I just Beat The GMAT!

Black Knight wrote:After having revelled in the glory of the GMAT score which I got two days back, finally I am here with my debrief . Here's my story and I hope that it'll be helpful to others here.


The idea...

Initially I had planned to go to a business school in the 2010 intake but because of lot of other things going in life, I couldn't take the GMAT then and fulfil that dream. Now after having worked for 6 years and achieving a fairly good career growth,I was in two minds whether going for an MBA made sense at this point of time. I researched more on this, talked to many alumni of top business schools and realized that a one year MBA would be a better option for me. After doing more research, I found that the PGPX program at the IIMs and the 1 year programs at INSEAD and ISB would fit me well.

The Study plan/strategy:

My goal was to not stress myself too much in the beginning. I knew that I had to peak in at the right time instead of burning out myself.
I set out for a 4 month plan and took a new year resolution that I am going to be consistent with my studies. I formally started my preparation in Jan end and was targeting at taking the exam by end April.

The Hurdles...
Work : Since I am at a project managerial position and also married, I had to juggle things well. I got zero time to study in office and had to manage studies at home. Since I hardly get anytime left after coming to home(thanks to a kid) ,I would get up a little early in the morning and study from 6 to 8 am everyday.

Discipline: I have been out of touch with studies for the last 6 years. God! makes me realize that time passes so quickly. Maintaining discipline and having the willpower to sit and study for 2 hours is something I developed with a lot of struggle. I had initially planned to take my GMAT by end April but because of work my preparation went off the hook for 2 months in April and May and finally I restarted the prep in June.


The start...
The first thing was to research on the material to use. Being from one top engineering schools, maths never looked scary to me .I have had good communication skills and since I have been a voracious reader, I didn't have face much issues in Verbal. However, the English tested on the GMAT is a little different from that which is use in our daily lives and I needed to ensure that I prepare diligently for that.

The resources...
For SC, I referred MGMAT SC Guide and Aristotle SC Grail I used SC Grail first. The content layout in SC Grail made learning SC concepts very easy and allowed me to quickly re-learn a lot of what I had forgotten.I firstly went through the entire SC Grail first and then again went through it but this time, I started doing the Questionbank at the end of the book alongwith the topics. For example, while studying the chapter on Modifiers, I utilized the matrix and did all the Modifiers question.
The benefit of doing the SC Questionbank of 100 questions was that I didn't end up wasting the OG questions initially. The answers to some questions were debatable but overall I think they were good to push me to the next level.

After having completed SC Grail, I moved to MGMAT SC Guide. I breezed through the book smoothly and then finally moved to the official Guide questions. I did the official Guide questions sequentially instead of practising them topic wise, because after practising the questions from SC Grail topicwise, I wanted to do questions from a mixed pool and OG provided me just that.

Critical Reasoning : Now this is a section which I loved equally because of its application in the real world. I used Powerscore CR Bible for this and while reading the book,I took notes diligently. As suggested by rishi raj and others, I started applying the CR concepts in real world. For example,while reading the newspaper or while talking to people, I would try to find out the assumption in their arguments or I'd try to find a strengthener or weakener to support/weaken their argument. Doing all this was fun and I learnt immensely.

Reading Comprehension : I started reading the New york times ,The Wall street journal and any other type of reading material I could get my hands onto. I especially recommend trying to read a couple of scientific publications if you have never done so, as you might run into a reading comprehension that carries such content. The language in a scientific paper can be very technical and, depending on the author's style, dry (no offense to scientists; I do fall into this category more often than I would want to). For practice, I exhausted the passages in OG12 first. However, I found most of the passages to be easy or of medium difficulty level. Moved to RC99 after that. Some of the passages are really difficulty there and not very representative of the GMAT passages but I think they helped me improve my stamina and concentration ability. I also became comfortable with those kind of obscure passages which are are tested on the GMAT.

The test...
I reached the center on time . The test started and I was a little nervous in the beginning but the AWA questions were straightforward, and I breezed through them. I would say I took about 3 minutes to plan, 25 minutes to write and proof-read simultaneously, and the remainder to do a final read for each essay.

The Math section went smoothly. Some of the questions were quite tricky and I ensured that I double check the answers for those tricky bits.

Verbal went by a little jerkier; I had found that my primary issue with verbal during the practice tests was that I tended to gloss over passages and sentences, resulting in me missing out on key information. During the test, I was constantly reminding myself to slow down and read confidently and to answer only when I believed that I had a clear understanding of what was meant or wanted.

After filling the survey and making sure that I had "report/view scores" selected, I hit the send button. Got a 740( Q49, V42). I was more than happy to see the scores .It was such a relief that I wouldn't have to take the GMAT again.


I am happy that the GMAT saga is over and I can happily look at the schools I'm targetting without having to worry on the GMAT front. These forums-both gmatclub and beatthegmat have been of great help to me as I googled the SC questions I had doubt in and invariably would land up with the links to the questions discussed here.
Rather not to compare but just as a thought, I think that each site has its own strengthen. The advantage of BTG is that it has instructors from various companies and you get great answers. The advantage of gmatclub is that it has more active community when it comes to the b-school application process. I got to know most of the things about the pros and cons of the schools from it. Hail the founders of both these websites.
I will be happy to take any questions and help out others here.

-Black Knight on beatthegmat
-target2010 on gmatclub.

shveta wrote:Hi Black Knight,

Great score. All the best for your apps. I am planning to give my GMAT in a month from now and am really getting saturated on my verbal skills. Can you help me with some strategies for SC and CR.

Cheers,
Shveta

Black Knight wrote:Thanks guys!
@Vineesh
When do you plan to take the GMAT ? I think you've been around here on the forum for quite sometime.

sss2534 wrote:Nice post! And 740 with a wife and a kid, eh? --- That's more like a 780 in my book!

megadeth wrote:Congratulations dude! You did it. Today is the last date for the IIMA PGPX program. Have you applied ?