I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi guys,

This is my first post on this amazing site. I have been waiting to write a debrief after my exam. It has been a tough 2 months to achieve this score. Though I am a tad disappointed on missing out a 750, but I am content with my score.

Let us straight get into the debrief:

Background :
India
Bachelors in Engineering (2006)
Work-ex - 4 years, IT and Business.

Quant - 50

GMAT Quant is quite simple. I did not find it any different from the GMAT Prep questions. In fact as there are only a limited number of topics to prepare from, it is more about getting back to the habit of solving math questions and doing calculations without the help of an excel or a calculator.

Materials Used:-
Jeff Sackman Challenge Sets - 12 of them or so.
Jeff Sackman DS Challenge, Extreme Challenge

Guys, make sure you do the DS Challenge set from the Jeff Sackman, it will give you a great understanding on how to approach a DS problem. The solutions are really well explained.

The tough topics according to me are :-
Inequalities and Modulus arithmetic , do spend that extra time on them to understand them thoroughly. I did not do OG-11 or 12 for maths, so I cant really comment on them.

There is an excellent resource on the GMAT Club regarding the Maths topics. Just go to that site and search for GMAT Math book, it has a good collection of all the formulae in one place.

Finally, I would say practice the Jeff Sackman Challenge sets and the OG and do your GMAT prep and you should do well on your exam.


Verbal - 39

Being a non-native speaker, I spent the bulk of my preparation on Verbal, I was a little disappointed for not touching 40 in the verbal.

SC

Materials used :-

Manhattan SC guide - this is the bible for the SC preparation

But let me caution you on this, just reading the book does not help you much. You have to understand it thoroughly. Try to clear about :-

Modifiers, Subject & Verb and Parallelism.

When you first read the book, you will understand 30% of it. But my advice spend two to three days only on forums especially the Manhattan GMAT forums ( just read the explanations for the SC questions) and BTG forums. Read only the solutions posted by the instructors. As you read them, especially posts by RON, Stacey, Testluv and others make your own notes from their comments on those questions. Keep going back to your Manhattan SC book as you read the solutions posted by these great minds. This is the only way to learn the nuances behind SC for non-native speakers. Just reading the book does not help.


Practice Material
OG - 11
OG - 12
Verbal Guide
Old ETS tests
150 questions from 1000 SC.

Finally, for non-native speakers, Manhattan and BTG forums are the only places where you can learn SC !

tip: While doing 1000 SC, for solutions just type the question in the google and search, you will invariably get a BTG or a manhattan link and then read the soluion offered by the instructors and try to understand their reasoning. I know it is time consuming but even if you do around 100 questions in this manner, it is equivalent to just solving 300-400 questions blindly.

CR

There is only one book, which gives you all the necessary tools to attack a GMAT CR and that is Powerscore CR Bible. There is no other book which gives such comprehensive detail. It is a must buy for all non-native speakers.

Materials used :-
OG - 11
OG - 12
Verbal Guide
Old ETS tests

I would suggest do the questions after you read the book (CR Bible) . One does not need to learn all the details presented in the book. Just read the book as a story book, that would be enough to get you started. Dont get put off by the volume of the book, you can finish the book in 5-6 hours. As i said dont read it thoroughly, just go through the book to get an understanding on the types of questions and semantics of a CR passage.

The forum studying applies to CR also, please read the BTG and manhattan forums, they are filled with valuable advices from instructors. Please spend time on forums.


RC

Whenever you read an RC, read it with passion, as though you love the topic. My mantra was to read the passage thoroughly and then answer the questions. My advice would be after you read each paragraph, paraphrase the content of that paragraph in your mother tongue or whichever language you are comfortable, this will immensely help you in understanding the passage thoroughly !!

Please dont neglect RC, practice as much as you can. There are 14 questions so you cannot neglect this section.

Materials used :-

Materials used :-
OG - 11
OG - 12
Verbal Guide
Old ETS tests

Tests

Manhattan GMAT 6 CATS ( They are amazing, except for the Quant part which is quite tougher than the original GMAT, so dont get disheartened by your quant scores )

MGMAT CAT 1 - 21/7/2010 - 650 Q-44 V-35
MGMAT CAT 2 - 29/7/2010 - 680 Q-48 V-34
MGMAT CAT 3 - 3/08/2010 - 670 Q-45 V-36
MGMAT CAT 4 - 8/08/2010 - 710 Q-47 V-40
MGMAT CAT 5 - 10/8/2010 - 730 Q-48 V-41
MGMAT CAT 6 - 13/8/2010 - 740 Q-50 V-41

GMAT Prep

GMAT Prep - I - 15/7/2010 - 740 Q-49 V-41
GMAT Prep -II - 14/8/2010 - 730 Q-49 V-40

Veritas Free Test
710 - Q-51 V-39

I gave around 3 tests with the essays, others are without the essays.

Hope this debrief will help all you people in its own little way.

Here I would like to take this oppurtunity to thank

RON - an absolute genius ! - I wouldnt have learnt SC without him.
Stacey - For her amazing RC tips, she is phenomenal
Test Luv and others on BTG - they are equivalent to GOD when it comes to GMAT.

They are giving out all this information for free, we really have to thank them for doing this !

I certainly couldnt have achieved this score without them !

Cheers.

Final Tip:
Love GMAT and it will certainly reward you with its love ! There will be moments when you feel down and out, just dont give up !

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Congratulations and best of Luck.

Congrats!! Great score indeed!!

congrats......

Congrates

congrats. great score

First of all, congratulations on a fantastic score.

Some questins for you.
1) Did you find CR, SC or RC level similar to OG? (by level i m including content,structure,answer choices & actual level)
2) WHich of the 3 verbal topics were difficult for you?
3) Finally, were CR's difficult to understand or options were pretty similar wherein you could eliminate only 1-2 choices?


Thanks in advance.

congrats!! such a great score. I would like to ask you as well if you saw any combination/permutation questions on the quant section of the actual gmat?

thanks

Thanks guys for all the wishes !

@ ashish

1) CR SC and RC were totally similar to OG, you dont have to worry anything about them. Just that for SC you might not find the splits (2-3) immediately, just patiently go through the options eliminating each one. If you are down to final two, just guess the best of the lot and move on. RC was exactly similar. CR - as I said, it all boils down to that last 75 mins...just keep your cool and you will do well if you have done the Power Score Bible and OG. Re-phrasing the CR passage in your native language definitely helps. Try this while doing questions. While doing OG for CR and SC questions, try to understand why the wrong answers are actually wrong so that you can eliminate the wrong answers easily in the final exam.

2) I spent most of my time on SC and CR, though I did practice RC regularly. There is nothing that you can learn for RC, but luckily half way through my preparation I had an aha ! moment - re-phrasing each paragraph into your own language ( this will take you less than 7 secs ) but will help you immensely in answering the main-point, primary purpose questions.

SC and CR - spend time on the forums. Just read as many solutions as you can that are posted by the instructors on Manhattan forums and BTG forums, and if you supplement this with the Manhattan SC book and the Powerscore CR bible, and do the OG questions you are good for a 40 in verbal.

@ mustbeatgmat

I got one P&C question ( straightforward one ), which was infact part of the Jeff Sackman Extreme Challenge set, just the numbers were different.
and one Probability - DS question, which was quite tricky, I might have got it right.

But dont worry just be thorough with the basics and you should do fine in these topics.

All the best.

thanks for the insight:)