I just Beat The GMAT!

Guys,

I finally achieved my target. First of all I would like to thank Stacey Koprince, Ron Purewel, Stuart Kovinsky and Testluv. Without their help it would not have been possible to achieve my target. I would also like to thank BTG and all the members of BTG for making this forum really helpful. And yes my wife who faced the wrath of GMAT by my side.

Will I started my journey about a 8-9 months ago, started with a score of 570(q24,v35). I took my first attempt in Feb this year and scored 670(47,35). No improvement in Verbal at all. My initial problem with verbal was with SC but as I improved in SC I think i made compensating errors in CR and RC and probably did not improve my score at all.

I started studying again and achieved my score.

Some of the things that worked for me

I cannot emphasize more the importance of GMAT prep in Quant, I took the test at least 10 times but still used to get 15-20, in hindsight I should have taken the test maybe in 20 times. I did not find the questions very difficult or lengthy, they were indeed tricky but not time consuming. My weakest area in Quant is VIC's and fortunately I did not get many questions from that topic. I did get 2-3 questions from Probability and Combination .

As far as verbal is concerned SC and RC are in line with GMAT prep but CR in the real exam was much more difficult, mainly because the length of the stimulus was too long to absorb. If you really want to score beyond 40 in verbal then be prepared for some challenging CR's.

I will be more than happy to discuss any specific question from anyone.

Cheers and all the best.

V

Congrats. I am happy for you. I took the exam today but my story is not happy ending.

Here is my story ...

https://www.beatthegmat.com/i-did-not-be ... 58400.html

Congratulations Vineet

- Can you share with us a little bit about the materials that you used?
- Was the level of the Quant questions like that of the GMAT Prep? If not, what are some of the areas that you feel one should concentrate on to up ante? (Number properties/ Word Translations / Statistics...)

For quant I used MGMAT guides they are actually very helpful, do go through their advanced sections, but as far as questions are concerned OG is really good but GMAT prep should be your GOD, take the test like 20 times, just quant. MGMAT questions for quant are quiet difficult.

In quant GMAT doesn't give very complicated questions, they rather try to trick you and especially in DS. You should do similar questions many times, the tricks that they use are fairly repetitive. Try Sets, they will show you the tricks. People say that quant is very difficult, its actually not that difficult when compared with GMAT Prep. GMAT prep is representative of your score and questions (except CR, that was totally brutal for me).

For verbal, I have no clue man, I tried really hard but could not improve that well. I tried MGMAT SC guide, Powerscore CR guide, I actually did improve in RC by using some advice from Stacey and Brian.

I was actually good in CR, typically in MGMAT and GMAT Prep q's I used to get 10-12 questions correct out of 14, but the real thing was much more tricky. Maybe that is the cause of my low score in verbal.

Congratulation, vineetbatra!

I am glad to hear that MGMAT has more trickery questions than the actual GMAT, because I am tired of getting tricked by MGMAT and feeling frustrated =).

uwhusky, just to bring to your notice that although MGMAT questions are tricky but its score is fairly representative of the GMAT. 3 weeks before I took its test and scored 690.

Actually MGMAT is really good to teach time management, something I struggled until the last test. You have to figure out the questions in which you will spend more than 2.5 minutes, cut your losses and move on after 1.5 minutes.

Remember GMAT thrives on the following:
1. Fear
2. Emotional attachment to a question

You have to overcome these 2 things.

So did you go through the MGMAT courses?
If so, how much were they?

Tks!

Question?

So for practice tests you only used the gmat prep software you download from mba.com?

And you took it 10 times?

I did not take MGMAT course's but I did write all its CAT's. I also wrote GMAT Prep 10 times, but that was not in full exam conditions, I was just trying to get as many questions out of GMAT Prep as possible.

I have about 17 days left before my test, and my plan is to utilize MGMAT for quant, and GMAT Prep/OG 12 for verbal.

Hopefully I can come back with a positive report.

If I were you, I would use GMAT Prep for Quant and MGMAT for CR. Last few days you want to concentrate on OG Material and concepts, avoid doing new material.

vineetbatra wrote:If I were you, I would use GMAT Prep for Quant and MGMAT for CR. Last few days you want to concentrate on OG Material and concepts, avoid doing new material.

I agree, that's why I am using OG material for verbal. Math is math, either you know the concept and formula, or you don't. MGMAT is very good with tricky questions, which is good to practice beyond concept and formula. I actually scored 49 on GMAT Prep, but only averaging 45-46 because how tricky MGMAT is.

There are more than enough verbal questions between OG 12, OG Verbal and GMAT prep, so I don't think I need to practice on 3rd party questions.

Hi Vaneetbatra, Congrats on your score!

Wanted to ask as to how many New Questions did you see each time for Quant and Verbal when you re-ran the GMAT Prep?

Thanks!

boazkhan,

I am told that there are more than 1200 questions in the bank, but nothing on the specific of the split between verbal and quant. I think logically the frequency depends on the average of your performance; if you are constantly scoring between 48-51, then after 2-3 tests, you might be close to exhausting the bank for questions in that range. On the other hand, if you start off with a much lower score, every time you improve your score, the likelihood of different and harder questions appearing will increase.

So if you are scoring very high in quant, taking the test more than 2-3 times may not be worth the effort.

Vineet Bhai,

Just saw ur Happy ending post..congrats bhai!!

Wish u good luck ..meet u in ISB soon!!