Dear All,
I gave GMAT yesterday and got a decent 710 (Q49, V36). Thanks to one and all for their insights and I believe this is the best GMAT forum community out there. BTG is simply awesome !!! Reading other members' experiences has really helped me device my own strategy to tackle GMAT. Since most of the information to be successful is already there on this website, I do not want to reiterate them again except few pointers.
I am an engineer by profession. VP_Jim has pointed out several times that if your basic fundamentals (in both Math and Verbal) are covered, one can get a great score even with OG material only (including supplementary books) if the same is effectively used (in a sense reviewing every problem in detail and understanding why one option is correct and the other four incorrect). I believe that is so true. One thing that helped me immensely is reviewing OG material completely word by word and understanding why one option is correct and the other ones incorrect. Many people have commented earlier, and I want to reiterate it again as it is very important, Quality wins any day over quantity.
Like most people with Engineering background, I was comfortable with Quant but verbal was my weakness, especially SC. Once I started hitting 49 or 50 consistently in Quant, I shifted by focus to Verbal completely. This is because I learnt from several people (who wrote earlier and my experiences with practice tests) that to pull your score beyond 700 requires a decent verbal score, no matter how high your quant score is. May be I could have spent more time working on quant to hit 51, but as Logitech has rightly pointed out that it takes a lot more time and effort to pull your score from Q49 to Q51 (which I feel is true), and hence decided to stop once I started getting Q49 and focused my energies on Verbal instead which may have pulled my verbal score up from late twenties to mid thirties.
I do not know if this is the right approach, but it worked for me. Apart from spending little of my mental energies on AWA, I made sure that I wasn't completely exhausted after doing Quant trying to score those 1-2 points and make sure that I get Q51. Instead based on my GMATPrep and MGMAT tests I figured out that you can get Q49 with still few questions answered incorrectly. Therefore I spent very little time trying to solve problems that are either totally new or the area I am not comfortable with. This saved me time as well as my mental stamina. Inspite of this, during last 15-20 minutes of my verbal section, I lost my focus and may have really bombed the last lengthy RC passage.
As far as Verbal is concerned, MGMAT SC guide is simply awesome. Though MGMAT quant (in their online test) is a bit tougher, there are some very good questions on number properties and are definitely worth looking into.
The materials I used:
OG11 and supplementary guides
MGMAT SC guide
Powerscore CR bible (this book is really good too)
Kaplan premier 2009 (a good starting point)
Thanks again to all of you guys ...
I gave GMAT yesterday and got a decent 710 (Q49, V36). Thanks to one and all for their insights and I believe this is the best GMAT forum community out there. BTG is simply awesome !!! Reading other members' experiences has really helped me device my own strategy to tackle GMAT. Since most of the information to be successful is already there on this website, I do not want to reiterate them again except few pointers.
I am an engineer by profession. VP_Jim has pointed out several times that if your basic fundamentals (in both Math and Verbal) are covered, one can get a great score even with OG material only (including supplementary books) if the same is effectively used (in a sense reviewing every problem in detail and understanding why one option is correct and the other four incorrect). I believe that is so true. One thing that helped me immensely is reviewing OG material completely word by word and understanding why one option is correct and the other ones incorrect. Many people have commented earlier, and I want to reiterate it again as it is very important, Quality wins any day over quantity.
Like most people with Engineering background, I was comfortable with Quant but verbal was my weakness, especially SC. Once I started hitting 49 or 50 consistently in Quant, I shifted by focus to Verbal completely. This is because I learnt from several people (who wrote earlier and my experiences with practice tests) that to pull your score beyond 700 requires a decent verbal score, no matter how high your quant score is. May be I could have spent more time working on quant to hit 51, but as Logitech has rightly pointed out that it takes a lot more time and effort to pull your score from Q49 to Q51 (which I feel is true), and hence decided to stop once I started getting Q49 and focused my energies on Verbal instead which may have pulled my verbal score up from late twenties to mid thirties.
I do not know if this is the right approach, but it worked for me. Apart from spending little of my mental energies on AWA, I made sure that I wasn't completely exhausted after doing Quant trying to score those 1-2 points and make sure that I get Q51. Instead based on my GMATPrep and MGMAT tests I figured out that you can get Q49 with still few questions answered incorrectly. Therefore I spent very little time trying to solve problems that are either totally new or the area I am not comfortable with. This saved me time as well as my mental stamina. Inspite of this, during last 15-20 minutes of my verbal section, I lost my focus and may have really bombed the last lengthy RC passage.
As far as Verbal is concerned, MGMAT SC guide is simply awesome. Though MGMAT quant (in their online test) is a bit tougher, there are some very good questions on number properties and are definitely worth looking into.
The materials I used:
OG11 and supplementary guides
MGMAT SC guide
Powerscore CR bible (this book is really good too)
Kaplan premier 2009 (a good starting point)
Thanks again to all of you guys ...
