-
tsfroggy
- Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 1:44 pm
- Thanked: 1 times
- GMAT Score:660
Hello all,
I took the GMAT today and scored 660 (82nd percentile) with a Quantitative score of 47 (78%) and a Verbal score of 35 (73%).
It's been an interesting climb! I'd like to share with you my experiences. I'll start by talking a little about myself, but firstly, I know that 660 is not the perfect score for most grad school applicants on BTG. I'm just really happy with how it turned out in the end for myself.
Anyways, I'm a recent graduate of a Midwestern university, where I received my bachelors in Business Administration. I'm a white male, 22 years old, US born and raised, and with no experience except for being a waiter at a great breakfast restaurant. I'm applying to another school in the same state (and same university system) for the Masters in Accounting program (which is an AACSB accredited institution, which is mostly why I'm applying there as opposed to the myriad of other schools in the area.) The minimum required GMAT score to qualify? 500. Average GMAT score for the school? 585. I didn't feel like I had much to worry about.
Start date: August 27th, 2009. One month of prep. I ordered Kaplan's 2010 Premier Live Online, OG12ed, Princeton's Cracking the GMAT, and Ace the GMAT.
I used the following materials in my climb:
OG 12th Edition: This book was essential to my success. I did every Problem Solving and most Data Sufficiency problems in the book. I didn't do much Verbal.
Kaplan, Ace the GMAT (by Brandon Royal), Princeton: These books I bought, but I didn't get much use out of them. I think I'm going to just resell them. The opening chapters of Kaplan and Princeton were useful, though. Ace the GMAT I didn't really go through - I got it later than the other books (ordered it mostly for its great Amazon.com reviews) and so I didn't use it much.
Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction: I had a high hit rate on Sentence Correction in my GMATPrep attempts so I bought this book for nothing really. I went through the first few chapters with my wife (an English grammar genius) and got down a few basics, but other than that it collected dust.
The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTest: When Reading Comprehension was a concern of mine, I bought this book to do problems out of, on the advice of a forum member who also used it. I did the first three RC things in the book and got 2 problems wrong out of around 21, so I just put it down. (Probably could have used the extra work in Verbal, but I digress.)
I could tell immediately that numbers properties and DS were going to be big weaknesses of mine. (As I've stated, I didn't concentrate much in Verbal, because my overall hit rate was pretty acceptable to me.) Numbers Properties problems were solved by just reading up on primes, multiples, etc. What really, really helped me on DS was Khan's Academy, a series of YouTube videos where the guy just does DS problems out of the OG11 book (at least, I think it was OG11.) It really helped me to get the gist of what the problem was asking me to solve. I watched those my last week of preparation.
GMATPrep 1: 640 (don't remember breakdown)
GMATPrep 1 (redo): 670 (saw a couple of repeats, again don't remember breakdown)
PowerPrep 1: 540 (42Q, 26V) (I was very tired for this try and didn't really concentrate)
GMATPrep 2: 660 (can't access the breakdown...
) (this score was 2 weeks before G-Day)
After taking GMATPrep 2, I stopped really practicing because I was at the level I knew I would be comfortable at. Mostly then, I surfed BTG to see how people's GMATPrep scores correlated with their actual GMAT scores, and the correlation was pretty high. My biggest worry was that GMAT's math would be much tougher than the practice problems/tests, as some others had reported, so I did a little practicing the night before.
The actual test: I did NO prep for the AWA because I'm very confident in my essay writing skills. I wrote out a beautiful essay for the Analysis of an Argument, but for the second question asking my opinion I know I just didn't do as well as I could have. I was very nervous during the first part of Quant because I was using more than 2 minutes for the first few questions (ended up at 70-ish minutes after 2 questions - eek!), but I caught up and had 8 minutes to spare. For Verbal, I had around 25 minutes to spare, so in hindsight, I may have been better off spreading that time more evenly throughout the problems.
Overall, I'm very happy with my score. I'm way above average for where I want to apply and I couldn't ask for much more.
Please post any comments or questions!
EDIT: In addition to some general edits, I've added some strategies that I feel helped me Beat the GMAT.
-I did not rely on questions other than the OG questions. Many people had commented in BTG that created questions simply don't have the same spirit the official GMAT questions had, and I felt the same way. I bought the other books for strategy but didn't really use them much, as stated. They were good references, but to me, not much more.
-Someone said to listen to fun music before you take the GMAT. I did this, and it really helped take the nerves off!
-For Problem Solving/Data Sufficiency, I went through the entire book and wrote down the questions that I had either gotten wrong or had guessed on. After I did a set of problems, I went back through the questions and read through the explanations. (I did about 25 problems a sitting.) After I completed all the problems in PS/DS, I redid the problems. I felt that this helped a lot.
-Like I had mentioned, I looked for high correlation between GMATPrep scores and actual GMAT scores. Clearly, for me it correlated well. My advice is to use your first test once to gauge your abilities. Two weeks after I had begun, I felt like I had learned a lot, so I went ahead and used my second test. Put some time between the uses of your GMATPrep tests, though, and concentrate more on where your weaknesses were and less on what the answers to the questions were (so that way when you take it again, it seems fresh and you are forced to work back through the problem.)
-Practice, practice, practice! I know that my verbal score could have been better had I put more effort into Verbal. Drill down on the areas you need assistance in and go for it!
