-
obliqueskeptic
- Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:23 am
- Location: India
- Thanked: 1 times
- GMAT Score:710
Greetings All,
I have been around the beatthegmat forums for the last two months, however, it was today that I decided to finally create a user-account and post for the first time in the forum.
Why today? Well, I appeared for my GMAT today and was able to score only a 710(Q48, V40) after having averaged around 730-750 in my practice tests. Yes, it possibly just a matter of natural correction for an expected score to come down by about 20-30 points, but overall I feel highly disappointed by my performance.
On the positive side I feel extremely proud of having been focused during my 45 days of preparation, especially with a 6-day work week and timings that range from 9 in the morning to 7, maybe 8 at night.
It also feels great about having score not-that-badly on an "academic" indicator, especially after a not-so-stellar performance during my bachelor degree.
So, here I am, after two hours of crying alone in my room and smoking half a pack of cigarettes, with a terrible terrible headache.(Its just the smoke, I suppose.)
I don't know how much help this post will be to those who read it, but I will just list down how I prepared for the GMAT.
Quant:
Having faced the ruthless wrath of the mathematics in the Indian education system, I did not find the GMAT Quant to be of a very high difficulty level. I spent 1 week revising all the concepts and familiarizing myself with the different problem types.
I used the Manhattan Quant Strategy Guides. The best thing about this book is that at the end of each chapter it lists problems from the OG. It was a great way of practicing all OG problems and at the same time of making sure that no particular concept was left un-studied.
For problems of a higher difficulty level I did the Quant & DS Practice tests included in the Kaplan software.
Verbal - RC:
I had appeared for the CAT(the most prestigious MBA entrance exam in India) two years back and had found that I was exceptionally weak at RCs. Nevertheless, after solving the first 10 RCs from the OG I knew that the GMAT RC was more refined, definite and more logical to understand and solve. The remainder of the practice for RCs came during practice tests, and of course, the OG.
Verbal - CR:
I had always thought that I would always do good at Critical Reasoning questions, because they simply test for logical reasoning and nothing else. Nevertheless, it took lots of practice from the OG to understand the type of answers that the GMAT expects from you. Try not to deviate too much from the OG for the Critical Reasoning questions. It is possible that you will get stumped by questions from other sources, and will not be very convinced by the answer explanations that they offer. The questions in the OG on the other hand are very near to those in the actual tests and the answer-expectation is very consistent. I would suggest that you should always read the entire answer explanation in the OG, even for questions that you don't get wrong. This will enable you to form a discernible line of approach while attempting CR questions on practice tests or the real GMAT. I, for one am very sure that I did not get a single CR question incorrect in my GMAT today. (I would like to thank sentence correction for the 40).
Verbal - SC:
I started straight away with the OG. Did all the questions, OG10,11,12 and then did all those in OG12 again. (Its alright to do the same questions again as long as you don't try to memorize them when you do them the first time). Moreover, I have never been very familiar with the grammar-jargon that most books use. Participle. Antecedent. Blah. Although, I agree that it might be very important for most people to understand these rules to develop an understanding of a language which not their first. However, I have always found myself sufficiently fluent and functional with my English and I decided to go against the advice of "doing questions by the ear." Nevertheless, the overall OG practice examples enabled me to learn about important rules and patterns that are common in GMAT sentence correction. However, I was still not satisfied, but terribly close to the examination. Four days before the GMAT I checked out "Spidey's SC" - a wonderful resource on GMAT sentence correction. I also got my hands on Manhattan Sentence Correction Guide. It was a very wonderful book, but unfortunately equally big. I scraped through the sample questions in whatever time I had left and there was something new that I learned on almost every other page, things that I would otherwise have totally missed had I just gone by the ear. Nevertheless, I think that my SC preparation would have been much better and I would have definitely scored a 44 had I got onto this book (and Spidey's SC) much earlier.
