Hi All,
I appeared for GMAT on 30th October, and was shocked to see my score. Basically, I don’t know what went wrong on the D-day. I had a good start, with the AWA’s the both the essay topics were fairly straightforward and I sailed through both in 25 minutes each. Started with Qaunt, it was complete replica of GMAT prep questions, the questions were of OG level. On the GMAT prep I had reached a 650 – 670 level, so I was confident of at least score around the same range.
I finished my quant on time, I didn’t found the questions too difficult, and on the GMAT prep I scored consistently between 42 and 48. I think I made a lot of silly mistakes on DS, especially the inequality ones. Finally started with the Verbal, CR and RC were my weakest areas. I read somewhere on the forum that it is very important to know why each and every option in the answer choice is right or wrong in CR and RC. I felt that was so true, especially after looking at my verbal scores.
I don’t know how much of this true, but apart from SC, you have to have one CR or RC as another strong area to get a decent score in verbal. My preparation was as follows -
1. Kaplan Premier Program – I personally think that this is an extremely bad book to start. I almost wasted weeks on this one; this does not clears any basics.
2. OG 11
3. Manhattan SC
4. Princeton – Please don’t consider Joe Blogs fundas...most of the time they don’t make sense
My prep scores are as follows –
1. GMAT Prep 1 – 490
2. GMAT Prep 2 – 630
3. MGMAT Test 1 – 650
4. Princeton Test 1 – Never got an overall score on this but the number of questions I answered correctly were – Maths (29), Verbal (27)
5. GMAT Prep 1 (Reloaded) – 630
6. GMAT Prep 2 (Reloaded) – 660
On all the exams verbal scores were always disappointing, after I gave GMAT prep (fourth time) and I was not able to improve considerably on the verbal part I knew it that if I don’t get a verbal improvement capsule before the exam, I will be screwed and the same happened.
I have on this forum that LSAT CR and RC’s are quite good, I am planning to start my prep again, but this time I want to make a proper plan rather than blindly jumping onto books. From my experience GMAT is all about quality, you can solve 1000 questions of each category but that will not help you if your basics are not clear. Here is my new study plan –
1. LSAT books for CR and RC
2. Read an editorial section daily to practice reading
3. Go beyond the prep books for quant to get a high score in quant
4. Manhattan SC book
Please suggest if I have left out something. Your help will be highly appreciated.
I don’t like to mention any excuses, because actually there are none and I personally don’t believe in the people when they say they didn’t sleep well before the exam....blah blah blah....I stand by my failure on the GMAT, I am certainly down but not out.....I have the gist to beat the GMAT.
Thanks,
Vikas Mehra
I appeared for GMAT on 30th October, and was shocked to see my score. Basically, I don’t know what went wrong on the D-day. I had a good start, with the AWA’s the both the essay topics were fairly straightforward and I sailed through both in 25 minutes each. Started with Qaunt, it was complete replica of GMAT prep questions, the questions were of OG level. On the GMAT prep I had reached a 650 – 670 level, so I was confident of at least score around the same range.
I finished my quant on time, I didn’t found the questions too difficult, and on the GMAT prep I scored consistently between 42 and 48. I think I made a lot of silly mistakes on DS, especially the inequality ones. Finally started with the Verbal, CR and RC were my weakest areas. I read somewhere on the forum that it is very important to know why each and every option in the answer choice is right or wrong in CR and RC. I felt that was so true, especially after looking at my verbal scores.
I don’t know how much of this true, but apart from SC, you have to have one CR or RC as another strong area to get a decent score in verbal. My preparation was as follows -
1. Kaplan Premier Program – I personally think that this is an extremely bad book to start. I almost wasted weeks on this one; this does not clears any basics.
2. OG 11
3. Manhattan SC
4. Princeton – Please don’t consider Joe Blogs fundas...most of the time they don’t make sense
My prep scores are as follows –
1. GMAT Prep 1 – 490
2. GMAT Prep 2 – 630
3. MGMAT Test 1 – 650
4. Princeton Test 1 – Never got an overall score on this but the number of questions I answered correctly were – Maths (29), Verbal (27)
5. GMAT Prep 1 (Reloaded) – 630
6. GMAT Prep 2 (Reloaded) – 660
On all the exams verbal scores were always disappointing, after I gave GMAT prep (fourth time) and I was not able to improve considerably on the verbal part I knew it that if I don’t get a verbal improvement capsule before the exam, I will be screwed and the same happened.
I have on this forum that LSAT CR and RC’s are quite good, I am planning to start my prep again, but this time I want to make a proper plan rather than blindly jumping onto books. From my experience GMAT is all about quality, you can solve 1000 questions of each category but that will not help you if your basics are not clear. Here is my new study plan –
1. LSAT books for CR and RC
2. Read an editorial section daily to practice reading
3. Go beyond the prep books for quant to get a high score in quant
4. Manhattan SC book
Please suggest if I have left out something. Your help will be highly appreciated.
I don’t like to mention any excuses, because actually there are none and I personally don’t believe in the people when they say they didn’t sleep well before the exam....blah blah blah....I stand by my failure on the GMAT, I am certainly down but not out.....I have the gist to beat the GMAT.
Thanks,
Vikas Mehra
