I have been reading this forum since last 2 months. This is my first post though. Just wanted to share my exam experience. I took the gmat with 2 months preparation. I work full-time, so I used to study for 6 hours on sat and sunday, 3 hours on weekdays.
Books/Reference Material:
1) Official guide
2) Manhattan Sentence correction
3) Verbal notes by spider, sumit.
Sample test scores:
---------------------
1) GMAT Prep 1: 630.
2) GMAT Prep 2: 640.
3) MGMAT Exam 1: 630.
4) MGMAT Exam 2: 680.
5) MGMAT Exam 3: 650.
6) GMAT Prep 1 Retake: 720
7) GMAT Prep 2 Retake: 700.
As you can see I crossed the 700 mark only twice in all the exams i have taken. I always scored decent in quant, but verbal was always problem for me. Never got score of more than 35 in verbal. I somehow felt the verbal in the exam was easier compared to the practice exams especially sentence correction. Also, in reading comprehension, fortunately i got couple of essays which were familiar topics to me, that definitely helped.
One thing i messed up is during the break between AWA and quant, the lady told me i had 10 mins, so i took 10 mins break and came back, but then they had to scan my fingerprint and this process took 2-3 mins, so this time was deducted from my quant time. I was very nervous initially when i got there with lost time, and i had to spend 3-4 mins on first question, timing was always problem for me, had to guess few questions in gmat too.....So make sure you do not use beyond the allocated break time.
The GMAT prep exams are the key, i would advise to take them multiple times, since the questions in real exam are pretty similar to ones in GMAT prep.
Books/Reference Material:
1) Official guide
2) Manhattan Sentence correction
3) Verbal notes by spider, sumit.
Sample test scores:
---------------------
1) GMAT Prep 1: 630.
2) GMAT Prep 2: 640.
3) MGMAT Exam 1: 630.
4) MGMAT Exam 2: 680.
5) MGMAT Exam 3: 650.
6) GMAT Prep 1 Retake: 720
7) GMAT Prep 2 Retake: 700.
As you can see I crossed the 700 mark only twice in all the exams i have taken. I always scored decent in quant, but verbal was always problem for me. Never got score of more than 35 in verbal. I somehow felt the verbal in the exam was easier compared to the practice exams especially sentence correction. Also, in reading comprehension, fortunately i got couple of essays which were familiar topics to me, that definitely helped.
One thing i messed up is during the break between AWA and quant, the lady told me i had 10 mins, so i took 10 mins break and came back, but then they had to scan my fingerprint and this process took 2-3 mins, so this time was deducted from my quant time. I was very nervous initially when i got there with lost time, and i had to spend 3-4 mins on first question, timing was always problem for me, had to guess few questions in gmat too.....So make sure you do not use beyond the allocated break time.
The GMAT prep exams are the key, i would advise to take them multiple times, since the questions in real exam are pretty similar to ones in GMAT prep.
