I just Beat The GMAT!

Long time lurker to these boards, proud to be able to post a quick debrief.

To study, I used the 60-Day Study Guide offered on this site. The daily emails were an invaluable resource to keep making sure I practiced a little bit everyday. It's way too easy to get caught up in work or social obligations and forget to keep up with your studying.

I believe the materials that the 60-Day Study Guide has changed a little bit, but besides the OG, I used the MGMAT Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning books, along with Kaplan Premier for Math, and Reading Comprehension.

I don't have all the scores of my practice tests, but I can tell you my diagnostic test was a 660. I majored in Math, so quant was never a problem for me, but I could quickly see from my results that sentence correction was my big Achilles heel. After completing the 60-day guide, my last practice test was a 710, and I still wasn't making much progress with Sentence Correction.

To try to combat this problem I decided to go back through the Manhattan book, and the OG. While going through the OG again, I didn't go through the questions in cardinal order. Instead, I solved every problem that ended in a 1 (1, 11, 21, etc.), then I went through and solved every problem that ended in a 2. It could just be a coincidence, but everything started to "click" while I was doing this. I believe it really helped to ramp up the difficulty in this manner.

Finally, I did three MGMAT practice tests, and got 740, 730, and 760. Felt confident, went in, took the test, and was ecstatic when I saw the final score.

Sorry I don't have more information about how to improve in quant, but feel free to ask me about anything regarding my experience!

bradenm2 wrote:Long time lurker to these boards, proud to be able to post a quick debrief.

To study, I used the 60-Day Study Guide offered on this site. The daily emails were an invaluable resource to keep making sure I practiced a little bit everyday. It's way too easy to get caught up in work or social obligations and forget to keep up with your studying.

I believe the materials that the 60-Day Study Guide has changed a little bit, but besides the OG, I used the MGMAT Sentence Correction and Critical Reasoning books, along with Kaplan Premier for Math, and Reading Comprehension.

I don't have all the scores of my practice tests, but I can tell you my diagnostic test was a 660. I majored in Math, so quant was never a problem for me, but I could quickly see from my results that sentence correction was my big Achilles heel. After completing the 60-day guide, my last practice test was a 710, and I still wasn't making much progress with Sentence Correction.

To try to combat this problem I decided to go back through the Manhattan book, and the OG. While going through the OG again, I didn't go through the questions in cardinal order. Instead, I solved every problem that ended in a 1 (1, 11, 21, etc.), then I went through and solved every problem that ended in a 2. It could just be a coincidence, but everything started to "click" while I was doing this. I believe it really helped to ramp up the difficulty in this manner.

Finally, I did three MGMAT practice tests, and got 740, 730, and 760. Felt confident, went in, took the test, and was ecstatic when I saw the final score.

Sorry I don't have more information about how to improve in quant, but feel free to ask me about anything regarding my experience!

Wow!! A great GMAT score and would u believe it.. My story is very similar to urs. (i also got a 660 in diagnostic and SC uggh.. i hate it!!)

Could u give me a bit more advice on how did u do SC??
thnks

Thank you!

For sentence correction, I really struggled to make any progress until I was able to really see them as logic puzzles. Instead of just looking at the differences between each answer choice, I would try to think what each difference implied. For example, if you see the word "evaluate" in one choice and "evaluates" in another, go back and figure out if the subject of the sentence is plural or not.

Next, I really advocate solving questions in the manner I described in the original post. I think it really helps out with two things. First, it forces you to figure out the error in the sentence. If you solve the questions in the order recommended by the MGMAT guide, you can go into a question already knowing that there is a modifier error. Second, if you try to solve all the OG problems in cardinal order, you will deny yourself a "warm up" unless you solve all of them in a single sitting. By solving every 10th question, you slowly ramp up the difficulty over each iteration, while helps build your confidence.

Finally, I would say one thing that helped me was to not immediately check to see if I got each practice problem correct. You never know how you're doing on the test in real time, so it's good to prepare your mind to move on from a question after you answer it. After solving 10-15 questions I would go back and check my answers so that I could still remember my line of reasoning when going over my errors.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

bradenm2 wrote:Thank you!

For sentence correction, I really struggled to make any progress until I was able to really see them as logic puzzles. Instead of just looking at the differences between each answer choice, I would try to think what each difference implied. For example, if you see the word "evaluate" in one choice and "evaluates" in another, go back and figure out if the subject of the sentence is plural or not.

Next, I really advocate solving questions in the manner I described in the original post. I think it really helps out with two things. First, it forces you to figure out the error in the sentence. If you solve the questions in the order recommended by the MGMAT guide, you can go into a question already knowing that there is a modifier error. Second, if you try to solve all the OG problems in cardinal order, you will deny yourself a "warm up" unless you solve all of them in a single sitting. By solving every 10th question, you slowly ramp up the difficulty over each iteration, while helps build your confidence.

Finally, I would say one thing that helped me was to not immediately check to see if I got each practice problem correct. You never know how you're doing on the test in real time, so it's good to prepare your mind to move on from a question after you answer it. After solving 10-15 questions I would go back and check my answers so that I could still remember my line of reasoning when going over my errors.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Thank you, i am going to use this definitely !

you might have seen that even BTG forum has those list of idioms.. did u learn them?
if yes, did it help you ? ( i ask this because i struggle a lot in learning them and using them in a test scenario)

vaibhavgupta wrote:


you might have seen that even BTG forum has those list of idioms.. did u learn them?
if yes, did it help you ? ( i ask this because i struggle a lot in learning them and using them in a test scenario)

Vaibhav , You can see the last post from the admin regarding idioms

https://www.beatthegmat.com/idioms-and-s ... 92022.html

I spent very little time going over idioms. To me, learning the different idioms is a pure memorization exercise. The chances of a question coming down to an idiom difference that the test taker has happened to memorize is very small. Tried to budget my time to learning how to think how the test wants people to think instead of just memorizing things.

bradenm2 wrote: Tried to budget my time to learning how to think how the test wants people to think instead of just memorizing things.

And that would be?

GMAC always refers to the GMAT as testing "higher order thinking." There was a good explanation as to what that is a couple weeks ago here on Beat the GMAT:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/10/ ... r-thinking

bradenm2 wrote:GMAC always refers to the GMAT as testing "higher order thinking." There was a good explanation as to what that is a couple weeks ago here on Beat the GMAT:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/10/ ... r-thinking

Thanks for the advice. will keep all of this in mind.

All the best for your applications!