I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi Guys,

I am happy to report to the community that i improved my gmat score from 610 to 730 within a month and half time. I was scoring well in my mocks even in my first attempt, but i was not destined to get a good score. I could not manage my time in the first attempt and had to guess randomly in the last few questions in the verbal section. That cost me derly and i scored q 48 and v 27, leaving me with 610. I prepared hard again and focussed my energy to the GMATPrep SC and CR doc. I practiced all the 185 SC questions from GMATPrep doc and all the 108 CR GMATPrep questions. I believe this gave me a lot of confidence this time. The questions from the doc are really challenging and makes you think in the right direction. The GMAT SCs are tested for meaning and overall logic. So don't just cram all the grammer rules. I think i made a big mistake by going over SC and CR rules. Read the books to get a hang of question type, but not for the rules. I think we all have good reasoning ability. So if we focus on meaning and logic, we can solve most of the GMAT verbal questions. I did not touch any other book and improved my verbal score from 27 to 38.

For quant, i bought the gmatclub tests. They are really awesome, especially the geometry and probability questions. Please work on Quant because you are going to see some challenging questions on GMAT. I neglected quant in my first attempt and scored only 48. Don't make such mistake. I believe actual GMAT quant is tougher than GMATPrep. So study well in GMAT. Do some tough questions in each of the quant areas such as geometry, number property, modulus, statistics, probability etc...

For AWA, i followed chineseburned template. I scored 6/6 in my first attempt. Chineseburned template is good enogh for this.

One important thing to consider while doing the actual test is timing. I screwed up my timing in the first attempt. I managed my time well this time and it paid off. I finished both the sections with 2 minutes. I did kaplan online CAT in my second attempt. I scored from 690 to 740. I think kaplan CATs are very accurate. I also did the princeton 670 and veritas test 700.

Let me know if you guys need any help. I am ready to help the community.

Congrats Sumit.

You did a good thing by not cramming too many rules. Wish I'd followed the same.

simple yet very useful tips. Thanks. Congrats on the great score.

Great Score. Congratulations. Can you tell us from where can we get the GMAT prep SC and CR docs mentioned in your post ?

Thanks in advance

Hey Congratulations on great score.
Can you please specify your timing strategy? Did you felt Kaplan was accurate?

Thanks
Vishal

Congratulations. What was your Startegy for RC. Would you like to make some sugesstions to non-native speaker.

Also can you please explain how can one purchase online KAPLAN test without purchasing the book.

Thanks

vineeshp wrote:Congrats Sumit.

You did a good thing by not cramming too many rules. Wish I'd followed the same.

Thanks vineesh,

i still remember, you posted a message on my thread when i scored 610 in my first attempt.

prodizy wrote:simple yet very useful tips. Thanks. Congrats on the great score.

Thanks

baladon99 wrote:Great Score. Congratulations. Can you tell us from where can we get the GMAT prep SC and CR docs mentioned in your post ?

Thanks in advance

GMATPrep SC and CR docs are posted on verbal section in gmatclub.com

vishal.borikar wrote:Hey Congratulations on great score.
Can you please specify your timing strategy? Did you felt Kaplan was accurate?

Thanks
Vishal

Vishal,

I faced issues with verbal section regarding timing. I could not finish the verbal section in mocks and had to guess on last 4-5 questions. This is a fatal mistake. The verbal section is unforgiving if you make mistakes in a series. I scored only 27 in my first attempt and i believe its only because of last 4-5 questions. I suggest you to distribute 75 minutes evenly for verbal. I basically distributed 75 minutes in 4 parts:

Question 1-10 : 18 minutes
Question 11-20: 18 minutes
Question 21-30: 18 minutes
Question 31-41: 21 minutes

I give more time to last 11 quesions because by the time you reach last 11 questions, i feel jaded and lose focus. So you need more time in the end.

However, in my GMAT, i had less than 21 minutes for last 11 questions. I could finish the section within time because the last RC was short and sweet and it didnt take much time to answer the questions. I am very strong in SC, so they took very less time too.

vishal.borikar wrote:Hey Congratulations on great score.
Can you please specify your timing strategy? Did you felt Kaplan was accurate?

Thanks
Vishal

Kaplan online CATs are very good predictor of your score.

Kaplan online CAT3: Q 55 V 30 Overall 700
Kaplan online CAT4: Q 55 V 38 Overall 740
Kaplan online CAT5: Q 52 V 33 Overall 710
Kaplan online CAT6: Q 51 V 36 Overall 690

Kaplan verbal is very challenging in terms of RCs. If you can do well on kaplan cats, there is no reason to worry about actual GMAT.

careers.asd wrote:Congratulations. What was your Startegy for RC. Would you like to make some sugesstions to non-native speaker.

RC is one of the toughest section to improve. RC skills can not be improved in a short span of time. I feel taking notes and ignoring details work for most of the people. Focus on the overall structure of the passage. Note-taking also helps becuase it forces you to think about the passage structure. For main idea questions, focus on the passage map. For inference and detail questions, always go back to passage to find the answer.

The most important thing, you should understand the meaning and purpose of the passage. If you can't answer why the passage was written, then you didn't comprehend it.

careers.asd wrote:Also can you please explain how can one purchase online KAPLAN test without purchasing the book.

Thanks

I bought the kaplan premiere book to get the online resource. I am not sure if you can buy the kaplan cats.

Hi,
I got the following score in Kaplan:
Q49 V 43 720
Q55 V 45 760
Q55 V 45 760
Q52 V 33 690 ==> worrying me, just few more incorrect but in series

Do you think it is good estimator overall. also how did u wrote kaplan with awa? how close u find kaplan scoring with actual gmat?

sharmasumitn1 wrote:

careers.asd wrote:Also can you please explain how can one purchase online KAPLAN test without purchasing the book.

Thanks

I bought the kaplan premiere book to get the online resource. I am not sure if you can buy the kaplan cats.