. I found the link to this forum while reading through people's comments on Amazon's MGMAT books page. And I've been a pretty much regular follower since then- mainly of the "I Beat the GMAT" notice board. A little background:
I'm an Asian Indian Male about 30, with 7 years of Software Engineering work exp, working in the US for the past 3 years.
My prep started in the 1st week of January this year when my wife pushed me into taking a test date
for 21st March. Knowing the kind of person I was - I would need to be pushed into something before I would do it. I'm probably one of the few people who take a date and then start studying for it.Study Pattern:
My pattern was entirely self study. Initially I did not know what I needed to look at.
I had a hand-me down OG 10 (yes 10) - and I started working on the problem sets. While working I realized I was faltering a lot on SC and DS. So I started shopping for books on Amazon, I stumbled upon the MGMAT guides. I bought the SC for myself, and I really liked it. So I went ahead and ordered the CR and RC ones as well.
My test scores on the 6 free MGMAT tests hovered around 660-690 usually, with one test at 590.
This is when I realized that the date was too ambitious for me - so I postponed it until 2nd May.
I really started working harder (1-2 hrs) everyday and more (about 3 hrs) on weekends - despite a day job with pretty hectic work schedules. This time, instead of the problems, I was focusing on understanding the concepts. GMAT Prep scores (1st attempt) came to about 680 and 690.
Reading the MGMAT guides also helped in honing my skills. The only test where I got more than 700+ was my last GMAT Prep Retake on which I scored a 740, 4 days before the actual test. And this was with about 2 or 3 repeats in the entire test. After this one, I didnt get time to write any more mock tests.
This boosted my confidence a lot - because this is when I knew what kind of questions to expect at the 700+ level.
The actual test:
The only schedule available on a weekend was one at 8AM, and though I'm mostly a morning person, 8 AM meant I had to leave home by 7. A bit of a challenge there, and I was wondering what that would do towards my wakefulness and agility.
During the drive, I made sure that I would totally relax. Pink Floyd kept me company through the 25 min drive, and that helped me unwind a lot.
After the formalities, started with AWA. The essays went decently well. I was guessing I would get somewhere between 5 and 5.5.
After the AWA, had my sandwich looking out the window. The aim was to relax completely. Unfortunately I had overshot my stipulated 10 min break by 2 minutes.
The math section went well - I was getting decently difficult questions - with a few easy questions interspersed. Timing wise, I was on track. By the time I was on my last question, I saw that I still had 6 minutes to spare. This question was quite difficult so I took my time in answering this one and finished with about 2 minutes to spare.
By this time I was sure that if don’t mess up my Verbal too badly, I would get a decent score. During this break too I didn’t have much to eat but made sure that I looked outside the window and relaxed.
Started off with the verbal and kept getting questions with decent difficulty level. After about my 30th question I was quite sure I was getting something above 700 - and unfortunately my heart started pounding faster than normal. I still didn’t mess up the subsequent questions though and finished with about 4 minutes to spare.
My lessons learnt:
1) MGMAT tests are quite tougher than the real thing - it's a good place to get some exercise. Do not get disheartened if you see you're not getting good scores on those.
2) MGMAT verbal guides are very good as reference material. They clear your concepts quite well.
3) MGMAT's Flash Cards and Eric's Flash Cards are both very good material during the last 2 weeks of prep. Thank you Eric for that effort!
4) Clear concepts more than doing the problems.
5) I did get some problems that were similar to what I had done on the OG.
6) On test day - make sure that you relax. In every way possible. Using your head for 4 hours at a stretch is quite a pain on the nerves and it's very important to keep your cool.
7) Practice writing the AWA when you take your mock CATs at home. This makes you give a fair idea of the timing and the stress level that you're going to face on D-Day. I had done some AWA during my mock tests but on D-Day, about 15 minutes from the end, I was feeling quite lacking in energy.
Thank you all! And those who are prepping - all the very best!
