I just Beat The GMAT!

I just finished taking the exam for the 2nd time. Proud to report that I scored a 750 (49Q, 44V). It was not an easy journey. On my first diagnostic, which was taken after my first month of study, I had scored a 550 using the GMATPrep software. I knew I was in no shape for the exam and studied hardcore for a good 6 months before taking the exam last month to get a 690 (47Q, 38V). I was disappointed since I was aiming for 700+ (but probably in the low 700s). I knew that this should be a realistic goal because in practice tests my verbal score would usually be around 41, whereas on the actual exam I got a 38. My goal for the 2nd retake was to just hit 700, since I was sooo close the first time.

I'll be honest, a 750 was more than I could have ever hoped for. I have always been mediocre at taking standardized exams, and both my math and verbal skills are mediocre at best.. believe me, I am not trying to be humble when saying this. I've always hated math and numbers. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I could never be classified as a smart person.. I have been called an idiot, aloof, or absent-minded on numerous occasions. When doing practice tests, as well as on the actual exam, I have never finished the exam before time ran out. I am a slow thinker, and require a lot of time on exams, or I don't finish. The GMAT is one of those tests that I really had to rush on and still not be able to complete on time. Therefore when I saw my score, I was pleasantly surprised. I was really aiming for a 700 or 710 the whole time, but never expected a 750 to pop up. Despite my shortcomings, I will say that I am tenacious and hard working. I studied 5 hours a day for most of 6 months. After getting a 690 the first time, I doubled my efforts for the month before the retaking. When I took my 2 week (and expensive) vacation to Asia, I spent at least 3/4 the time in a coffee shop when I should have been working on my tan on the beach. Given that I was in a resort town the locals, hotel staff, everyone thought I was insane. I am a firm believer in hard work, and I know that if I can get a decent score, then almost anyone can do it. I am of below average intelligence, but I have always squeeked by the finish line with strong work ethic. So for those of you who are not hitting your desired scores, or feel like giving up, just keep at it, and you will hit your target.

Since some of you asked, I wanted to share my feedback with you on the exam.

Books Used:
- Manhattan GMAT Series - ALL you need to get a grasp of the fundamentals. As many have mentioned, the Number Properties and Sentence Correction books are especially valuable.
- Official Guide 12 - Very valuable, since these are the actual past GMAT questions. Once you have the foundation from the Manhattan GMAT material, the best way to prepare is to do problems that are similar to the ones written by the test writers.
- Official Guide 11 - The more actual GMAT questions the better! If you can get a copy of Official Guide 11 (it can be purchased cheap or found at the library), it will have some additional questions that aren't in OG12. The Manhattan GMAT website shows the difference between the two: https://www.manhattangmat.com/official-guide-12.cfm. One can use the site to determine where the overlap occurs and work on the questions that aren't repeats for OG12.
- Official Guide for GMAT Quantitative Review - Again, I advocate doing as many official questions as you can get your hands on.
- Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review - Again, I advocate doing as many official questions as you can get your hands on.
- Princeton Review Crack the GMAT - Worthless. Do not buy.

Practice Tests Used
- GMATPrep - This is an extremely valuable resource that can be obtained for free. There are 2 exams, but since the exam generates random questions, I was able to take maybe 5-10 tests and still see new questions each time. The software is also computer adaptive so should give you the most reliable indicator of where you stand. Anyway, enough has been said about the GMATPrep software by other forum members, so I won't talk about it in depth. I scored a 550 the first time I took it, after 1 month of study. Subsequently I scored 590, 640, 720. Note that each additional time you take the test, your score will probably be inflated because you are bound to see some repeat questions from the last couple times you took the tests. However, as I mentioned, you will still see plenty of new questions as well, so it is good to keep taking the GMATPrep in order to exhaust the questions.
- Manhattan GMAT - If you buy any of the MGMAT book, you get 7 practice tests for free. These are good, but much harder than the actual exam. I could honestly never even finish half the quant section before time ran out. Eventually I stopped practicing with the timer on. Instead I took the tests at a leisurely pace just to see if I knew my fundamentals. Note that some of the questions are very tough and test concepts that are not frequently tested on the real exam (see my section below on tough or out of the ordinary questions). Therefore, I wouldn't sweat these exams too much, but just use them as an additional resource for practice. I took the 7 exams throughout my study (with the timer off) and scored the following: 610, 690, 670, 710, 690, 700, 720.

