I just Beat The GMAT!

Many Thanx Logitech for the prompt and GRAPHICAL reply..I appreciate ur genuine concern..
Thanx again.

Just received my AWA score: 5.5 (80 %)

So as I mentioned before, do not spend too much time on practicing AWA. But AWA is curicial during the prep and real test.

1) It is an extra ONE HOUR work in front of the computer. Please write the essays during your practice tests..sitting there for one more hour before the real test starts can change things!

2) On the real test..AWA is your friend! It helps you to overcome your stress.

logitech wrote:Just received my AWA score: 5.5 (80 %)

So as I mentioned before, do not spend too much time on practicing AWA. But AWA is curicial during the prep and real test.

1) It is an extra ONE HOUR work in front of the computer. Please write the essays during your practice tests..sitting there for one more hour before the real test starts can change things!

2) On the real test..AWA is your friend! It helps you to overcome your stress.

I so agree with this! Most people think about GMAT AWA as something intimidating or terrible but in fact it is just a chance to show yourself and write funny things that help you relax and when you get to the "real thing", the questions, you area already a bit laid back. Wait. Did I just mention funny and GMAT in one sentence? Oh yes, I did and I really mean it .

Logitech,

I am averaging about 2.5 mins for CR questions? I know the concepts for CR. I also get them correct.

I have studied OG and have tried to understand the wrong answers.

I follow the T-diagram method of MGMAT. I find it useful to nail down the answers

What would be the best way to improve timing on CR?

Thanks

schumi_gmat wrote:Logitech,

I am averaging about 2.5 mins for CR questions? I know the concepts for CR. I also get them correct.

I have studied OG and have tried to understand the wrong answers.

I follow the T-diagram method of MGMAT. I find it useful to nail down the answers

What would be the best way to improve timing on CR?

Thanks

That would be your reading speed and there is only one way to get faster: PRACTICE! I am sorry but I really dont have any silver bullet for this but GETTING them correct is awesome now you have to master it and make this process more quicker!

By the way if you know how to eliminate the OBVIOUS wrong answers, you can spend your time on the rest of the options!

Schumi, if I could add my 2 cents:


Writing down A B C D E and putting a ? mark against the contenders, corss mark for the ones that can be ruled out has helped me quite a bit.

This way we can just focus on rereading the contender choices rather than all 5. I also remember reading this from Calgirl(she score a 740 or so) debrief's that its good to stick with what we thought the answer could be when we first read the argument(i.e among the 2 contenders the one that struck us in the first place).

Like Logi said practice and this is the best way to know if a particular strategy we adopt works as it quantifies the success rate. Wihtout measuring the results predicting the success of any strategy is out of question.


I havent tried the T diagramming method but I have heard some good things about it on this forum. Stick with what works best for u like u r doing now.Hope this helps also.

Regards,
CR

Thanks Logitech and Cramya.

I will try to implement your suggestions and hope to improve.

Thanks
Schumi

"Awesome Score" U deserve it.

Congratulations!

Congrats logitech & wish u lots of luck!

Logiteck!
You rock, man!
Actually, i would say you deserve an even better score, but this one is awesome too!

Congratulations and best of luck!


Feruza

Great score dude..... you really deserve it !!!!
Congratulations !!!!

Very deserving score. Awesome analysis of every section.

Congrats LOGITECH you hammered the GMAT.

I gave my GMAT 2 days ago and the same thing happened to me I got lesser than the least score among my practice tests. Reading your posts gave me a new point of view and a hope to work towards a good score.

I could relate to so many points you mentioned.

I have one question. How can one improve in math from a 44 to 50? I mean is there any book which will help you with the concepts for tough questions.

No matter how strong you are in math basics some tricky questions eats you up. I got a geometry question based on a real world scenario giving angle measurements and asking to find the distance there was absolutely no information given whether the trajectory of the helicopter was parallel to the ground and with out assuming that it was parallel it was very difficult and lengthy almost impossible to solve it.

So I was wondering if there are books out there which can introduce us to such questions and help us get a hang of them because I find math questions in OG way to easy when compared to the actual GMAT questions.

