Ok So here is my story.
I am 33 years old and Married .
I thought about getting an MBA first when I was around 28 and single. But then I got this great job with six figure salary and all the good stuff. MBA went down the drain. Was I shortsighted ? You bet.
I was doing pretty well in my career. I am actually doing better than a lot of my friends who got their MBA from good schools (lower than top 15) but not top rated.
Around June of this year , I was itching to get an MBA and one of very good friend (who was 34 at the time of matriculation )went to Wharton and he encouraged me.
Around 20th June I began my study.
I bought the following:
OG11
Verbal and Quant Supplement
Manhattan SC
One week into studying, we had an unplanned pregnancy. My studies went down the drain. I didn't do anything in July. Sort of lost my focus. When things stabilized a little in August. I started studying again. It was very hard to find time. I have a very demanding job and 30-40 people are dependent on me for my inputs. So I couldn't take vacation and study.On top of that my job requires me to travel a lot - every week actually.
If I could 8-10 hrs of studying in a week . It was a good week for me.
Nevertheless, I think my preparation had flaws, which I will talk about now:
** What went wrong ?
I couldn't sleep the night before the test. I managed only couple of hours of sleep. I guess I was too anxious.
**What did I do wrong:
I let my biggest strength to become my weakness --
I am engineer and obviously Math is not a problem for me. I just didn't focus on Math. Every 10 days or so , I will just pick OG and do a few questions in bulk. Like 25 - 50 question at a time. Almost always I would finish the these questions in less than a minute per question. You can imagine that I got no question wrong in OG from 1-200.
and this made me think .., I will breeze through Math and I just need to focus on verbal. It's only when I started to hit questions from 200-275. I realized I was making stupid mistakes and how these are actually the type of questions that will show up on the GMAT. The later questions are not difficult per se but they really require application of concepts. I had good concepts but I had just not practiced the application enough.
I was kinda fooled by OG in to believing that Math is my good spot. But my score proves it. My target in Math was 51 but I lowered my expectation going in to GMAT. I got a 49 in Math in the actual test. Not bad.. But 51 would have given my overall score score a bump to be in 740 bracket.
Same story for data sufficiency.
My two cents for Quant section: If Math is a your strong point and you are short on time like I was.You can ignore first 150 question of OG (problem solving) and about first 75 question of OG in DS.
Focus on the application of concepts. Every body knows about the concepts. The application of those concept makes the difference.
I realized it too late. (Last week of my preparation). Also I think If I had entire week off , I could have done something about it. I only had Thursday and Friday off from work and my test was on Saturday.
*** Verbal
My not so strong point. But I made up by working on it.In the actual test I think I got all of my SC and CR questions right and most of my RC questions wrong. I think since I was doing good in verbal , I was given these humongous passages where every term was some word that I had not heard before. I felt like I was reading a totally different language. I was also tired at this point.I wasted close to 5 mins on making some sense but I just couldn't. So I kinda guessed on all its 5 questions and moved ahead.
I did pretty well in RC during practice tests but in actual test it got me.
For SC:
OG questions and Manhhtan SC is all you need. You don't need to read no spidey notes , no nothing - in my view.
For CR :
LSAT questions. I can't stress this enough. I manged to get couple of LSAT actual papers from a friend and that did the trick for me.I think for most part OG doesn't even have actual GMAT level questions except for last 30 or so.
In all likelihood you will not be given simple weaken or strengthen the assumption question on the actual test (if your bin is higher/you are doing better). I got close to 5 questions where I was asked to select an answer choice that completes the argument.
I employed no strategy for CR but IMO CR actually is a test of comprehension. While attacking the answer choices , if you actively keep in mind what are you looking for (i.e work with in parameters of the question), you will never get a single CR question wrong.
for RC:
I know of no strategy. I did practice LSAT RC and did well but in the actual test I was too tired and my passages too tough to get them right.
** What did I do right ?
I did not panic during the test and I manged my time very well with a strategy that is outlined below.
General Strategy:
Few things that I did and I think they made a difference:
I had this on my sheet
for verbal:
question completed | Mins remaining
5:66 | 10: 57 | 15: 48 | 20 : 40 | 25: 31 | 30 : 22 | 35 : 13 | 40 : 4 | 41 : 0
I followed above time markings no matter what., I would just let couple of mins of difference creep in between actual and estimated time. If I was lagging behind, I would just make an intelligent guess and move forward. I did those for those 5 question in RC. Remember it's a good strategy to skim a question that you can't answer but you can't do it more than 4-5 times in one section. I used in both in Verbal and Quant , so that I have time for all the questions.
Lastly I think , GMAT is an exam of application. Working smarter not working harder makes a difference. I see people in this forum , doing all sorts of stuff for all sorts of places. I believe OG is enough and for CR LSAT questions make a difference.
I hope it helps.