I took the GMAT today and scored 660 (82nd percentile) with a Quantitative score of 47 (78%) and a Verbal score of 35 (73%).
It's been an interesting climb! I'd like to share with you my experiences. I'll start by talking a little about myself, but firstly, I know that 660 is not the perfect score for most grad school applicants on BTG. I'm just really happy with how it turned out in the end for myself.
Anyways, I'm a recent graduate of a Midwestern university, where I received my bachelors in Business Administration. I'm a white male, 22 years old, US born and raised, and with no experience except for being a waiter at a great breakfast restaurant. I'm applying to another school in the same state (and same university system) for the Masters in Accounting program (which is an AACSB accredited institution, which is mostly why I'm applying there as opposed to the myriad of other schools in the area.) The minimum required GMAT score to qualify? 500. Average GMAT score for the school? 585. I didn't feel like I had much to worry about.
Start date: August 27th, 2009. One month of prep. I ordered Kaplan's 2010 Premier Live Online, OG12ed, Princeton's Cracking the GMAT, and Ace the GMAT.
I used the following materials in my climb:
OG 12th Edition: This book was essential to my success. I did every Problem Solving and most Data Sufficiency problems in the book. I didn't do much Verbal.
Kaplan, Ace the GMAT (by Brandon Royal), Princeton: These books I bought, but I didn't get much use out of them. I think I'm going to just resell them. The opening chapters of Kaplan and Princeton were useful, though. Ace the GMAT I didn't really go through - I got it later than the other books (ordered it mostly for its great Amazon.com reviews) and so I didn't use it much.
Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction: I had a high hit rate on Sentence Correction in my GMATPrep attempts so I bought this book for nothing really. I went through the first few chapters with my wife (an English grammar genius) and got down a few basics, but other than that it collected dust.
The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTest: When Reading Comprehension was a concern of mine, I bought this book to do problems out of, on the advice of a forum member who also used it. I did the first three RC things in the book and got 2 problems wrong out of around 21, so I just put it down. (Probably could have used the extra work in Verbal, but I digress.)
I could tell immediately that numbers properties and DS were going to be big weaknesses of mine. (As I've stated, I didn't concentrate much in Verbal, because my overall hit rate was pretty acceptable to me.) Numbers Properties problems were solved by just reading up on primes, multiples, etc. What really, really helped me on DS was Khan's Academy, a series of YouTube videos where the guy just does DS problems out of the OG11 book (at least, I think it was OG11.) It really helped me to get the gist of what the problem was asking me to solve. I watched those my last week of preparation.
GMATPrep 1: 640 (don't remember breakdown)
GMATPrep 1 (redo): 670 (saw a couple of repeats, again don't remember breakdown)
PowerPrep 1: 540 (42Q, 26V) (I was very tired for this try and didn't really concentrate)
GMATPrep 2: 660 (can't access the breakdown...
) (this score was 2 weeks before G-Day)After taking GMATPrep 2, I stopped really practicing because I was at the level I knew I would be comfortable at. Mostly then, I surfed BTG to see how people's GMATPrep scores correlated with their actual GMAT scores, and the correlation was pretty high.
My biggest worry was that GMAT's math would be much tougher than the practice problems/tests, as some others had reported, so I did a little practicing the night before.The actual test: I did NO prep for the AWA because I'm very confident in my essay writing skills. I wrote out a beautiful essay for the Analysis of an Argument, but for the second question asking my opinion I know I just didn't do as well as I could have. I was very nervous during the first part of Quant because I was using more than 2 minutes for the first few questions (ended up at 70-ish minutes after 2 questions - eek!), but I caught up and had 8 minutes to spare. For Verbal, I had around 25 minutes to spare, so in hindsight, I may have been better off spreading that time more evenly throughout the problems.
Overall, I'm very happy with my score. I'm way above average for where I want to apply and I couldn't ask for much more.
Please post any comments or questions!
EDIT: In addition to some general edits, I've added some strategies that I feel helped me Beat the GMAT.
-I did not rely on questions other than the OG questions. Many people had commented in BTG that created questions simply don't have the same spirit the official GMAT questions had, and I felt the same way. I bought the other books for strategy but didn't really use them much, as stated. They were good references, but to me, not much more.
-Someone said to listen to fun music before you take the GMAT. I did this, and it really helped take the nerves off!
-For Problem Solving/Data Sufficiency, I went through the entire book and wrote down the questions that I had either gotten wrong or had guessed on. After I did a set of problems, I went back through the questions and read through the explanations. (I did about 25 problems a sitting.) After I completed all the problems in PS/DS, I redid the problems. I felt that this helped a lot.
-Like I had mentioned, I looked for high correlation between GMATPrep scores and actual GMAT scores. Clearly, for me it correlated well. My advice is to use your first test once to gauge your abilities. Two weeks after I had begun, I felt like I had learned a lot, so I went ahead and used my second test. Put some time between the uses of your GMATPrep tests, though, and concentrate more on where your weaknesses were and less on what the answers to the questions were (so that way when you take it again, it seems fresh and you are forced to work back through the problem.)
-Practice, practice, practice! I know that my verbal score could have been better had I put more effort into Verbal. Drill down on the areas you need assistance in and go for it!
Last edited by tsfroggy on Tue Sep 29, 2009 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
