GMAT Strategy

Hello Experts,

*Who Am I?
I am Jyo, working as a software engineer in a globally reputed IT firm for the past two years. I have decided to apply for MBA, preferably for classes commencing spring 2013.

*What I did for my GMAT till now?
Speaking of MBA applications in top / top-mid tier universities, I require a good GMAT score (minimum of 650). And since, most of the applications start by end of august, I have scheduled my test date on 16th August. I have not prepared much for the GMAT till now, except for taking up a couple of free prep tests to get acquainted with the test pattern. I have also purchased the "Self-study" course materials from the Princeton Review, which includes the 13th edition official GMAT review/Guide, a couple of strategy books and access to online contents and 10-practice tests online.

*Where do I stand at GMAT?
As stated earlier, I took a couple of prep tests and scored 500 (44 Q, 16 V, 5 IR) in my first test and 550 (42 Q, 23 V, 5 IR) in the second. And nevertheless, these were scored without preparation and includes guessed answers (due to time constraints???), especially in the verbal section. I have started preparing for my GMAT with the purchased contents a couple of days back and would be attempting another prep test today.

What are my expectations?
Since, I would prefer a b-school that gives me a good ROI and a good career growth, I would require a decent GMAT score, ranging between 650 to 750 and nothing less. I should also mention that I would be dedicating a month's time (July 12th to August 15th, my test date is August 16th) just for GMAT preparation with no office / personal works. As you can see, I am an average test taker and since I do not have a proper strategy to execute for my preparation , I am in need of some expert's advice. Posting my queries here seeking help in scoring well on my GMAT with minimal preparation time.

I would appreciate any valuable advice, suggestions and "proven" strategies on preparing for the GMAT with the constraints and scenarios I have stated above.

(In short - An average test taker with 550 score without preparation, expecting to score 650+ with limited prep resources and dedicated preparation time of one month)

Hoping to use this post as my guide throughout my preparation time. I would also require advice in choosing my universities and the process throughout applications, but i suppose it shall wait until i get my GMAT score.

Thanks


UPDATE:
Well, I took a prep test from princeton review and again got a score of just 550 but this time

Verbal: 22
Quantitative: 43
Total (V & Q): 550
Analytical Writing: *
Integrated Reasoning: 9

VERBAL SECTION: 22 (18 of 41)

QUANTITATIVE SECTION: 43 (33 of 37) - Wrong answers at questions 1,5,13 and 27

INTEGRATED REASONING: 9 (9 of 27)

I am planning on taking up the drills and OG13 problems a bit before I attempt another full test by next week. I shall also update the post with my actions and improvements, if any. It would be great if I get a proper guidance and strategy to follow.

-Jyo-

You definitely need to get more acquainted with the Integrated Reasoning section. Also you should spend more time improving the Verbal section. Try to note down the types of questions that you fail to solve correctly and which answer is correctly and why. The types of questions are repeated so the more ready-made solutions you will remember the faster and more successful you will be.

Kasia@MasterGMAT wrote:You definitely need to get more acquainted with the Integrated Reasoning section. Also you should spend more time improving the Verbal section. Try to note down the types of questions that you fail to solve correctly and which answer is correctly and why. The types of questions are repeated so the more ready-made solutions you will remember the faster and more successful you will be.

Thanks for the reply Kasia. I require a couple of clarifications regarding the GMAT scoring.

1. In the first 2 tests given in (GMAC's GMATPrep tool), I scored 5 in integrated reasoning (which was for a scale of 8) and in the recent test taken today (in Princeton Review's Core practice test), I scored a 9 (which does not fall within the 0-8 mark - solved 9 out of 27 questions, so what the score might be?) and how much importance does the IR section carry and how it might affect my aggregate score (out of 800)?

2. In quants section, in the test taken today I had only 4 wrong answers but still my score was just 43 (less than the 45 mark) but in GMATPrep earlier, once I answered 5 wrongly but still ended up with 44, so how do I go about with the calculation of the score in the GMAT CAT and where exactly do I stand?

And when it comes to Verbal, I currently have my OG13 and a couple of prep books from the princeton review. Would they be enough to aid me in scoring better? Also, I tend to do the Verbal problems better on the book rather than the one's on the screen. So any suggestions so as to what might be wrong with the way I am answering / attempting the questions. Especially, when it comes to reading comprehension, I tend to skim through the paragraphs without understanding even the very concept of the para. I could realise that something is wrong in the way I attempt verbal questions, but unable to identify what :):)

The final question would be - Will I be able to keep up the pace to score a 650+ (MINIMUM) from the 550 Mark with just one more month to go, or is it a good choice to postpone the test date? Also, if i postpone, what might be the chances for me to apply to good schools for spring 2013???

I might sound a bit demotivated here, but ultimately all I want to get for now is the GMAT score that I desire

Appreciate your inputs

Thanks

Hello experts,

I have my exam in exactly 15 days from tomorrow (on August 16th 2012).

I have been practicing gmat problems for the 2 weeks and taken a good number of prep tests from GMAC prep and TPR.

