I just Beat The GMAT!

I took the GMAT on Tuesday and scored a 760 (Q49 V44)! OK, buckle your seat belts, this is going to be a long post.

Overview - First I'll describe my test experience, then go through various factors of my test prep, ending with a summary of what I'd change if I had to do it over again. If you're in a hurry, scroll to that section first for the main "take aways".

Test Experience - My test was at 12:00pm on Tuesday. I went running to relax on Monday...and pulled a muscle in my back. It hurt like hell, but fortunately the pain dissipated enough by Tuesday for it not to matter. This brings up an important point - do not let random events stress you out too much. Generally this is good advice, but particularly in the days before the test.

The test was in a town two hours away, so I got a hotel room. Before I left, I printed out copies of messages from BeattheGmat, from TestLuv and others, about becoming GMAT confident. I also printed out copies of all the math questions from my most recent practice GMAT tests, as I was feeling a little unconfident in that area.

Once I checked into the hotel, I drove over to the test center. I went into the parking lot to make sure there weren't any parking restrictions. Next, I went and found a place I could eat in the morning - Subway. Then I went back to the hotel. It was a good thing I checked all this out - turns out one entrance to the test center's road was closed.

Once at the hotel, I read over the questions, demonstrating I knew how to work them out. This boosted my confidence in math. I also read over all of the messages, getting myself into the mental state to take the test. At this point, I was literally ready to take the test. However, I still needed to sleep.

I went to bed at 1am. I was unable to fall asleep for THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Again, the value of NOT stressing out is demonstrated. At that point I got the idea to find a sleeping aid. There was nothing open, and my hotel's lobby didn't have any. So I called the hotel next door, and while the employee who answered didn't have any in the lobby's pantry, she gave me two Tylenol PMs from HER OWN BOTTLE. God bless her - it was a Hilton Garden Inn, so even though the price is higher, the hotel chain must hire higher quality people. Within 15 minutes I was asleep.

I woke up at 10, showered, checked out, and ate at Subway. I arrived at the test center around 11:30am. First thing I did was check out where the bathrooms were - I knew I would need those later on. Then I took ½ of a caffeine pill (remember I'm running on 5 hours of sleep), got signed in, got my scratch paper, tested the markers, and started early. I didn't want to take a whole caffeine pill, because I was afraid of jitters.

I warmed up with the essay writing. In my practice tests I found the essays were crucial to get me into test-taking mode; thank you GMAT for putting this in front.

I took my eight minute break. Note that the clock runs while you check out. So the guy says "scan your palm", and then he is unable to log in. The proctors are friendly, but seem absolutely unconcerned about your time constraints. So I asked to sign out in the front desk area, to which the admin agreed. Ran to the bathroom, came back, crammed a granola bar in my mouth, gulped another ½ caffeine pill, and got signed back in. In my practice I was a little weaker on DS, but had done enough practice problems to where I felt confident of being able to dissect any quant question, PS or DS. Fortunately, the problems were a little easier than they had been on my most recent practice exam. There was at least one problem though I "sacrificed" - tried to solve it for a minute, and then clicked on an answer and moved on, knowing that I wouldn't be able to solve it.

Always double check your answers. On my last problem I reached an answer that didn't match any of the answer choices, so I picked a choice that was close enough. I then double checked it with a quick calculation, and that quick calculation turned out to exactly match a different answer choice. So as the clock is counting down "10...9...8" I clicked on the new answer choice and confirmed.

I took my break, ran to the bathroom, gulped another half of caffeine tablet and granola bar, and made it back with two minutes to spare. I quickly drew out my answer grid, and was ready to go.

The questions seemed reasonable, but I felt like I was doing just "OK", not stomping it like I had in my last practice test, when I scored V44.

Toward the end, my mind started wondering what my score would be. Whenever it did that, I stopped, breathed, and thought "Don't worry about your score. You're still in the test, just focus on getting every one of these last questions correct. Let's get this one correct right now."