For fundamentals all you need is Manhattan GMAT
As many have mentioned, these books are excellent for getting the proper foundation you need to succeed. In fact, these are the ONLY materials you need to get that foundation, and I wouldn't bother with anything else unless you really don't understand a concept the way MGMAT has explained it and you need supplemental material. I read each of the books from cover to cover, taking notes along the way. I reread some of the books multiple times if necessary, especially the really good ones, such as Sentence Correction and Number Properties. I would also do the questions at the end of each chapter, as this solidifies and confirms your understanding of the fundamentals. If short on time, obviously the most important material to know is the stuff in the first half of the books (the stuff prior to the advance section). If you have the time, I would also review the advance material, though this is far less important. In fact, I only paid a minimal amount of attention to the advance sections in the MGMAT books.

Focus on Official Questions
I would not bother as much with questions outside of the official questions, such as those from other websites, or designed by test makers/individuals outside of GMAC. The reason is twofold: First, within the the Official questions, there should be enough material to keep you busy and develop a good foundation for your test. 2nd, there are often minor, although important, differences between official questions those designed by non-official sources. I'm not saying to not do any questions at all outside of official questions.. I'm just saying that it is unnecessary to achieve a 700+ score, and the subtle differences may throw you off from what an actual question should look like. I personally found this especially to be true of the sentence correction questions on various websites. Do as many official problems as you can get your hands on. The same question types tested in the official questions are frequently tested on the actual exam, the the test writers are lazy or lack the desire to make significant changes to the problems.

Don't focus on extremely tough or out of the ordinary questions
Yes, it is good to gain an understanding of every question type if you have the time and capability to do so. However, I found it unnecessary if your goal is to simply achieve a score of 700+ (as opposed to 770). Like some have mentioned, it is best to focus on the MAJOR fundamentals and questions where you are required to apply these fundamentals. The most important questions to know are the ones where you see the concepts repeatedly in many other OFFICIAL questions. Example would be just know how to do the most extreme basic of combination or permutation questions, not all the various more complicated variations. Any question that you come across that is testing some obscure concept that you never seen tested in any other question is probably not worth your time getting more than a basic understanding of. Again, the bare fundamentals, the concepts that are repeatedly being tested, and the most common methods that they like to use to trick test takers, are the most important areas to focus on. Unique question types or one-off tricks are a waste of your time and it will be a rare chance if you actually get tested on it during the real test. I guess this is my only gripe with the MGMAT books. Sometimes they cover certain areas in depth even though the chances of occurrence on the actual exam are slim. I guess they just want to have all their bases covered in case some guy wants to score a 780. One offender that I can think of right off the top of my head is the MGMAT chapter on combinations. Waaay to much detail, and 75% of it is too complex for the real GMAT. I could explain everything about combinations required for the GMAT in maybe 5 sentences and 2 or 3 sample question types. It was really unnecessary for them to go into the whole anagram method and such. You cannot possibly prepare for every question type that the exam makers will throw at you. Better to spend most your time studying the most tested concepts or question types rather than spend 80% studying questions that have a 2% chance of occurring.

You do not need to get every question correct to get a good score, not even close
This point kind of follows my point above that one should not focus on studying really tough or out of the ordinary questions. If you see a question on the test that you simply don't know how to do or never seen before, don't bother wasting time spinning your head on it. Chances are likely that you will waste a considerable amount of time thinking about it or freaking out about it, and then end up guessing or working it through just to get it wrong anyway. Better to just skip the question and save the time for something you CAN do. I had skipped about 3 or 4 questions in quant knowing that I didn't have a chance of figuring it out, and still didn't finish the exam on time. I also know that I didn't answer every other question correctly, as I had to do plenty of guessing on other questions as well. I still got a 49 in quant, which I think is pretty decent, and a 750 overall. Proof that you can afford to skip questions and still get a 700+ on the exam. NEVER EVER waste time on questions you don't know how to tackle. Try to eliminate some of the choices is possible, and then take an educated guess, and move on.

