I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi All,

I did well on the GMAT today. Scored a 740. This was a retake (I had a 690 previously.)

My prep materials

1. OG 11
2. GMATPrep tests
3. Manhattan CR and RC material

My prep tests

GMATPrep 1 : 730
GMATPrep 2 : 720
GMATPrep 3 : 730
GMATPrep 4 : 710
GMAT : 740 - 97%ile (49 Q - 88%ile, 41 V - 92 %ile)

My test experience

The start

I reached the center 45 mins before schedule. After completing the formalities, we started the test abt 10 mins before scheduled start time. I hadn't taken the AWA on a single prep test, which came to bite me on the actual test. My AWA wasn't smooth. I might barely manage a 4.5 or 5.

Quant

After the AWA, i came out and had a sip of water. Went back to my seat and started my quant section. I usually divide quant into 3 chunks of 12-13 questions to complete in 25 mins each. I wrapped up the first chunk in 18-20 mins and probably became overconfident, coz most of them were lollipops. But the nightmare was just abt to begin.

The next chunk took me roughly 35+ mins. There were some of the toughest problems I had ever encountered in quant (including my preps.) There were probability sums, twisted mean/median/mode/sd problems and others. I went slowly knowing that I needed to get most qns right, since I had taken so much time already. The surprising thing was that there were some more lollipops in the middle of these tough cookies. And since I was in the tough-problem-solve-slowly-mode, it made me go slow on the easier ones as well, which took up a bit more of my time.

Finally I was left with about 18 mins for the last 13 problems and I knew I was in deep trouble. Unfortunately, there were few more diff problems in this set. But a combination of a cool head, some very lucky intuitive guesswork and quick thinking saved the day and I finished the section with about 7 seconds to spare.

Verbal

In the break, I came out for another sip of water and sat down for few mins to gather my thoughts. I wasn't confident about my quant section, but I told myself to let it go and focus on what lay ahead. I am good with verbal and I told myself to focus on acing it, since that was the only thing left in my hands. I went back and started the verbal section. Compared to quant, verbal was a breeze and my practice with Manhattan CR and RC really, really helped (If anyone at MGMAT is listening, I owe you guys big!!!) I can honestly say that just this part of my preps resulted in a 20-30 point increase in my overall score as I managed to get my accuracy in CR and RC up, both in my test preps and my final exam. 41 in V is my highest scaled score in the 10 or so GMATPrep tests I must have taken as part of my preps at various points in time (also including my earlier take.) And I picked a good day to do it too.

Final Result

After completing my test, I sat at my seat saying to myself: "Let it be higher than 690, let it be higher than 690, let it be higher than 690." Yes. I said it precisely 3 times. And then the numbers popped on screen. I had scored my highest ever score and that too on the big G-day! I was feeling a mixture of delight and shock! I quietly pumped my fists (so as not to disturb other candidates), came out, collected my unofficial score and as soon as I was out of the center, I jumped up and punched the air a few times. It was a HUGE relief and it felt good to have backed myself and believed in my ability and most importantly, to have executed it.

Next up

The great BSchool circus begins...

Thanks BTG for all the resources on this site. I look forward to giving back to the community in whatever way I can.

All the best to all GMAT takers out there! Keep the faith ppl!!!

Sayonara!

xcellent feedback - congrats on the high score

good brief...just wondering how messed up statistics is in the real exam... questions in the gmat prep are fairly easy...is the level of mean/mode and sd similar to gmat prep...


thanks and good luck with yr applications.

delta

rockyb wrote:Hi All,

I did well on the GMAT today. Scored a 740. This was a retake (I had a 690 previously.)

Nice job! Congrats! But it's not like 690 isn't a pretty darn good score to begin with. Still, 740 does sound more impressive. Glad it paid off for ya. Good luck with b-school applications.

@ogbeni: thank u

@deltaforce: thanks man. i found quant on the actual gmat tougher than the preps on each of my gmat attempts by about 20%.

the easy ones are easy on both tests. but the tough ones are tougher on the real test. og proves useless when it comes to these tough problems.