Oh yes, the AWA:
I used to write a lot around three years ago, but have almost completely stopped. When I first started my AWA prep on the 18th of June (GMAT minus 6 days) I was able to confirm the existence of the global phenomena known as the "Writer's Block." The GMAT AWA doesn't expect you to be Shakespeare. (Well, definitely not, he would have totally bombed in Sentence Correction). The GMAT AWA requires you to be clear and concise. I thoroughly read the sample responses for both questions that are provided in the OG. I scanned several templates, from Princeton, Kaplan and from other resources on the Internet. Then I got onto making my own master templates, which I successfully applied to 4 practice questions of each type. During the preparation for the AWA I realized that I was using more or less the same words, adjectives, adverbs across all my essays and analysis. I grew worried for a while, but only to realize that I will be writing only one analysis of an issue and one analysis of an argument in the actual GMAT and both would be scored by different readers. So, it doesn't matter if you have a dozen of favorite "impact" words that you like to use - just be sure to use them judiciously throughout the paragraph. More importantly don't favor impact over loss in meaning or context.
Well, there it all goes. All that I could learn (and remember) from my GMAT prep. It was a wonderful experience which helped me re-explore my abilities of dedication and focus. It also helped me re-discover the joy of writing and I guess that you will get to see more of me on the beatthegmat forums.
I do not know whether a 710 with 2 years of work-experience and an exceptional EC record will be of any help in getting me into the schools that I desire - and this I realized as soon as I peeked through my hands on my face to look at the score on the screen at the test center - but I know that the GMAT, although adds to my profile, it in no way defines me as a person.
As it is said, I am who I am, and the GMAT prep experience has only made me better
Do let me know if you have any queries or if you would like to have the GMATprep worksheet that I made in order track my preparation.
All the best with your preparation.
Regards,
obliqueskeptic
(No, I don't have a real name - my current boss maybe reading this post
)
P.S.:
Any score above or below 700 deserves a bowl Maggi (India's most favorite 2-minute noodles), so I'm off to have mine.
I have been around the beatthegmat forums for the last two months, however, it was today that I decided to finally create a user-account and post for the first time in the forum.
Why today? Well, I appeared for my GMAT today and was able to score only a 710(Q48, V40) after having averaged around 730-750 in my practice tests. Yes, it possibly just a matter of natural correction for an expected score to come down by about 20-30 points, but overall I feel highly disappointed by my performance.
On the positive side I feel extremely proud of having been focused during my 45 days of preparation, especially with a 6-day work week and timings that range from 9 in the morning to 7, maybe 8 at night.
It also feels great about having score not-that-badly on an "academic" indicator, especially after a not-so-stellar performance during my bachelor degree.
So, here I am, after two hours of crying alone in my room and smoking half a pack of cigarettes, with a terrible terrible headache.(Its just the smoke, I suppose.)
I don't know how much help this post will be to those who read it, but I will just list down how I prepared for the GMAT.
Quant:
Having faced the ruthless wrath of the mathematics in the Indian education system, I did not find the GMAT Quant to be of a very high difficulty level. I spent 1 week revising all the concepts and familiarizing myself with the different problem types.
I used the Manhattan Quant Strategy Guides. The best thing about this book is that at the end of each chapter it lists problems from the OG. It was a great way of practicing all OG problems and at the same time of making sure that no particular concept was left un-studied.
For problems of a higher difficulty level I did the Quant & DS Practice tests included in the Kaplan software.
Verbal - RC:
I had appeared for the CAT(the most prestigious MBA entrance exam in India) two years back and had found that I was exceptionally weak at RCs. Nevertheless, after solving the first 10 RCs from the OG I knew that the GMAT RC was more refined, definite and more logical to understand and solve. The remainder of the practice for RCs came during practice tests, and of course, the OG.
