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BlueRain
- Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:36 pm
- Thanked: 1 times
- GMAT Score:770
As promised, I will try to go over my 3-month preparation experience. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.
Background:
Engineering degree from top 50 U.S. university -> Strong Q
Living in U.S. for 10+ year -> Decent V
Strength (>95%): PS, CR
OK (>90%): RC, DS
Weakness (>80%): SC
Test Score in Chron. Order:
GMATPrep 1: 720
Kaplan Free Paper Test: 610
MGMAT Free CAT: 680
GMATPrep 2: 760
Actual GMAT: 770
Books Used and Respective Reviews:
OG 11th Edition
Good: great practice questions w/ explanations, tie for most helpful
Bad: lack of test strategies (expected)
Kaplan 800 2007-2008
Good: good techniques to tackle hard questions in all categories, unrealistic difficulty (good if you have STRONG fundamentals and want to tackle the hardest questions)
Bad: unrealistic difficulty (bad for gauging progress)
Manhattan Review - Verbal Study Guide
Good: very good verbal fundamentals review, a comprehensive list of idioms, tie w/ OG for most helpful
Bad: no/little explanation on practice questions
Note: this is NOT the same company as Manhattan GMAT, which publishes books for each individual areas, most noted for the SC guide
Manhattan GMAT - SC Guide
Good: offer good SC techniques (if you have STRONG verbal fundamentals)
Bad: the SC guide made much more sense after I finished reading the Manhattan Review book since it focuses more on test strategies instead of fundamental concepts, and Manhattan Review book covers some strategies as well after the fundamentals. So in contrast to many people on this forum, I actually found this book to be least helpful in the studying.
Preparation Details
End of May:
* Downloaded GMATPrep and went through the sample questions to get familiar with the question types
* Finished GMATPrep 1 to gauge initial score level (pleasantly surprised with the score, possibly overconfident)
* Analyzed the GMATPrep 1 results to find strength/weakness (spotted relative weakness in SC and DS)
* Purchased OG
Taking a break, I'll continue to update this thread tomorrow.
Background:
Engineering degree from top 50 U.S. university -> Strong Q
Living in U.S. for 10+ year -> Decent V
Strength (>95%): PS, CR
OK (>90%): RC, DS
Weakness (>80%): SC
Test Score in Chron. Order:
GMATPrep 1: 720
Kaplan Free Paper Test: 610
MGMAT Free CAT: 680
GMATPrep 2: 760
Actual GMAT: 770
Books Used and Respective Reviews:
OG 11th Edition
Good: great practice questions w/ explanations, tie for most helpful
Bad: lack of test strategies (expected)
Kaplan 800 2007-2008
Good: good techniques to tackle hard questions in all categories, unrealistic difficulty (good if you have STRONG fundamentals and want to tackle the hardest questions)
Bad: unrealistic difficulty (bad for gauging progress)
Manhattan Review - Verbal Study Guide
Good: very good verbal fundamentals review, a comprehensive list of idioms, tie w/ OG for most helpful
Bad: no/little explanation on practice questions
Note: this is NOT the same company as Manhattan GMAT, which publishes books for each individual areas, most noted for the SC guide
Manhattan GMAT - SC Guide
Good: offer good SC techniques (if you have STRONG verbal fundamentals)
Bad: the SC guide made much more sense after I finished reading the Manhattan Review book since it focuses more on test strategies instead of fundamental concepts, and Manhattan Review book covers some strategies as well after the fundamentals. So in contrast to many people on this forum, I actually found this book to be least helpful in the studying.
Preparation Details
End of May:
* Downloaded GMATPrep and went through the sample questions to get familiar with the question types
* Finished GMATPrep 1 to gauge initial score level (pleasantly surprised with the score, possibly overconfident)
* Analyzed the GMATPrep 1 results to find strength/weakness (spotted relative weakness in SC and DS)
* Purchased OG
Taking a break, I'll continue to update this thread tomorrow.
i am waiting for the update
)
Spent quite some time on this and still not sure if I understood it fully given the inference/connection that I had to make to make the passage make sense. End up slowing down twice as much as the first section (2+ min/question) and still had 10+ minutes left by the last question. 