Error log was a waste of time for me (maybe not for you)
This is going to sound like blasphemy to a lot of people because so many successful GMAT scorers attribute their success to using an error log, however I found it to be an absolute waste of time. I guess everyone has their own study methods. I did start using one initially as well, hearing how critical it is to one's success, but stopped after a while. I found that I spent too much time inputting questions and all the other info (e.g. source, question type, topic tested, etc etc) into the error log when I could have been using that time to actually do questions. That is not to say I didn't have a way to keep track of problem areas or questions. What I found most useful for myself was to simply circle questions that I missed in the official guide, so that I could review them later. I would circle the question, and assign a 1, 2, or 3 to it depending on difficulty, with 1 essentially meaning I just wanted to review the question later to make sure the fundamental concept was still in my head later (I forget stuff over time), and a 3 meaning that I didn't know how to do the problem at all the first time through. This was much quicker than inputting a bunch of information into an excel spreadsheet. I also kept in a word file the areas that I was having problems with where I needed to review the problems (e.g. triangles, combinations, etc). Then I would simply go back to the MGMAT books or other sources to solidify my understanding of the fundamentals.

If you are a native English speaker, don't waste a lot of time with idioms
I did not bother studying idioms at all and near the end of my test prep I was scoring in the 99 percentile on verbal consistently. There are just too many idioms to bother memorizing them all. Like I said, my verbal skills are not excellent, but it was NOT required to mention all the idiom listings. If anything, there are many 3-5 idioms that are more commonly tested than others, which might be worth knowing, but you will come across these in the official guide questions anyway. Again, your yardstick for determining whether or not something is worth memorizing is whether you see the specific concept (or idiom) being tested more than once in official questions. Some important ones I can think of off the top of my head is "because of" vs "due to" or "if" vs "whether".

Exam Anxiety
For those who have it, this can affect your performance on test day if you let it. Just take some deep slow breathes prior to the exam. Sometimes I'll do a few jumping jacks or push ups to let out some stress. Either way, you need to make sure you're in the right state of mind PRIOR to the exam. Be confident and tell yourself that it's just a test, it's really not the end of the world. Retakes are always available if needed. If stuck on a question, don't panic. As I've mentioned above, you do not even need to get close to getting every question right to get a decent score. Just skip the question and move on unless you think you will able to figure it out.

From 690 to 750
As I've said, I was able to raise my score from 690 to 750 in one month. Some have asked for exactly what I did during the one month to achieve the increase. To be honest, I didn't really do anything significantly different from my 690 to 750. My 690 on the first exam consisted of 47Q and 38V. The 47Q was about on par with what I was getting on my practice tests, so I was satisfied with that score. However, on most of my practice tests I was starting to see that my verbal score was more in the vicinity of 40 or 41. As such, I knew off the bat that I had underperformed the first time I took the test and I should probably have been in the low 700 range. Since, my verbal score was lower than expected, I decided to dedicate some more time to sentence correction, reading comprehension, and critical reasoning. I knew I wouldn't be able to raise my quantitative score significantly since I had already put in a ton of study there, and felt I had just about reached my limit. That is not to say I ignored quantitative during my one month study. I simply continued to do the same thing, more in order to prevent myself from forgetting concepts and strategies than anything. I did the same questions over again, and rereviewed the MGMAT books. On test day, my verbal improved from 38 to 44 and even my quantitative went up from 47 to 49 points, I guess from the additional month of study.

I hope this is helpful to at least some people out there. If anyone has any other questions, ask, and I will be more than happy to provide my feedback.[/b]

Thanks for the tips. It was a great help. So in your mind are the MGMAT books and the OG 11th edition book enough to do well on the test. I have about 3 months to study for the test. Is this enough time? Thanks.

Congrats and thanks for nice debrief!! and Best of luck with your applications

skins81 wrote:Thanks for the tips. It was a great help. So in your mind are the MGMAT books and the OG 11th edition book enough to do well on the test. I have about 3 months to study for the test. Is this enough time? Thanks.

The amount of time required for the GMAT depends on your prior knowledge of fundamentals of math, grammar, etc, as well as what score you are hoping to achieve. In general I would say 3 months is sufficient if one studies diligently.

I only used the MGMAT books, along with sources for as many official questions as I could get my hands on. I am sure that in 3 months time you can easily go through OG12, 11, 10, as well as the official verbal and quant review books. However, it might not be necessary for you to have that much review, while it definitely benefited me.

Great score !! Congrats! Great debrief! I am sure you had solved some very high level (700-800) questions in both sections that's why it popped up 750.