Once I confirmed the last question, THEN I let myself wonder. Based on how I felt throughout the test, I was expecting anything from 720 to 760. "Would you look to see your score?" A little nervous, I clicked yes...and saw "You scored: 760 (Q49 V44)".

WOW!!!! I could barely contain myself. I did a double fist pump, not going to lie.

Now, onto how I prepared:

Timeframe - I allotted 8 weeks to study for the GMAT. I studied roughly 170 hours for the GMAT, roughly on par with Ursula and TwinSpliter from the TestMagic forums. This averages out to a little over 20 hours a week, though in later weeks I was spending more like 30-40 hours a week.

Relax! You don't need to study 170 hours to do well on the GMAT - my hours were high for three reasons:

1. When I want to do well at something, I work hard at it. It's not necessarily the easiest way, nor necessarily the most efficient way, just what works for me.
2. I wanted to maximize my chances of getting a good score - I'd rather study too much than too little!
3. I was often inefficient with my time, particularly on SC. I spent all this time trying to memorize random rules out of the Manhattan guide, when I had no foundation for all of these rules to rest on. It wasn't until I read PowerScore's SC Bible that I finally developed that foundation, and consequently improved my performance.

I believe in being candid with study time. While I wouldn't necessarily tell people in "real life" I studied 170 hours for the GMAT, I want to tell you guys so that you can set your expectations realistically. If someone gets a high score and claimed they didn't study much...they're probably lying to make themselves to sound more intelligent, like it was just natural they did well �.

I used a free time tracking software called "Klok" to literally clock in and out when I was studying. All of my hours weren't necessarily productive (phone call, personal interruption, snack break, etc), but I also did some studying or browsing of forums when I wasn't on "clock", so I bet it all came out in the wash.

My time breakdown was as follows:
"¢ Quant - 30.26 hours
"¢ SC - 69.14 hours
"¢ CR - 40.03 hours
"¢ RC - 4.4 hours
"¢ General prep (practice tests, practice test analysis, strategy development, etc) - 24.82 hours

You'll notice RC was very low...I was a natural in this area, and got all the practice problems except one right in OG 12. This highlights an important point: don't waste time in an area or on concepts that you're strong in, at the expense of weaker areas. The exception is in the few days before the test, where focusing on strengths rather than weakness is a key to building confidence.

Test Prep Strategy -

I had about 8 weeks to prepare for the test, full-time. I scheduled my test for noon, because I knew 8am would not bring out my best performance. I started off by getting familiar with the GMAT, and then taking a diagnostic test.

This, in my opinion, is crucial to identifying your strengths and weaknesses. I got a 700 (Q48, V38). I found in the verbal, SC was definitely my weak area. I got most of the CR right, and all of the RC right.

I decided to adopt TwinSplitter's approach of focusing on a weak area for two weeks at a time, then moving on (if anyone knows where that post is, I'll edit this message to include the link).

Quant - I worked through Kaplan's GRE & GMAT Math Workbook, 4th edition. This book provided a good overview of math topics, but appeared to be targeted toward people aiming for middle scores. It didn't contain "difficult" math problems and how to approach them. I think the fact that I didn't read up on strategies for the hardest math problems is what kept me in the upper 40s versus a 50 or 51.

For example, Kaplan's book was missing permutations/combinations, but I found an excellent post on that from BeattheGmat (https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/12 ... asy-method). All you need to know on this topic.

Then, I did all the practice problems in OG. I was crushing PS problems, but not DS. I realized that I was trying to figure out too much in my head, and started WRITING DOWN all the information in the problem. What did I need? What was I given? What information am I missing?

Then, as was often recommended on BeattheGmat, I simplified the given information. If the problem said "Is 1/k > 0" this is the same as "Is k positive?". Sometimes, a statement would exactly match my simplified version of the problem lol.

Sentence Correction - I worked through Manhattan's Guide, making notes and flashcards of concepts and idioms. After three weeks, I still saw no improvement, and I realized that I had no grammar foundation for all these rules and tricks. The guide was very comprehensive, but lacked a key ingredient - a grammatical foundation. I found that it assumed you already had a strong grammatical foundation, and that you simply needed to know the tricks on the GMAT. Not true for me.

