through Arco's essay book to get some idea on the AWA section.
Third montha.k.a. This is it
The first thing that I did in the beginning of this month was to get a test date. Without a date,
I was certain that my prepartion would not be anything worthwhile. I got Dec 22 @ 8:30 am as my
test day. As soon as I got the confirmation email, I took the diagnostic test given in OG 11th
ed. Of course, the diagnostic test was not really a true diagnostic test considering I was fairly
familiar with the material.
I started an Excel sheet that looked like this:
corr/tol time time/Q
V RC 16/17 30 1.76
CR 11/17 45 2.65
SC 14/18 31 1.72
Q PS 18/24 65 2.71
DS 17/24 33 1.38
This test showed me that I needed to do well on all sections except the RC to even have a decent
chance of getting above 700. I made myself another excel sheet with a detailed plan of attack
which included 2 testing sessions (from paper based tests) of 30 min each followed by a 30 min
session for a review of the tests . I would rotate between CR+DS and PS+SC on alternate days in
the first week. At the end of the week I took my first CAT (prepared by 800 Score) for the V and
Q sections.I also started regularly visiting this forum to sharpen my quant skills.
800 Score CAT
V 39 81(%)
Q 41 85(%)
The second week my routine was like this:
Mon OGCR1 OGPS1 MSC
Tue OGRC1 OGPS2 MSC
Wed OGSC1 OGDS1 MSC
Thurs OGCR2 OGPS3 MSC
Fri OGRC2 OGPS4 MSC
Sat test
I would do 20-25 questions from two of the sections of the OG and do a section of the Manhattan
Sentence Correction (MSC) on every day. Total time devoted was about 2-2.5 hours. I took this
prep approach like that of a person who needs to concentrate on training certain muscles groups a
day as opposed to training all of them every day.
At the end of the week, I took a test again, this time from Powerprep.
Powerprep 1
V 28 48(%)
Q 48 90(%)
Total 640 (81%)
I realized that although my math skills were somewhat improving, I still sucked at all parts of
the verbal section. This result was even more demoralising when I read on this forum about people
using Powerprep to boost their morale - that is the scores obtained on this test are "inflated".
In the third week I revised my strategy and realised that I needed to cut down on sleep (I could
not cut back from my long days at work) and devote atleast 3 hours a day on this prep. My new
strategy included doing 20-25 questions from each section of the OG 11th ed so that I am not out
of touch of any section in particular. (Note: I did not do much of RC because I was good at it
since my GRE days eons ago). I also doubled my test taking frequency and started devoting more
time on analysing my tests.
I brought forward my test date from Dec 22 @ 8:30 am to Dec 20 at 12:30 pm (I am not an early
morning person)
Powerprep 2
V 40 90(%)
Q 47 86(%)
Total 710 (95%)....this was a score that led me to believe that I can hit 700+
Kaplan Online test
V 31/41 39 89% 650(83%)
Q 31/37 43 90%
I realised I should not take Kaplan tests at this test because 1. They are not GMATPrep/Powerprep
people, that is they are not the test makers, so their tests are not the true test of my
abilities anyway, and, 2. I did not want a sore like 650 to dampen my spirits.
Forth week
I finished the OG and concentrated on doing as much quant from this forum as possible. I took
more tests and tried raising my confidence.
GMATprep 1
V 40
Q 48
Total 720
GMATprep 2
V 36
Q 50
Total 710
I also did the practice questions from the GMATprep CD.
Lessons learnt/ Strategies formulated:
General (for ALL sections)
1. Read the question properly and ask yourself what it is asking
Trust me on this, a lot of people who are really good at anything don't actually do well on such
tests becaue they have misread the question.
2. Look at the answer choices
PS:
1. Get your basics straight - easier said than done.
I always looked at Logitech and Cramya's posts on quant because Logitech offered a lot of out-of
-the-bix solutions and Cramya showed the error-free most methodical approach for solving any
question. More so, these guys often sifted and cited the postings from instructors like Stuart,
Ron, Ian etc which saved my time in looking for other unique solutions or explanations. I only
have people on this forum to thank for clarifying my doubts on absolute values, inequalities and
probability.
2. Avoid silly mistakes - again easier said than done.
The way around this is practice, practice and practice. Keep in mind that >90% of the GMAT
problems are solvable within 1-1.5 min. So if you are not getting a question right in that time,
you are missing the point!
3. Recheck your calculations - this is easy to do
Become paranoid if you are a person like me who is prone to making errors like 2+3 =6
DS:
1. In addtion to the General tips and PS tips, a good strategy that I found (thanks to people on
this forum) for doing a lot of DS questions is to simplify the question root. For example, if the
question is: Is ab-bc>0, one can simplify it to b(a-c)>0 and of course the Statements would be
Stm1: b>0; Stm2: a>c. This was a simple exaple, but a lot of seemingly complex questions can be
simplified and their answers be found very easily.
2. Make sure you solve the DS by using one Statement at a time, i.e, do not take info from Stm1
in solving Stm2. This sounds obvious, but it is not. SO watch out for this.
RC:
Read the passage as attentively as possible the first time. It might seem that it is a waste of
time, but once I properly read a passage, I would spend ~ 30 seconds in answering its questions.
Very importantly, reading the passage properly allows you to literally nail the "inference"/
"tone" type questions in less that 10 seconds flat. - A huge time saver!
CR:
I always read the question beforehand and repeated in my mind that I was looking for something
that would weaken/strengthen/assume etc or be on the look out for LEAST weaken/weaken EXCEPT type
of questions. More than anything else, this strategy helped me be alert on CR questions. When I
started out I would take 4-5 minutes on any given CR question and my accuracy was <40%. After
doing the CR questions from the OG, I realised that the faster I read, the better my
comprehension was and the clearer my mind was. This reflected in my average time taken for doing
the CR coming down to 1.5-2 min per question with a >90% hit rate.
SC:
Alas, this was a section in which I started off with a 65-70% hit rate and did not improve much,
in fact I rather dipped in my performance for this section. Manhattan SC is a fine book, but I
guess the most important thing to nail it by reading a proper grammar book (remember my point
about getting your basics staright?). I can guarantee that especially for non-native ENglish
speakers, a good grammar book like Wren and Martin would sky rocket your SC hit rate.
Part III - my test experience will follow[/quote]
Last edited by
cheeseburst on Wed Sep 16, 2009 1:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