Amazing score and a nice detailed debrief explaining some new and very simple areas.
Your story inspires me to work hard and 700 can be achieved ..need to try hard.
All the best for your apps.

keep rocking,
PN.

Congrats on the awesome score! I'm deeply impressed by your candor and tenacity!

You mentioned that you did another month of prep after scoring a 690 to achieve a 750. Could you please describe what did you do during that one month period that lead to the score increase? Thanks in advance!

tallazndood wrote:Congrats on the awesome score! I'm deeply impressed by your candor and tenacity!

You mentioned that you did another month of prep after scoring a 690 to achieve a 750. Could you please describe what did you do during that one month period that lead to the score increase? Thanks in advance!

To be honest, I didn't really do anything significantly different from my 690 to 750. My 690 on the first exam consisted of 47Q and 38V. The 47Q was about on par with what I was getting on my practice tests, so I was satisfied with that score. However, on most of my practice tests I was starting to see that my verbal score was more in the vicinity of 40 or 41. As such, I knew off the bat that I had underperformed the first time I took the test and I should probably have been in the low 700 range. Since, my verbal score was lower than expected, I decided to dedicate some more time to sentence correction, reading comprehension, and critical reasoning. I knew I wouldn't be able to raise my quantitative score significantly since I had already put in a ton of study there, and felt I had just about reached my limit. That is not to say I ignored quantitative during my one month study. I simply continued to do the same thing, more in order to prevent myself from forgetting concepts and strategies than anything. I did the same questions over again, and rereviewed the MGMAT books. On test day, my verbal improved from 38 to 44 and even my quantitative went up from 47 to 49 points, I guess from the additional month of study.

Thank you for sharing your insights, Antec0721!

I just took the real GMAT for the first time today and got 670 Q49 V31. Like yours, my quant was within expectation. But I underperformed on my verbal by as much as 10 points compared to my practice test averages. For some reason, I felt that the verbal section on the real test was measurably more difficult than those found in the practice tests (MGMAT or GMAT Prep). I was wondering if you felt the same way on your first attempt?

tallazndood wrote:Thank you for sharing your insights, Antec0721!

I just took the real GMAT for the first time today and got 670 Q49 V31. Like yours, my quant was within expectation. But I underperformed on my verbal by as much as 10 points compared to my practice test averages. For some reason, I felt that the verbal section on the real test was measurably more difficult than those found in the practice tests (MGMAT or GMAT Prep). I was wondering if you felt the same way on your first attempt?

When I took it the first time I felt that the verbal was about within range of the MGMAT and TestPrep. But feelings can be deceiving. I felt like I had done a great job on it right before hitting the submit button and was disappointed to see that I scored a 38, which was lower than I had done in most of my sample tests. The second time I took the exam, I felt like it was the hardest verbal I had done, and I was feeling like I would get another below 700 score, only to see that I had scored a 44 on verbal.

Thanks for such a detailed article, Antec0721!

I do have a question. I have been studying, admittedly not as much as I should be. I have taken two practice tests (one Kaplan, the other GMAT Prep) and scored 560 (Q31, V39) and 570 (Q31, V34), respectively.

Obviously, I need to focus on the Quant section and review the Verbal section every now and then. Since my weakness is the Quant section, I want to know which book by the MGMAT helped you review the quant fundamentals. Which book exactly provided you with that math review? I am making flash cards that will hopefully help me understand and remember the concepts thoroughly. If you could provide me with a link, that would be much appreciated.

Please let me know when you get a moment.

Thanks!

Did you really find the MGMAT tests harder than the actual GMAT? A few folks on here stated that the actual GMAT was HARDER than the MGMAT tests.

I sure hope you are right. I have definitely taken a few of those, and they were not too bad.

I hate this exam - it is such a barnacle on the butt of existence.

i love this post thanks!

Thank you for that wonderful post. There have been many good posts on BTG but yours is one of the best by far. Part of this is how similar it sounds to my current situation. My studying is going to continue to pick up because of what you wrote. Thank you. NGUFO!

Money,

Did you attend an MBA event - the Stanford Many Voices event?

You look familiar!

Just curious.

Anyway, I agree with this post. I think it is all about how you study - quality in the problems. I spoke to a guy who got a 700 who said exactly the same thing!