I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi,

This is my first post on BTG, but I have been following the forum time to time since the GMAT bug bit me. I finally took the GMAT yesterday and scored 740, which I feel is good enough and as per my expectations. The biggest hurdle or turning point towards getting a good score is scheduling an appointment, I'll tell you why I think so.
In most of exams, the dates are just announced by the authorities and you have a mindset ready to meet that deadline and you prepare accordingly, but in case of GMAT as you can choose your own date, you tend to postpone it because of other things going on in life. I had planned to take GMAT earlier this year, somewhere near the April end, but because of so many things going on at work, I chose to not take the appointment and to schedule it sometime later. A useless step, because later you realize that everything else just keeps on going and you just have to take the next step some day. I felt that once you take an appointment, the deadline effect kicks in and you start preparing and unless that happens, nothing is going to improve. So, one saturday night, at 1:30 AM, I just decided to take the next step and schedule an appointment for 2 months later (23rd Oct being my father's birthday as well, I thought it will bring in the luck factor )
So, all you folks out there who plan on writing GMAT and are waiting for things to settle down a bit in your life to take an appointment, I would like to tell you, things wont settle on their own, you have to make them settle and that will happen automatically when you take the appointment.
After taking the appointment, I followed a simple strategy, I would go about solving a couple of passages, 15-20 SC/CR questions daily after usual work hours and in my last week before exams, I took personal leave to prepare of the final blow. I really feel that the last week added at least 30-40 marks to my score, so that also is advisable if you can afford that. The last week's prep was very crucial and very hectic. I did not change my routine of getting up at 7 for office, just that instead of going to office, I worked for myself for those 8 hours a day

The books I followed are :
1) OG 12
2) OG Verbal Guide
3) Princeton Review
4) Sahil's Grammar notes (search for it on net, its in pdf/word format)

I have listed these in their order of importance and relevance to the actual GMAT. I started with Princeton Review first and when I was halfway through that, I started doing problems from the Verbal Guide. After a week of doing this, I took the first Mock (Princeton) and scored 620. This actually gave me sense of relief because it meant there is a lot of room for improvement and a lot for me to work upon. A decently high score might have boosted up my confidence too high, so that I would have relaxed and maybe the final scores would have suffered because of that.
After the first mock, I kept a target of taking one mock every weekend. I took GMATPrep about 6 times and Princeton 5 times. In my last week of prep, I used to take one mock test daily throughout the week (did not take on Wednesday as I might have burnt out the enthu, so preferred taking a rest that day and covered all the AWA topics instead) at the same time as my appointment (1 PM) so that the body clock gets tuned for optimum performance about that time. I even completed the AWA sections in the last two Mock tests I took , just to simulate it completely.

My scores ranged from 610 to 740 in Mocks (yes, 740 was my highest in mocks and I am lucky enough by god's grace to manage that in actual GMAT as well )
I even managed to pull off a 610 in Princeton Mock on Tuesday in last week and this is when I decided to skip the test on Wednesday and rather do some different activity.

Anyway, the key to preparation I feel is not the number of books you study, but the dedication you show towards it and the routine you follow. So, just go ahead and give it your best shot and leave it to the higher powers to tell you the final score.
Best of luck everyone!!


PS - I am planning to apply to Stern, Sloan, Haas, INSEAD, and maybe a couple more.
My profile is as follows:
Age - 25
Work Ex - 3
Profession - Software Engineer
Country - India
Undergrad Degree - BTech

Oh yeah, and the breakup of scores is Q50, V39.

Being from an engineering background and having cleared the toughest engineering entrance there is (IIT-JEE), quant was never a big problem, but Verbal is where I had to focus a lot more.

This is a huge improvement you made.Congratulations .

Could you share your strategy about what different you did since your last attempt ?

This was my first GMAT attempt. The other scores I have mentioned are of the Mock tests of Princeton and GMATPrep.

nice score! how did you prepare for quant?

Luckily Quant is my strong area(because of 4 years of engineering education i guess) and was never much concerned about it. I used to consistently score 51 in mock, not sure what I did wrong in the actual GMAT. I guess I just covered the normal questions in OG12 and Princeton review. I worked on Quant for only about 10 days maybe.
However, Verbal is a totally different story.

Abhishek can you please let us know how did you find the Actual GMAT comapred to OG specially Quants portion

The OG is very close to the actual GMAT standards in the Problem Solving section, but the Data Sufficiency question on the actual GMAT were certainly tougher on the actual GMAT. I would say if you score 10/10 in OG DS, you can expect 8/10 on actual GMAT DS.

Congratulations for the great score..How about similarity of GMAT verbal questions to OG latter Verbal questions .. Did you see any idiom usage that was not seen before in your prep.. also how long were CR questions .. was it in comparable to length of OG CRs ( also with respect to toughness level)

The Verbal section on OG is also very much comparable in toughness and length of questions for CR/SC/RC. In fact, I found the RC passage on GMAT a bit less boring than a couple of passages in OG.
I dont think I spotted any new Idiom in the actual test, but I cannot be sure that there were none. I did not spot them does not mean that they were absent
If you are concerned with idioms in specific, go over 'Sahil's Grammar Notes', you'll find a good enough list of idioms there. You can never rule out the possibility of coming across an unseen idiom in the actual test, all you can do is prepare the best you can. After the test, you should be able to say, "I could not have scored any better. I could not have prepared any better".

Thanks for the info..

Any suggestions on pacing for verbal section?
I always tend to lag behind it.

The suggestion for Verbal is same as that for any other section.
Since you cannot go ahead unless you give an answer, you must have a deadline for each question. Once you cross that deadline, just take a best bet and move on. Thinking endlessly will most probably not lead you to the answer if you are not there already.
Keep updating this deadline after every 4 questions attempted, eg, if you have 45 min left and have 15 questions yet to attempt, you cannot afford to waste more than 3 mins on a question. After attempting 3-4 questions, again have a rough figure of the deadline. It is extremely critical that you keep an eye on the clock and number of questions left. As long as you do that, you'll know how much you need to pace up.
Keep practicing, you'll get the hang of it.

PS - I was also unable to complete my Verbal Section for the first 2 of my Mocks, but in the actual GMAT, I had 10 mins to spare in Verbal and 20 mins to spare in Quant!!