After reading the Manhattan Guide, and feeling overwhelmed, I got my SC accuracy to around 75% - much better than 50% on my diagnostic, but not to the 95% threshold I wanted for all my sections.

So I paged through some old grammar books my mom had, online guides, even going so far as to order a grammar book from Amazon before I found PowerScore's SC guide. I was so impressed with their CR guide that I ordered the SC guide, and was not disappointed. The first chapter went over a grammar foundation, but only what you need for the GMAT - exactly what I was looking for.

A few other SC resources I found helpful...
"¢ https://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html - Excellent description of the twelve verb tenses. This was confusing the hell out of me until I found this site.

A note: Both the Manhattan and PowerScore SC books ironically have multiple grammatical and spelling errors. For example, page 22 in PowerScore uses "its" when it means to use "it is" in one of the side notes, while page 30 repeats "to" twice in an example problem. Do not let that shake your confidence in what they teach - it doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about; it just means they need better editors �.

However, I don't want to primarily criticize these books - they're very good in their primary purpose of helping you improve your score in a certain area. In particular, in the SC Bible, I loved the analogy between sentences and movie production.

For the record, the OG has grammatical errors as well, but far fewer. For instance, choice (A) on page 727 in OG 12 spells "flourished" wrong.


Critical Reasoning - I ordered the PowerScore book for this. I carefully worked through it, and then did all the CR practice problems in OG 12. While I had 75% accuracy on my diagnostic exam, I got 94% correct of the OG problems and 100% accurate on my final practice exam. This book works, I didn't need any other resources besides official problems.

I think strengthen/weaken/assumption questions are among the trickiest questions, though they are certainly not impossible. My hint is to look for the "slap in the face" answer. If you've ever seen "8 Mile", remember how wild the crowd went after a particularly good diss? Look for the answer that elicits that reaction: there will only be one if you've carefully read the stimulus.

For strengthen, pretend the conclusion is the guy rapping - how are you going to help him verbally slap the opponent down? For weaken, pretend the conclusion is the guy who is listening - how are you going to verbally slap him down? For assumption, logically negate the choice and pretend the conclusion is the guy who is listening.

A word of caution: some answer choices may seem like they might work. These are akin to the diss that elicits a few people jeering in the crowd. Just because a few people jeered, didn't mean it was that great of a diss. It's not the "face slapping" answer you're looking for.

Reading Comprehension - I got all my questions right on my first practice exam, so just confirmed that I had this area down by doing some practice problems. I just did the intermediate-to-hard problems, and did well.

I can't really recommend any books on this, but check out my old post (https://www.beatthegmat.com/tips-for-doi ... 47450.html), where I posted my strategy for RC questions. Testluv also followed up the post with some Kaplan strategies, so if you're not strong in this area, head over there to get started.

Practice Tests - I was always a fan of the strategy of taking an initial practice test to diagnose weak areas, and then a second one to confirm your improvement and predict test day performance. I don't trust any other provider other than GMAC for accurate practice tests - they don't have the algorithm, nor can they use genuine GMAT questions. However, they obviously do their best to make GMAT-like questions, so I can see some value in just terms of general prep. I'd suggest you take general practice tests only after you've mastered all the questions in the OG, and verbal/quant supplements. If you still have time, then you can work through other practice tests. These tests also have some value in helping your timing, so if that's an area of concern for you, I'd consider taking more practice tests.

Study Approach - When I would read through a book, I found I engaged with the material best when I typed out bullet points, paraphrasing what the book was saying. Sometimes I copied the text word for word, particularly for definitions or foundational stuff. However, I wouldn't copy every word of the book. I more or less have a copy of PowerScore's CR and SC Bibles typed out on my computers.

I'd also make note cards of important concepts, or just things to memorize. By the end I had a quant stack, a CR concept stack, a CR key word stack, a huge stack of sample SC questions (before I discovered SC Bible), a SC concept stack, a SC idiom stack, and a SC key word stack.

