Gave my GMAT today..here are a couple of things that worked for me and which might be relevant to you, specially those of you who have demanding work profiles and cannot devote more than an hour or two everyday for preparation...
1. Start Early: There will be many times when the office work pressure would increase significantly and you wouldn't be able to sustain the desired momentum in your preparation, specially if you don't want to compromise on your existing career. I started my prep back in November last year and initially planned to give GMAT in July, but I ended up pushing the date to Sept as there were developments at work which I couldn't have foreseen earlier.
2. Pick one source of reading material and stick to it: I just used the reading material from Jamboree (VA & QA) and OG 12 (Only for VA) for my preparation. I picked up the MGMAT SC book and RC 99 in the last 15 days after having read some rave reviews in forums like this one but frankly they weren't of much help to me, specially RC 99 (unnecessarily convoluted RC's which are nowhere close to what is actually asked). The MGMAT SC book is too dense and should only be used if you have a lot of time on your hand.
3.Sentence Correction: The actual test questions are more difficult than most of the questions in OG. There's a clear emphasis on meaning clarity and studying idioms is pointless. To be honest, verbal ability is something that gets build over years and mugging up some grammar rules alone will not help you to identify the subtle errors. You have to start 'thinking' in English if you want to genuinely ace this section.
4. Reading Comprehension: No difficult vocabulary was used in any of the passages and here again almost all questions were aimed at assessing one's ability to understand what's been written and implied rather than locating some info from the passage. I like the approach of understanding the passage structure first and then reading into details as it helps in focusing on the required things.
5. Critical Reasoning: By far the toughest set of questions that I faced in the exam...the difference between choices were so subtle that I had to literally read everything thrice (even after having made the necessary scratch notes). If you have time I'd suggest you to look at some of the LSAT stuff because the OG questions are not very representative of what is actually asked.
6. Quantitative: Stress on basics..the 2 GMATPrep tests are very close to the difficulty level of the actual test.
7. Practice Tests: I think the stage at which you start writing the tests is critical. In my case I chose to wait till I had finished all the study material and gave all the tests in the last 3 weeks.
Ignore Score 800, Kaplan and the other various random tests floating in the market. Apart from GMATPrep, the MGMAT tests are by far the closest to the actual stuff (except for QA which is far simpler in the real test).
My scores:
PowerPrep I (Nov 2010) - 660
PowerPrep II (September 2011) - 760
Score 800 - 700,680
Kaplan 1 - 580 (confidence killer, the VA questions were completely off)
MGMAT 1 - 690
MGMAT 2 - 680
GMAT Prep 1 - 720
Gmat Prep 2 - 720
GMAT Prep 1 (Repeat) - 770
Gmat Prep 2 (Repeat) - 750
Finally, thank you all. Though I have never before posted on this forum, this website has been extremely helpful and a 24x7 ready reckoner on all doubts and queries.
Best,
Icarus
1. Start Early: There will be many times when the office work pressure would increase significantly and you wouldn't be able to sustain the desired momentum in your preparation, specially if you don't want to compromise on your existing career. I started my prep back in November last year and initially planned to give GMAT in July, but I ended up pushing the date to Sept as there were developments at work which I couldn't have foreseen earlier.
2. Pick one source of reading material and stick to it: I just used the reading material from Jamboree (VA & QA) and OG 12 (Only for VA) for my preparation. I picked up the MGMAT SC book and RC 99 in the last 15 days after having read some rave reviews in forums like this one but frankly they weren't of much help to me, specially RC 99 (unnecessarily convoluted RC's which are nowhere close to what is actually asked). The MGMAT SC book is too dense and should only be used if you have a lot of time on your hand.
3.Sentence Correction: The actual test questions are more difficult than most of the questions in OG. There's a clear emphasis on meaning clarity and studying idioms is pointless. To be honest, verbal ability is something that gets build over years and mugging up some grammar rules alone will not help you to identify the subtle errors. You have to start 'thinking' in English if you want to genuinely ace this section.
4. Reading Comprehension: No difficult vocabulary was used in any of the passages and here again almost all questions were aimed at assessing one's ability to understand what's been written and implied rather than locating some info from the passage. I like the approach of understanding the passage structure first and then reading into details as it helps in focusing on the required things.
5. Critical Reasoning: By far the toughest set of questions that I faced in the exam...the difference between choices were so subtle that I had to literally read everything thrice (even after having made the necessary scratch notes). If you have time I'd suggest you to look at some of the LSAT stuff because the OG questions are not very representative of what is actually asked.
6. Quantitative: Stress on basics..the 2 GMATPrep tests are very close to the difficulty level of the actual test.
7. Practice Tests: I think the stage at which you start writing the tests is critical. In my case I chose to wait till I had finished all the study material and gave all the tests in the last 3 weeks.
Ignore Score 800, Kaplan and the other various random tests floating in the market. Apart from GMATPrep, the MGMAT tests are by far the closest to the actual stuff (except for QA which is far simpler in the real test).
My scores:
PowerPrep I (Nov 2010) - 660
PowerPrep II (September 2011) - 760
Score 800 - 700,680
Kaplan 1 - 580 (confidence killer, the VA questions were completely off)
MGMAT 1 - 690
MGMAT 2 - 680
GMAT Prep 1 - 720
Gmat Prep 2 - 720
GMAT Prep 1 (Repeat) - 770
Gmat Prep 2 (Repeat) - 750
Finally, thank you all. Though I have never before posted on this forum, this website has been extremely helpful and a 24x7 ready reckoner on all doubts and queries.
Best,
Icarus
