I joined this forum in june when i enrolled to take up the test. took it on 29th august and got a better than expected score (750; V-45, Q-48 ).
Would like to thank this great forum for all the stuff i picked up from here.
1) got my queries answered
2)got the explanation to a lot of questions especially quant.
3)and drew inspiration from the accounts posted by other test takers.
i must say that i too responded to some queries where i felt i had something to offer. just in case u guys are thinking of me as just a leecher
but i would say i have taken more from this forum than i have given back. will try and be more active and see if i can contribute more, now that the test is out of the way.
the books that helped me:
i started with kaplan (the one which comes with a CD having 4 computer adaptive tests); and then moved to OG11.
after finishing those 2 books, i went through kaplan 800. i think my verbal especially improved because of this book. cos i couldnt crack more than half of CR questions in this book. and then on the test day, the verbal section seemed so easy. i felt it wwas because i had gone through the tough verbal sections of this book.
for quant, i used the Barrons book on GRE. that book has sections dedicated to each area of maths: algebra, numbers, exponents, decimals, percentages, interest rate problems, triangles, polygons, circles, 3d objects (cone, sphere). i found the quant sections of the GRE barrons book the most helpful in getting the fundamentals on these sections right. i also used the 11th and 12th standard maths book to read up on probability, permutation/combination, venn diagrams, and equation of line/slope problems. those were my weakest areas.
my one regret is that i dint devote enough time to AWA and i just hope i dont get below 4 on those. it was just bad time management and towards the end, i was lazy/fed up and just backed myself and my writing skills to come up with something on test day. but in hindsight, i feel that i should have given it much more time and polished my writing skills.
the online tests i took and scores (in the order i took the tests)
1)gmat prep test1: 670
2) kaplan test 1: 550
3)kaplan 2: 540
4)kaplan 3: 550
5)kaplan 4: 610
6)gmat prep 2: 700
i also took some 7-8 tests of the gmat material of IMS. most questions were gmat type of questions, but Some questions had answer choices like )all of the above or ) none of the above, which is never so in gmat. so i dint know what to make of those tests. but then again, a lot of the questions are gmat type of questions, so it doesnt do any harm in taking those tests. be careful though to not judge your scores based on what u get in the IMS mock tests. use them as just net practise.
after i was done with my gmat prep tests ( 2 weeks before the test), i decided to download the gmac s/w again hoping that a new set of question papers would have been put up since i had last downloaded more than 2 months back. but this strategy brialliantly backfired cos the mock tests were the same. however i jsut kept retaking these tests cos everytime u tend to come across a few new questions atleast. (50% questions were different on the repeat tests). so iwould say keep taking the tests so that you can see most of the questions in those tests. However, DO NOT judge your scores based on the scores you get on the repeat tests. you are obviously going to score higher on those.
the test day
the awa questions were not too difficult. if i had practised more i could have written better. i felt i had written fairly decent essays/arguments. but when i re-read them , they seemed pretty simple, and dint look too sophisticated. but i made sure to correct spelling errors and get the grammar right. those silly mistakes can take away from even sophisticated essays. and i hope that i corrected all of them.
the quant section for me has always been a case of hits and misses. but with practice, it became more hits than misses. my problem always was the DS section. when i took the quant test, i knew i had done just as well or bad as i had done in most of my mock tests. and therefore i was confident of atleast 43-44 in that.
the pleasant surprise to me was the verbal. although i kept thinking that verbal was my strong point, and therefore did not devote as much time to it as to quant, i saw that in all the tests, it was the verbal section that was dragging my scores down. ie quant scores would always be in 40s but poor verbal scores wud drag the total down.
but when i started taking the verbal on the gmat test, i felt that it was much much simpler than all the practise and mock tests that i had worked on. somehow it just felt a lot easier and i felt i had done better than expected in verbal. this was later reflected in my score as well.
i must admit though that this is a score that my brain dint dare think of even in dreams. just once i had a dream where i scored around 725 i think.
if you have come this far, thanks for your patience. hope you found this post useful.
i kept this for the last because i did not want this to get lost within that long post
Flash Cards
a week before the exams, start going through Eric's GMAT Flash Cards. if you already have started doing it, great. but if you feel you cant devote time to it now, i would say atleast use it in the last one week. keep going through it whenever you feel like.
Eric, I owe YOU big time. Thanks a lot for those flash cards.
the link https://www.beatthegmat.com/download-my- ... s-t32.html
i hope this is ok. i.e links to other topics/sections on the forum.
p.s: i do not want to sound like some big brains who cracked the gmat with his all-perfect plans. infact all through before the exams i was wondering what if i have a really bad day and score just 600. i was never even sure of touching 700. it just turned out to be a real good day for me.
if on the other hand i had had a real bad day and scored 600, all the stuff i mentioned above would be worthless. i know that. so the other piece of advice is: do it in whatever way that works best for you. if you find a particular book/study material/ mock tests useful, then go ahead and use those, even if no one has recommended them anywhere.
i know this may sound cliche, but now i can afford to say it
Its all in the mind. if you feel you can beat it, most probably you can. (and then i saw kung fu panda, and the same message was reinforced there too
warm regards
vishwanath
