I just Beat The GMAT!

I just took the GMAT, 740 score, 49 Quant, 41 verbal. My prep over 4 weeks was as follows:

I thought my quant would be ok (I have an 800 quant from the GRE), it was verbal that woried me most.

Books:
Princeton Review - basic stuff, good for an overview but no good if you're chasing a serious score. I never bothered with their trial exam.

Kaplan Premier - solid, but almost too difficult. The cd is very useful, the mini quizzes are excellent. I did find this almost a confidence breaker as it can be soo difficult. My time was short so I gave up on Kaplan and moved over to the OG books.

Official Guide 11, Verbal Review, Quant Review - these 3 books are a must. The best resource out there (next to the GMATPrep cd).

Strategy...
Quant: The OG has the best review section of basic concepts. I'd also strongly advise on learning the Airthmatic Progression formulas (no book seems tro mention these - they are a big timesaver).

Verbal: The best resource I found were Spidey and Sahils notes on this website. Find them, print them, learn them - they are your best friend when it comes to SC.

On the Day...
My quant section was nasty, I barely finished and had to guess at least 3 questions due to their difficulty. In the GMATPrep I had always finished with minutes to spare so this was a shock. The key here is to stay cool, if its a brutal question good chance is its a trial question.

Verbal was much like the prep cd. Learn those grammar rules (find those notes I mentioned), SC can be dramatically improved by practice.

My score was on the money, my test exams were 730 and 750, so 740 was spot on. Also - take the GMATprep exams a few extra times, the questions vary and they're the best resource out there.

Good luck out there!

Thats an improvement, Fei.
Congratulations!
Sorry I missed your post earlier.

Congratulations Fei!!! Glad to see that you were able to crack the GMAT in 4 weeks time. I currently have mine scheduled for the 12th of May, but most likely will end up rescheduling it for sometime in either June or July.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Hi Fei,
Hearty congratulations for this huge score.
can you please guide me if there is any cource on net from where i can access the GMAtT material coz i have jus shifted to a new country and finding hard to get the books so easily.
what is this GMAT cd ? is this that GMAC one??

thanks
Utkarsh

dear Utkarsh,

there are indeed loads of materials on internet for GMAT preparation.

the first yet the ultimate GMAT stuff is GMAT prep s/w download it first.

also u'll find tons of files on this site as well as on other sites such as esnip...
download them.

Congrats Fei... where can I find these great verbal practice notes. By far my weakest area as well.

I'd also strongly advise on learning the Arithmatic Progression formulas (no book seems tro mention these - they are a big timesaver).

Can you expand on this? I'm not familiar with that and didn't see anything over on the Beatthegmat Wiki about it either.

Congrats for the great score !!
Not sure how ur score went to 740 with the 49 and 41 score...as per the OG it would have been in the range of 690 to 700.

Just curious to know if it helps to give the GMAT in March ..off season time.

Hi All - You can find loads of good GMAT prep material, including Spidey and Sahils notes mentioned in the original post on https://www.beatthegmat.com/wiki/doku.php

Allenkt - The arithmetic progression formula is just a formula which allows you to find the nth term or the sum of all the terms in an arithmetic progression. They can be applied to specific arithmetic progression formula type questions or on "if xx expands at a rate of y an hour, what is the radius of xx in t1 hours" type questions on the GMAT.

You can follow the links kindly provided by Jangjo Jess in my original post on a similar question https://www.beatthegmat.com/viewtopic.php?t=6187 for more info/practice.

thank you, fei. congratulation

nice work there! very inspiring. i'm trying to take the GMAT in 3 weeks.

my question for you: besides, GMATPrep, what other CAT practice exams did you take?

also, i have OG 11, PR, Kaplan, MGMAT SC.... do i really need OG green and purple? did they make that much of difference for you? or is OG 11 good enough? thankyou