Please find the details of my test results below (ordered by latest test to oldest)

Test Name Date %ile Total Q Q cor V V cor IR IR cor

Princeton Review 7 30-07-2012 79th 650 800 51 23/37 30 26/41 - 15/29
Princeton Review 6 27-07-2012 85th 680 800 51 28/37 33 24/41 - 17/30
GMAC Prep Test 1 25-07-2012 63rd 600 800 49 22/37 24 22/41 8 18/21
Princeton Review 5 24-07-2012 32nd 490 800 47 27/37 11 26/41 - 16/29
Princeton Review 4 22-07-2012 74th 640 800 47 27/37 31 23/41 - 17/28
Princeton Review 3 19-07-2012 57th 580 800 41 26/37 29 27/41 - 14/27
Princeton Review 2 17-07-2012 54th 570 800 39 28/37 29 19/41 - 21/28
Princeton Review 1 08-07-2012 48th 550 800 43 33/37 22 18/41 - 9/27

If you could observe, there is a significant improvement in the overall score (Total) in the last 3 test taken. However, the number of questions answered correctly (Q cor and V cor) are actually less in comparison to the older tests.

Also since the score fluctuates between 490 - 680, there is a high probability of getting a score less than the 600 mark in the real GMAT test; I am still not sure how the test is scored in real, but to be honest, the tests where I have scored high (600-680) and in the test where I have scored a 490 had difficult questions (may be that is the reason the over all score got boosted??? but why 490 in the 5th test??? in all the tests the incorrect answers were scattered evenly across the sections and not more than 3-4 consecutive incorrect answers).

It could also be noted that in the test where I have scored a 550 had the maximum number of correct answers but still the score was low with the test where i have scored a 600 having the least correct answers.

Since I am having just around 2 weeks of preparation time for the test, I am not able to judge myself so as to position myself of where I stand even with all these statistical data as listed above.

I can say that, most of the mistakes in quants are resultants of either misinterpreted questions (only in DS types) or "silly" mistakes which I am trying to avoid by spending more time; I almost take all the 75 minutes for quants section inspite of rushing the last 5-6 questions under 8 minutes;

When it comes to verbal, I have improved to a little extent when it comes to CR and SC types; But still RC score is determined only by luck!

I would be able give a 10 point increase in verbal but still RC does not seem to be in my hands; Even if i study the passage well and give a reasonably correct answer, it turns out to be wrong most of the times;

I am expecting a 650 + (or atleast 600 and nothing less) in the real test and would be glad if i could be given some suggestions, justifications about the unpredictable scoring as given above and expert's advice on how i can proceed further;

[The materials i am using are posted earlier - OG 13th edition and The princeton review (TPR) selfstudy online materials and books; I would not be able to purchase or avail anyother materials due to time constraints].

Your feedback and suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks

RC requires you to really pay close attention to the prompt. Most of the answers are lifted from the text directly, meaning you should be able to point to the answer within a specific sentence or two. If the prompt says "implies" you'll need to find the idea that they're asking about and only make a small logical step. If you need to make two steps to get to that answer, it's probably wrong.

You're right that RC might be out of your hands at this point especially since it can be very vocabulary dependent, I might recommend you spend more time doing SC, which is often quite mathematical in nature.

I really liked studying with manhattan gmat because their assessment tools are really good (they track data across tests). I was able to notice that in CR I missed assumption questions and boldface questions, so I only studied those. This meant I was able to ignore weaken/strengthen/flaw questions. It's about studying smarter since you only have 2 weeks or so. With CR questions, are you reading the question or the paragraph first? It helped me to read the question first!

You really need to get at least a 30 in verbal, and given your writing, it seems you have plenty of confidence with English. Perhaps you could brush up on your tenses for SC though. Idioms aren't worth studying at this point because you'll never see any that you learn. That's how evil the tests are!

Thank you for the prompt reply Machichi.

I would say I am doing pretty good with SC questions, getting almost 75-80% of the answers right and with CR, its not definite. I tend to read the question first and skim across the choices and select the one which appears to be the most appropriate option.

However, this does not turn out to be the "best" answer. In most cases, i select the second best choice since in almost every CR question that i have come across, there are 2 choices that seem to be right and 3 choices which are completely absurd. This seems to be true for any CR question above the easy level. The mistakes i make usually are on the "Inference" Critical reasoning questions, which i still have difficulty in choosing among the 2 best choices; However, when given the answer I am able to clearly reason out, why it turns out to be the best choice.

RC, I would not say is not primarily due to the vocab dependency but rather the way I read the passage. I tend to have this habit of giving a glance over the entire passage, without even interpreting the message being conveyed; May be lack of interest? or maybe I am getting distracted by the "question"?
Would there be any proven strategy that could be applied to tackle RC questions with minimal error rate?

And in quants, eventhough I score above 48 on an average, I get around 8 - 11 questions wrong out of the 37 questions (which is almost 25% of the total questions). The mistakes are mostly due to misinterpreted data sufficiency questions/ silly miscalculations. Eventhough these could be minimized with a bit more of a practice, can I trust the scoring pattern of the mock tests and expect the same in the real GMAT? As, 75% correct answers does not seem to go with a 50+ gmat score in quants!

Appreciate your inputs.

Regards,
Jyo