@alpha800: thanks! i was confident that i was a 720 student. feels good to have the confidence pay off.

Awesome score, rockyb. Great man!

thanks aj!

Congrats ! you actually beat the GMAT
my datasufficency part is very weak ,can you tell me from where i get the basic knowledge of it .

@barira1: thank u.

for DS, i believe discipline is important. the concepts are the same as a normal word problem/geometry/stats. the discipline is to keep at solving the problem/reading between the lines, when the easiest option is to choose option E.

yes, that is a mistake i was making many, many times in my practice tests and i identified that i was doing so because i was mentally assuming certain problem conditions and not actually doing paperwork for the problem. this led to marking E incorrectly many times.

what i then did (in practice) was whenever i assumed it was E, i said, recheck your steps and that way i made corrections until it became a habit for me to do the paperwork and not just quickly mentally solve a sum.

the rest of the steps (AD / BCE) and math concepts remain the same and are developed thru studying.

hope this helps.

Big Congratulations on your great score rockyB. I scored 650 on my gmat last year and am preparing again to give it one more shot in august. Can you suggest any material other than OG that would be useful?
What was the difference in your study between your 2 attempts?
Also, has the difficulty level varied after the OG 12 was released?
Is it very much required to buy OG12 for the preparation as i already have both OG 10 and 11.

hi ben!

thanks for your wishes.

1. other than og, i would recommend manhattan sc, cr and rc material. the manhattan cr and rc tips helped me push up my score. also, take more than 2 tests on the gmatprep. while 1/2 qns or passages may be repeated in different tests, usually i got different qns each time.


2. i had taken my first gmat last year and scored 690. i had prepared for about 10 days for that. between then and now, based on the learnings of SC in my first gmat take, i started putting more thought into my daily activities like writing emails, blogs, chats with friends and corrected myself wherever i was violating the general rules of SC. so that helped my SC. add to it the mgmat tips i used for cr and rc. i also took toefl in the meanwhile and while people may say it is very easy, i managed to further fine tune my reading comprehension and note-taking skills by preparing for toefl.

i feel these 2 aspects helped me score higher in this gmat take. my quant score only moved up by 1 point (48 -> 49), but my verbal score went up from 36 (78%ile) to 41 (92%ile), which i feel has significantly improved my overall score.

3. i used og 11. i have not purchased og 12 and have no idea about its material. hence i wont be able to help you with this query. sorry about that.

maybe, u can try posting it in a prep material forum and someone who has both 11 and 12 could help u out.

all the very best and i hope u do well in ur aug take!!! keep us posted and let me know if i can help u in any other way.

Great score! Congrats!

thanks ace!

Thanks a bunch for the reply rockyB. Here is wishing you all the best for your applications.
BTW, are you aware of cliffGMAT material? I have read that they have difficult problems solving which might help since it is my second time around.

For my second attempt, my plan is to get deeper understanding of solving questions on all 5 sections.

hi ben,

thank you for your wishes! i can surely use every bit of good luck that comes my way!

sorry again. i havent heard of cliffGMAT. i have come across some good prep material on the btg forums. maybe you can have a look and see if that meets your objectives.

your plan for getting a deeper understanding of each section is commendable. however if you are going for a fall 2010 application, time is not on your side, as going deep into the preparation will take time. if this is not the case, then yeah, i suppose you can give it a proper amount of time as you see fit.

one thing i would suggest is to avoid overpreparing. in my case, i did not give much emphasis to quant. i already had 48, which is a pretty high quant score and i knew that an effort of say 15 days extra preps on quant might only fetch me 1-2 more points. so i basically ignored my quant preps and focussed on preparing for the verbal, where i had much scope to improve and i did improve on it in my final test.

essentially, as you go higher, the effort to score a single point increases exponentially and time to prepare is as critical as the material itself.