I'm a new member of this forum. I've been a silent member of this forum for around 1 month reading all the posts and stuffs. This is my first post in this forum and i would like to share my experience with GMAT.
Started preparing for the exam with 0% idea of this exam during the month of Apr '09. Found time and Studied only during weekends as i'm working in an IT company and its certainly tough to study during weekdays. Booked the exam Jul 29th.. Had no idea whether the 4 months time and that too weekends is sufficient to crack.. On the Day of exam, i was a bit nervous and i'm not the kind of guy who gets nervous during exams. Something in me told that i was not that well equipped for the exam but still want to give a crack and had to nothing to give up. After finishing AWA, started quants and found very difficult right from 1st question. I had not anticipated the exam to be that tough.. I had the same experience with Verbal and i knew that i was fully beaten by the exam. Got a devastating score of 500 (Q36, V23). Never expected such a poor performance from me. The only positive score from this exam was AWA (5.0/6.0)
I never spoke to anyone after the exam.. My dad called me immediately after the exam to enquire. I couldn't speak a word to him over phone. I was totally choked by my score. My dad understood why i was not able to speak a word and he told me that he would call after a few hours and asked me to take good rest.
I tried to forget abt GMAT for a few days. After a few days, i casually passed by Beat the GMAT site. From then, i'm simply reading all kinds of posts (Exercise practices, Other's experiences abt the exam, Recommendations of books, suggestions etc.) After reading all kinds of posts, i got a good insight of the exam and now i realized what i was really missing in the exam.
First of all, to be honest, i took the exam very lightly like other exams. And believe me, after my first attempt, i realized that GMAT exam is not like any other exam. You can never take it very lightly even if you have GOD-gifted brains!! This is the first lesson i learnt.. Secondly, the kind of books i used for my preparation are way below the standards..
1. Official Guide (An exceptional case)
2. Barron's GMAT
3. Nova's GMAT
4. Few 1000 SC,RC,CR
I would not say that one must not use Barrons or Nova's but it must not be the only books for your preparation. Probably to start with, these 2 are good books to get an introduction of problems esp after a long break of college and work. From this forum, i understand that most of the people are recommending books like Powerscore CR Bible, MGMAT etc.. Now i have a good idea of how to prepare for the exam.
I'm thinking of adding high-school maths book to my list of preparation books as i think it is the best book to strengthen my basics. Also, my weakest part in verbal is CR. I'm planning to buy a Powerscore CR bible to learn the tricks and strategies.
There are lots of lessons learnt from my first attempt and i take this experience in a positive way. Had i scored 600-620 in my first attempt, i wouldn't have taken a decision to re-write the exam. Probably, i would have missed a chance to get into 700-club javascript:emoticon(':)')
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/smile.png)
And finally before ending this post, thanks a ton to this forum!!! I'm absolutely rejuvenated by reading the posts!!! I now have an approach and road-map to tackle the exam.
Thank you very much for reading the post!!
-Pradeep