When I did practice problems, I would time myself for each problem, and enter the time into a spreadsheet. I would also enter the type of problem, and whether I got it correct or not. By entering a few simple formulas, I could determine my average time per problem, as well as my accuracy. I could also see if there was any particular type of problem I tended to miss. For example, I found "Assumption" CR questions I tended to get correct, but they would take me longer than average to reach this correct answer.

With RC I modified this approach, because the first problem would show a really long solving time. I would time myself for reading a passage and answering all the questions, and enter that time for one of the problems, and not enter a time for any of the other associated questions. Because my formula averaged the time for all the questions, entering a total time for a block of questions would calculate a correct average time per problem.

For each problem, I analyzed whether I got the answer correct or incorrect. Regardless, I'd also analyze why the other answer choices were wrong (or right), and how they approached the problem (particularly helpful on math problems). To really drive it home for CR, I typed out why the answers were wrong in my own words.

Confidence - From TestLuv (https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-in-10-d ... 47417.html):

"In the final days before the test day (I'm assuming your test is real soon since you have already written UPT), you need to be confident. And the secret of confidence is not a secret. Two people, equally talented, but one consistenly performs better. The difference? The one who performs better knows how good they are, knows how well they know their stuff. Even though they know that stuff no better than the other person.

And the secret to becoming GMAT-confident? Working on your strengths in the last few days, dwelling in everything you know, visualizing yourself using those tactics...is waaaay better than doing a bucnch of new questions that stump you in the last few days.

...Oh but you still have stuff to learn you complain?

Two responses: a)if you haven't learned that stuff yet, it's a bit too late; b)you don't need to know nearly everything to get a great score; and c) you are assuming that trying to do a bunch of new questions and bunch of CATs in the last few days will be better for your score than what I am suggesting (fine, I cheated, three responses).

Seriously, go beat the gmat."

What Would I Do Different?

You probably scrolled all the way down to here first �. Here's what I say worked for me, and what I'd change:

What worked:

-Taking a diagnostic exam to figure out weaknesses.
-Working through PowerScore CR Bible
- Working through PowerScore SC Bible
- Working through Manhattan SC Guide
-Doing OG problems, and analyzing correct/incorrect answer choices
-Timing all of my practice problems
-Clocking "in" when studying

What I would change:

-Find a math book that covered strategies for the most difficult math problems. If the Manhattan math books are as comprehensive as Manhattan's SC book, then I think those would work. I haven't personally read them though.

-Read the PowerScore SC Bible BEFORE the Manhattan Guide. The Manhattan Guide is literally a book of grammar rules, which is great if you have a grammatical foundation. If you don't, then all of those rules are going to collapse the moment you try a SC question. How can you look for parallel elements of a sentence, if you don't even know what the parts of a sentence can be? The SC Bible provides this foundation, but doesn't provide as comprehensive of coverage of GMAT mistakes as the Manhattan Guide does. I think if you're weak in SC, getting both books is the way to go.

-Read the Manhattan Guide AT LEAST twice. I read the Manhattan Guide only once, and I feel I missed a lot of the finer points. I've heard from others on here that they got a lot more out of the guide the second time they read through it.

-Redo old problems. I meant to go back and do all of the problems I missed or that took too long, but ran out of time. I didn't even get to all the SC or Quant problems in the OG. As I said before, I wasn't always perfectly efficient with my time. I also hate feeling stupid. When I would miss a problem a second time, I'd feel stupid. As a result, I tended to avoid re-doing old problems. In reality, missing a problem a second time just means that particular concept was giving me trouble, so it's going to feel great once I get it right. If you have a similar mental block to re-doing problems you got incorrect, push through it so you master those concepts giving you trouble.

Thanks to

-God for positively affecting the factors out of my control. The questions given to me on test day, the lady with the sleep aids, safe driving conditions on way there (imagine if my car was wrecked en route!), etc.

-Eric, for founding this community.

-TestLuv for insights on confidence building.

-DanaJ for recommendations on books to get my GMAT started.

-shadowsjc for insights on timing and "day of the test" attitudes.

-Numerous others for answering my questions that were posted in various forums, writing insightful articles, and offering support.

