Beaten by Gmat(660) and Still have some Suggestions !!

Yesterday I have appeared for the GMAT for the first time. In fact I had preponed the examination(!) by almost one month (this is exactly the opposite generally people do ), but I thought I was gradually loosing the enthusiasm(this is the strongest weakness that I have!) after I sincerely prepared for almost 2.5 months!. During this period I have studied and practiced for 1 to 4 hour every day.

Now about the real thing, the score, well it was a bit disappointing - 660 (Q-48, V-33). Though I never expected it to be 720+ keeping my practice exam scores in mind (certainly I don't fall into the category '720 and disappointed!') , but I sincerely expected it would be 690-700 range.

In brief, my journey goes like this,

Study Duration: 2.5 months

Books: I studied only two books and NOTHING ELSE. Kaplan GMAT Premier and OG 12. Solved all the questions (except Kaplan RC).

Practice exams those I have taken by increasing order of date,

GMATPrep-1 - 640 (after 1 month of preparation)
GMATPrep-2 - 670

Kaplan Test-2 - 610
Kaplan Test-3 - 590
Kaplan Test-4 - 600
Kaplan Test-5 - 710

GMATPrep-1 (Retake) - 680
GMATPrep-2 (Retake) - 710 (1 day before the actual test)

On the real test day, nothing was extraordinary. In different forums I have read difficulty level of GMAT is increasing. NO WAY! Trust me, the GMAT prep is just like real GMAT, both look and feel and difficulty levels are same with the actual test.

Essays were not that difficult (please go through the essay topics from OG12). Quant section was Ok, I think I had to guess at few questions. I finished the section before 2 mins. Now comes the verbal which is my weak point. I knew I will definitely do well in CR and bad in SC AND MY RC PERFORMANCE IS NEVER CONSISTENT, so I tried to be as careful in RC but later I realized, that was a very bad strategy! I spend almost 2.5-3 mins per RC questions and later had to rush to finish and this time I am sure I have made some simple SC/CRs wrong in time pressure. So friends, PLEASE DON"T DO ANY EXPERIMENT IN YOUR FINAL TEST! Learn from my mistake as somebody rightly said one's life is too short to learn from his own mistakes J.

So I am not sure with this score whether I qualify to provide any advice to the GMAT aspirants , but still want to mention few important things about quant section which may help somebody,

1) Please read the questions very carefully, at least twice. Trust me it sounds very silly, but if you can avoid the silly mistakes you can raise your score more than 50 points. For me, I used to do such mistakes often, but then I started being more careful and that really helped me.

2) Never assume anything, for e.g. if you get something like x, y, unless it is explicitly stated in the question, never assume that x,y are integers.

3) 2 is Even and Prime, 0 is neither positive nor negative; trust me, there is very high chance you will get a question (or more?) which will test these simple concepts.

4) Coordinate Geometry, I think the most neglected chapter in Gmat books, but I feel you will get at least 3-4 questions from here (more than the probability)

5) Please don't do maths in your head, write down the equations, you will find you can avoid many mistakes specially in DS part.

About the verbal sections, well here I can not add much L because I myself need expert advice! I knew I was weak on verbal (except CR), that's why solved all OG and Kaplan Premier questions, carefully tried to understand the categories but it seems that did not help much. Also, in CR I often loose concentration. Unfortunately the same was true even in the real GMAT. I will try to attack GMAT one last time after 1.5 months with special attention to verbal section. Please wish me luck and let me know any good book for improving my SC basics and guide me how can I improve RC accuracy.

Last but not the least, I am sincerely thankful to the forum where I have learnt a lot and I will be grateful to all the great people here for their kind help and guidance.

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