NethraN wrote:Very deserving score. Awesome analysis of every section.

Congrats LOGITECH you hammered the GMAT.

I gave my GMAT 2 days ago and the same thing happened to me I got lesser than the least score among my practice tests. Reading your posts gave me a new point of view and a hope to work towards a good score.

I could relate to so many points you mentioned.

I have one question. How can one improve in math from a 44 to 50? I mean is there any book which will help you with the concepts for tough questions.

No matter how strong you are in math basics some tricky questions eats you up. I got a geometry question based on a real world scenario giving angle measurements and asking to find the distance there was absolutely no information given whether the trajectory of the helicopter was parallel to the ground and with out assuming that it was parallel it was very difficult and lengthy almost impossible to solve it.

So I was wondering if there are books out there which can introduce us to such questions and help us get a hang of them because I find math questions in OG way to easy when compared to the actual GMAT questions.

Hi Nethran, my humble advice:

1) Regarding your score, be carefull with ranges in math or verbal with "high" standard deviation!! As you know there's a huge difference in scoring 44 or 48. If you consistenly score with a deviation of 1 for example between 44 and 46, I think it is acceptable but no more than that.

2) To improve Math, Mayonisse has very good advice. Also try to recognize your weak areas.

When I feel lost as you felt in the problem you mentioned about the "helicopter", I try to figure out what is being tested. May be it was possible to draw a diagonal, a triangle, etc. If it's problem solving the figure is right unless it says not drawn to scale. If it's a DS and you felt there was no enough info, so E could be the right answer. May be it was an experimental question... Have you train your guess technique? Never dishearten with a problem if you can't solve it. Just made your best guess and move on.

Also when we think that a problem is imposible to solve, we must change our mind. Ask ourselves what is happening here that we can not understand what is being tested or recognize what to do?
I don't think there is a book with hard problems,etc. Do you actually took Gmat preps several times until you got 50 score in Math to understand hard problems? Have you try Manhattan or 800 score? Have you search the forum for hard problems?

Hope this helps, all the best, and remember "impossible is nothing"!

If you have access to Manhattan TESTS, Read all of the explanations for math. I am sure that it will help you! Also POST your questions and pick up people's brains. There are so many people with different visions and you will learn ALOT from others. Remember 44 is 70 percentile and 50 is 94 percentile. The numbers might look close but the actual work between them is significant. I am sure within 2 months many of you can boost your score from 44 to 48-49.

GMAT scores are based on 650,000 peoples score. And only 1% scores 51.

Thanks a lot for the advice Logitech and El Cucu.

@Logitech: Yes I completely understand that every point improvement after 44 takes a lot of effort and intelligence. I agree with what you have suggested and will try to do my best. Will be regular on the math topics here and try to brainstorm more and make the most out of it.

@El Cucu - I tried forming a triangle and it had to be a right angled triangle to solve it which again came with the assumption that the helicopters trajectory was parallel to the ground. This was a PS problem and I don’t know whether I got it right or wrong so assuming that it was parallel could be the right approach. I just wanted to know how to get used to such problems and like you said the best approach would be to take GMAT Preps till it throws such tough problems on you. I took GMAT preps a few times and got between 44 and 46 and since my Verbal score was low I did not pay much attention on improving my quant(My mistake). I did search the forum for hard problems and got a document with tough quant problems but I did not feel that represented the tough problems of GMAT as they were way too difficult and I could not solve many of them. I know it prepares you for the worst but at first glance it was very demoralizing.

Thanks guys. I have been getting a 44 or 46 consistently so I need to work very hard to improve it by few points and work double hard to improve my verbal skills. I hope to do it.

Logitech - How good was the new version of sentence correction book when compared to the older version? (If you have used it) I currently have the 2007 edition.

I know all the strategies from Manhattan SC book but I fail when it comes to applying them on the actual questions. Is there anything that am missing or doing wrong? Because sometimes when I see a "they" in the underlined section of SC I feel there is no right reference for it but then there will be a "their" in the non-underlined portion which indicates that there is no pronoun reference problem right?