Misc Thoughts

To Eric - Can you or someone fix the message boxes when posting a new message? In my browser, after a few lines, the box will automatically start scrolling to the beginning of the message, in effect not allowing me to freely edit anything beyond a couple lines. I use IE 8, and notepad to type out my messages . Does anyone else experience this?

To Those With Manhattan Guides - The online CATs are good prep, to a point. I found the math questions are more difficult, but sometimes unrepresentative of GMAT problems. For example, some of the probability and combination questions are way more complex than anything you'd actually see on GMAT. Furthermore, the math problems tend to be more computationally heavy than GMAT problems. So just be aware of that - if you can crush the MGMAT math questions, then you're sitting pretty good for GMAT math!

Conclusion

That's a wrap folks. My GMAT journey is over, but yours may just be starting. While people tend to box in their weight class, there's a lot you have control over, so I hope my experience will help you quickly move from "where do I begin" to actual studying. Do well, and feel free to send me any questions you may have.

Congrats on the amazing score and thanks for the equally amazing debrief!

Charlie,

Way to go!!

Amazing debrief and loved your tips and take aways. Hope I can follow your footsteps! Very happy for you. Besides being a solid candidate for graduate school due to your MBA you have also opened up a new career path for yourself. Go teach :D

All the best,
Jas

Congrats bro,,
All the best... i will keep you up to date in pertains of my preparation.

Congratulations! Such a good inspiring post..! You have really knocked off the exam!

How did you plan your quants preparation apart from kaplan GMAT workbook? Would you mind sharing your SC bible notes?

papgust wrote:Congratulations! Such a good inspiring post..! You have really knocked off the exam!

How did you plan your quants preparation apart from kaplan GMAT workbook? Would you mind sharing your SC bible notes?

Well, that's why I don't think I improved much in quant - I didn't do anything besides the Kaplan GMAT workbook and the OG problems. I just assumed through practice I'd improve, and I did a little. Honestly, I think my improvement was pretty much due to reviewing exponents - a lot of GMAT problems use exponents. If you know how to manipulate exponents those are easy problems, but if you don't they are quite difficult.

So I think that's a dangerous assumption to make: that you'll just improve through OG practice alone. I'd seek out a book that covers advanced strategies and problems, to ensure that when you're exposed to the more difficult problems, that you'll know ways to break them down.

While much of the notes are paraphrased, much of the notes contain direct quotes from the book, so I don't want to give away PowerScore's cow. However, after you dig into the book and you have questions on concepts or ideas in there, feel free to ask!

cbenk121 wrote: Well, that's why I don't think I improved much in quant - I didn't do anything besides the Kaplan GMAT workbook and the OG problems. I just assumed through practice I'd improve, and I did a little. Honestly, I think my improvement was pretty much due to reviewing exponents - a lot of GMAT problems use exponents. If you know how to manipulate exponents those are easy problems, but if you don't they are quite difficult.

So I think that's a dangerous assumption to make: that you'll just improve through OG practice alone. I'd seek out a book that covers advanced strategies and problems, to ensure that when you're exposed to the more difficult problems, that you'll know ways to break them down.

While much of the notes are paraphrased, much of the notes contain direct quotes from the book, so I don't want to give away PowerScore's cow. However, after you dig into the book and you have questions on concepts or ideas in there, feel free to ask!

Hi cbenk121!

Well, i understand your problem for not sharing the notes and i stand with you.

For CR's and RC's, from which source did you practice with?

For SC, i agree with you that studying just MGMAT SC is not going to help you unless you are strong in grammar. I currently own Wren & martin book, but i find it difficult to read and understand. I feel that it is not an easy read book and these kind of books are just not suitable for guys like me. I've read through Powerscore's CR bible and i really love that book. It was a very easy read book that walked me through all the concepts smoothly.

I'm now thinking of buying SC bible and i believe that it should be just like CR bible. I want to start from ABC of grammar right upto GMAT SC rules. Do you think this is the right book for me?

great score!!!!!
so cbenk121, the best questions one should focus on are the OG questions? and did u do any other CAT apart from Gmatprep?

