I just Beat The GMAT!

On Thursday, March 14, 2013, I beat the GMAT into submission on my first (and only) attempt. It was not quite the knockout punch I was hoping for, but it is sufficient that I can now focus on the other aspects of my upcoming applications (starting this summer). My score was a little bit less than what I was targeting (~ 770 or higher), but a 760 (99th percentile), with a 46 Verbal subsection (99th percentile) and 49 Quantitative subsection (83rd percentile), AWA 6.0 (90th percentile), and IR 6 (67th percentile) is likely to be sufficient.

Background:

I have a very strong humanities and social sciences background -- a law degree from one of the top 3 law schools in Australia and an undergraduate bachelor of arts in Chinese literature and history. I graduated around 6 years ago, and have spent the last 6 years as a legal counsel for a fairly large global private equity fund manager based in Europe -- partly in their headquarters in Europe and partly in a regional headquarters in Asia.

I was born and raised in Malaysia and I am a native speaker of English.

My target programs are generally top 10 programs in the United States (the usual suspects). I'm planning to stay in the same industry -- PE or move to an earlier stage in the financing of corporations, VC, but planning to move away from being purely a legal counsel advising on investments.

Study technique:

Quantitative

I recognized quite early in the preparations that I needed a rather thorough refresher in most of the mathematical concepts on the GMAT. While I had done calculus and analytic geometry in undergraduate, before I decided to focus on literature and history, that was more than 9 years ago. I also recognized early in my preparations that given the extremely long hours and weekends that my profession requires, my study technique and schedule had to be built around the reality that I would not be able to commit to any scheduled face-to-face courses.

I started off with a Veritas Prep On Demand online course so that I could watch the lessons at an hour and time of my choosing. This gave me a quick introduction to the various topics that were covered in the GMAT. I found the book and lessons for Combinatorics and Probabilities to be the most useful of the set, as it covered in some detail a topic that I only vaguely recall from high school. (Probability I did in undergraduate as part of my social sciences, but mostly normal, poisson and various other similar distributions, together with all those linear regressions and other statistical tools, none of which are tested on the GMAT.)

I also acquired the Manhattan GMAT quantitative prep books and the Manhattan Advanced GMAT Quant to have some additional materials to review. The most helpful of these books was the Manhattan Advanced GMAT Quant, which gave quite a few techniques for solving difficult questions, and also showed how tricky the GMAT question-makers could be.

I then supplemented that with three items from GMAC: Official Guide, 13th edition, Quantitative Review, 2nd Edition, and the GMATPrep Question Pack 1 to get a feel for actual past GMAT problems.

To finish off, I did work with a private tutor -- local GMAT prep company rather than one of the big ones like Veritas Prep or Manhattan GMAT -- for the Quantitative section for the last 5 weeks of my preparation (1 session per week). I found it useful to have someone to bounce ideas off, and to analyze why I was getting certain categories of questions wrong.

I kept a very detailed error log of every question I got wrong, so that I could analyze those questions again.

Verbal

For the Verbal part of my studies, I relied almost exclusively on the Veritas Prep materials to give me an overview of the topics and the categories of questions. I did a few sets of practice problems from the Official Guide, but that was it.

Reading comprehension -- This was relatively easy for me, as one of the few useful skills a lawyer learns is how to distill reasonings and assumptions and facts from 100+ page law cases.

Critical reasoning -- This was again similarly simple -- the logic here is easier than the stuff on the LSAT, to be honest.

Sentence correction -- I studied a fair bit harder for this as there are some aspects of sentence correction that trip up even native speakers, but still didn't spend more than a few hours on it, total.

Duration of Study Prep for the GMAT:

I started in August 2012, stopped for around 3 months from late September to October due to work demands -- I was regularly working until midnight or later -- restarted mid-November 2012, stopped in early December 2012 due to work demands, and restarted around February 2013, interrupted it for 2 weeks during mid-February 2013 due to work commitments, and finally did a concentrated 1 week of studying in March 2013 before the exam. I would estimate I spent around 9 - 10 weeks in total.

CAT Practice Tests Taken:

I did 2 CAT practice tests -- the GMATPrep tests, and did as many questions on a computer screen as possible (mostly from the GMATPrep Question Pack 1).

Thoughts on the Actual GMAT:

The day before the actual GMAT, I did a few questions from the GMATPrep Question Pack, then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. I timed my test for when I would likely be at my best (I'm a morning person), and got to the test center early so that I wouldn't be worried about being late.

Analytic Writing -- This was a walk in the park, but again, this section plays to my strengths as a lawyer.

Integrated Reasoning -- This was a little bit harder than the ones in the GMATPrep Question Pack, but the trick is to just treat it as one part of the test (and not yet an important part).

Quantitative -- The questions were a little harder than the ones in the GMATPrep Question Pack and Official Guide. I did have a bit of an issue with timing, particularly towards the end.

Verbal -- After the Quantitative section, this was a walk in the park. The overall difficulty level was around that of the Official Guide, especially the harder questions towards the end of each section. I finished with around 30 minutes to spare and decided to end the test.

Advice to GMAT Test Takers

Take your study for this seriously and try to get in consistent amounts of time on it. I'd also suggest taking a diagnostic test early in your studies so that you know what areas to focus on (for me it was quantitative). Apart from that, I would say do as many questions (especially Official Guide questions) as you can, as you need to get used to the patterns that the GMAT question-makers use in their questions and answer choices.