Alright, got my full nights rest (first time in a while). A few cautionary notes:
- I do not recommend this for others. Everyone has to find the way that they learn best, my personal method is very fast paced and high velocity learning. Literally a crash course.
- I sacrificed my social life for 1 month
- I would wake up in the middle of the night trying to crack permutation problems. At this point my girl friend thought I had lost it completely.
So my story begins on November 7th, the day I started my PR live online course. I had decided that I wanted to write the Gmat in October, but didn't do anything to prepare until November 7th. After I attended my first lesson with PR, I decided to do a diagnostic. To my dismay, I scored a 470 (31q and 27v or something like that). To be completely honest, this was more a matter of not really focusing while writing, rather than lack of understanding. Nonetheless, that 470 lit a fire under my butt and made me hit the books that much harder.
I commute daily to work for about an hour each way, leave the house at 7 and get home at 7-8. Everynight when I got home I would focus on a particular area for about 4 hours. I would go through the OG 12&11 and do problem after problem after problem.
This was my key success factor: repitition. I had done so many OG problems (went through each book twice), that doing the problems on the test was literally second nature: more on that below.
So: 3-4 hours a night on weeknights, and 15-20 hours spread out over the weekends. I downloaded the free flashcards on this site, but I think it would have been much more beneficial if I had actually created my own. During my lunch break at the office, or during some down-time, I would quickly fire through a section of my flash cards. In some cases, there were concepts that 'I' did not understand, but apparently my sub conscious did, and I attribute this solely to repitition. PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT!
So, my scores were as follows:
Princeton Review GMAT 11/11 : 470 (31 quant 27verb ??)
Princeton Review GMAT 2 11/18 : 650 (41 Q 40 V)
Manhattan GMAT 1 11/30: 650 (43 Q 36 V)
GMAC GMAT 1 12/03 : 650 (46 Q 34 V)
Princeton Review CAT 3 12/07: 710 (Q50 V39)
Princeton Review CAT 4 12/08: 650 (46 Q 34V)
Princeton Review CAT 5 12/09: 570 (38Q 31V)
Princeton Review CAT 4 12/09: 580 (41Q 32V)
Princeton Review CAT 5 12/09: 580 (41Q 32V)
I was absolutely devestated to see the downward trend. I started to get frustrated, and really lost motivation. A sense of desperation took over and I wasn't able to solve the simplest of problems. Those 3 five hundreds were on Wednesday the 9th, and I was to write my exam on the 11th. I promised myself I wouldn't do another practise test, but determined that I could not possible walk into the GMAT having a 580 as my last score. I told myself that I'd worked way too hard to let it slip at this point.
GMAC CAT 2 12/10: 680 (47Q 38V)
I was very happy to see this calibre score again, and it couldn't have come at a better time. At that point, I was convinced that I knew my stuff.
The testing center I wrote in was about 3 hours away, so Wednesday afternoon I drove to my hotel, checked in, and drove to the testing center to get familiarized with the area.
So thursday night, I was too tired to even look at my flash cards. I developed a slight fever and figured that it was my bodies way of telling me that enough is enough. I packed it in and went to bed at 11. Woke up the next morning at 7:30 (exam was at 10:30). Did my 100 pushups, and deep breathing exercise. Took a nice long shower to relax. At this point, nerves started to settle in. Wasn't hungry, couldn't drink my coffee etc etc.
Sat down for the exam 30 minutes early, and I was distraught. I am an excellent test takerk, and very rarely allow my nerves to get the best of me... not on this day. The essays went fine, didn't bother spending much time on them at all. Quantitative was an absolute blur. I can honestly only remember 2 questions from the 37, it was honestly an out of body experience. I was convinced I had absolutely bombed it, specifically because I saw a perimeter question as my last question in the section. It had only a few hidden variables, and I solved it in 7 seconds. DON'T TRY TO JUDGE HOW YOU'RE DOING BY THE QUESTION DIFFICULTY- JUST FOCUS ON THE QUESTION AT HAND.
Needless to say, when I saw that last question, I was convinced I was going to be in the 500 range. That feeling was almost a blessing in disguise though: I was so thoroughly convinced that I had done poorly that I was calm, cool and relaxed during verbal. Verbal was typically my weakness and this greatly helped.
After the personal backround questions were answered, the screen indicated I would have 2 minutes to decide to report. It took me 1.5 minutes to decide and ultimately went with yes, out of absolute curiosity. I was honestly expecting in the 500's, and was hoping for a mid 600. When I saw the magical '700', I nearly jumped out of my seat, I fist pumped very hard, and I even yelled out 'Whammyyyy' (simultaneously with a fist pump). The proctor then asked me to sit down, and I did because I didn't want my score thrown out.
So in summary, the keys to my success were:
-If you don't have much time to prep (ie. a month) it is absolutely crucial not to waste ANY time on areas you're proficient in. For me, this was Data Sufficiency. Even in my awful CATs, I would consistently get at least 90% right, often times 100%. I decided that focusing on PS questions was much more effective.
- For verbal, (English is my first language, contrary to my awful writing style), sentance correction was my menace. I spent nearly all of my time doing sentance correction, and none on CR or RC. Those areas were above 80-90% hit rate while SC was ~50%.
So that's it folks. I AM DONE. Now it's application time. If you have any questions on crash course preparation, I'd love to share some tips.
Cheers