Verbal - CR:
I had always thought that I would always do good at Critical Reasoning questions, because they simply test for logical reasoning and nothing else. Nevertheless, it took lots of practice from the OG to understand the type of answers that the GMAT expects from you. Try not to deviate too much from the OG for the Critical Reasoning questions. It is possible that you will get stumped by questions from other sources, and will not be very convinced by the answer explanations that they offer. The questions in the OG on the other hand are very near to those in the actual tests and the answer-expectation is very consistent. I would suggest that you should always read the entire answer explanation in the OG, even for questions that you don't get wrong. This will enable you to form a discernible line of approach while attempting CR questions on practice tests or the real GMAT. I, for one am very sure that I did not get a single CR question incorrect in my GMAT today. (I would like to thank sentence correction for the 40).
Verbal - SC:
I started straight away with the OG. Did all the questions, OG10,11,12 and then did all those in OG12 again. (Its alright to do the same questions again as long as you don't try to memorize them when you do them the first time). Moreover, I have never been very familiar with the grammar-jargon that most books use. Participle. Antecedent. Blah. Although, I agree that it might be very important for most people to understand these rules to develop an understanding of a language which not their first. However, I have always found myself sufficiently fluent and functional with my English and I decided to go against the advice of "doing questions by the ear." Nevertheless, the overall OG practice examples enabled me to learn about important rules and patterns that are common in GMAT sentence correction. However, I was still not satisfied, but terribly close to the examination. Four days before the GMAT I checked out "Spidey's SC" - a wonderful resource on GMAT sentence correction. I also got my hands on Manhattan Sentence Correction Guide. It was a very wonderful book, but unfortunately equally big. I scraped through the sample questions in whatever time I had left and there was something new that I learned on almost every other page, things that I would otherwise have totally missed had I just gone by the ear. Nevertheless, I think that my SC preparation would have been much better and I would have definitely scored a 44 had I got onto this book (and Spidey's SC) much earlier.
Oh yes, the AWA:
I used to write a lot around three years ago, but have almost completely stopped. When I first started my AWA prep on the 18th of June (GMAT minus 6 days) I was able to confirm the existence of the global phenomena known as the "Writer's Block." The GMAT AWA doesn't expect you to be Shakespeare. (Well, definitely not, he would have totally bombed in Sentence Correction). The GMAT AWA requires you to be clear and concise. I thoroughly read the sample responses for both questions that are provided in the OG. I scanned several templates, from Princeton, Kaplan and from other resources on the Internet. Then I got onto making my own master templates, which I successfully applied to 4 practice questions of each type. During the preparation for the AWA I realized that I was using more or less the same words, adjectives, adverbs across all my essays and analysis. I grew worried for a while, but only to realize that I will be writing only one analysis of an issue and one analysis of an argument in the actual GMAT and both would be scored by different readers. So, it doesn't matter if you have a dozen of favorite "impact" words that you like to use - just be sure to use them judiciously throughout the paragraph. More importantly don't favor impact over loss in meaning or context.
Well, there it all goes. All that I could learn (and remember) from my GMAT prep. It was a wonderful experience which helped me re-explore my abilities of dedication and focus. It also helped me re-discover the joy of writing and I guess that you will get to see more of me on the beatthegmat forums.
I do not know whether a 710 with 2 years of work-experience and an exceptional EC record will be of any help in getting me into the schools that I desire - and this I realized as soon as I peeked through my hands on my face to look at the score on the screen at the test center - but I know that the GMAT, although adds to my profile, it in no way defines me as a person.
As it is said, I am who I am, and the GMAT prep experience has only made me better
Do let me know if you have any queries or if you would like to have the GMATprep worksheet that I made in order track my preparation.
All the best with your preparation.
Regards,
obliqueskeptic
(No, I don't have a real name - my current boss maybe reading this post
)P.S.:
Any score above or below 700 deserves a bowl Maggi (India's most favorite 2-minute noodles), so I'm off to have mine.
"A blind man sees what he wants to see."