[quote="papgust"][quote="cbenk121"]
Well, that's why I don't think I improved much in quant - I didn't do anything besides the Kaplan GMAT workbook and the OG problems. I just assumed through practice I'd improve, and I did a little. Honestly, I think my improvement was pretty much due to reviewing exponents - a lot of GMAT problems use exponents. If you know how to manipulate exponents those are easy problems, but if you don't they are quite difficult.

So I think that's a dangerous assumption to make: that you'll just improve through OG practice alone. I'd seek out a book that covers advanced strategies and problems, to ensure that when you're exposed to the more difficult problems, that you'll know ways to break them down.

While much of the notes are paraphrased, much of the notes contain direct quotes from the book, so I don't want to give away PowerScore's cow. However, after you dig into the book and you have questions on concepts or ideas in there, feel free to ask![/quote]

Hi cbenk121!

Well, i understand your problem for not sharing the notes and i stand with you.

For CR's and RC's, from which source did you practice with?

For SC, i agree with you that studying just MGMAT SC is not going to help you unless you are strong in grammar. I currently own Wren & martin book, but i find it difficult to read and understand. I feel that it is not an easy read book and these kind of books are just not suitable for guys like me. I've read through Powerscore's CR bible and i really love that book. It was a very easy read book that walked me through all the concepts smoothly.

I'm now thinking of buying SC bible and i believe that it should be just like CR bible. I want to start from ABC of grammar right upto GMAT SC rules. Do you think this is the right book for me?[/quote]

I am in the same position and have exactly the same question regarding SC.

All the best,
Jas

@papgust - I practiced exclusively with OG 12 for CR and RC problems. I found that was more than enough practice (around 120 for each question type), particularly by analyzing why answer choices were wrong or right. To do all those problems, plus the analysis, takes a LOT of time.

Before you tackle the problems, however, I'd make sure you've got your strategy down (i.e. Read the accompanying book to the question type, such as PowerScore CR Bible).

However, if you find your reading speed isn't up to par, then i'd save the RC problems for later, and practice reading dense material, like McKinsey Quarterly or LSAT passages.

I absolutely recommend the SC Bible. It's not completely comprehensive, but it does give you a foundation and hits on the most prevalent GMAT errors. I believe this book will get you ready to tackle MGMAT book without having to constantly wonder "Wait...what is a participle again?"

I believe the only conceptual gap between the two book was the SC bible doesn't explain the difference between simple and complex gerunds. Really, that's about it...the MGMAT just goes more in depth on various concepts. Crawl before you run - get the SC Bible first.

@xela760 - Thanks! To your question...I firmly believe OG questions are the best. Not only are they written by the test makers, but also are subjected to various measures to ensure they are fair questions. The various test prep companies do their best to approximate the GMAT questions, but at the end of the day lack the rigorous validation and proprietary methods of developing questions.

There are a lot of rumors I've heard that the actual test contains questions that are harder than in the OG...I don't believe it. While it may be true the questions get a little harder over the years to keep the proper score distribution, it's not a significant gap. If you do all the problems in the OG for a certain question type, and do very well, you can pretty much rest assured you're going to do very well on the GMAT for that question type. Maybe not perfect, but certainly well. The one caveat here is that I'm assuming you can adapt to doing problems on the computer screen...for some reason my CR performance took a nose dive the first time I did a practice test. I started reading more carefully, and my CR performance got back in line with how I did on the OG problems.

Yes, I did two CATs from MGMAT. MGMAT's verbal problems are pretty much in line with GMAT, but MGMAT's math problems are definitely more difficult. The math problems also tend to involve more calcuations, so you may be forced to rush more often than you would on the GMAT. If you keep that in mind, and the fact that probability/combination/permutation questions are definitely NOT as complicated on the GMAT as on the MGMAT CATs, then its good practice.

@JasLamba - See my post to papgust

cbenk121, thanks a hundred folds for the confidence building advice. And i wish you well in your application process. once again thanks!!!!!

cbenk121, that's an amazing debrief..

amazing and inspiring!