GMAT Strategy

Hi,

a big hello to everyone on this forum and thanks to the moderators for approving my membership.

I am a 30 Year old male from India, working in the IT industry with close to 7 years of IT experience. planning to appear for the GMAT in December'11.

as far as Quant and verbal skills for competitive exams are concerned, i have been completely out of touch and decided to take the first step towards my goal by appearing for one of the "freely" available GMAT CAT Tests on the internet.

appeared for Knewton Free Diagnostic and scored a dismal 460.

Verbal 26/40%
Quant 27/19%
Total 460/26%

I understand that i am looking at a really tough road ahead of me, how'd the gurus rate my chances of reaching the 750 range considering the fact that i wasn't even able to recall the formula for calculating the Median when i appeared for the diagnostic today

Planning to brush my fundamentals up and appear for another free prep test in 20 days.

this is a fantastic forum, looking forward to being here and learning from you all.

thanks

Don't get too disappointed, it looks like Knewton algorithm is skewing down score....
However a 750 seems a little bit far... but not unreachable.
Use the OG12 as a bible and take the Gmat Test Prep ( download from mba.com), there are 2 free tests.. these are the most accurate form of evaluation


Good luck!

Hi there,

The score I got on Knewton's diagnostic test was 100 pt below MGMAT Test. I took the MGMAT test 2 weeks after the Knewton test.

Taking into consideration that I took only one Knewton and one MGMAT test, I cannot surely say that Knewton's scoring algorithm is skewed. However, one should also consider that for those Knewton students who haven't taken the official GMAT before, the score from the Knewton test is considered as a baseline for the 50 pt increase money back guarantee.

@Kenji and iKaplan,

thanks for the encouragement! i know i am down but surely not out.
i have started looking into the OG12 for Quant concept overview and plan to appear for another free prep test in two weeks time.

i have also enrolled myself into the BTG 60 day study plan ,so that should help me structure my prep a bit.

hope to learn from all you wonderful people on the BTG.

thanks for the kind words, ill keep the forum updated of my progress.

following the BTG 60 Day study plan, tried my hand at solving the OG12 Diagnostic today, 7/13/2011.

Problem Solving - 7/24
Data Suff - 10/24
Reading comp - 14/17
Critical Reason - 5/17
Sentence corr - 9/18

first things first, I Clearly need to get my Quant basic right. then some work on CR concepts. for the rest, i would like to believe that i am at the 50% level so there's still hope

the fun begins...

thanks

Hi Pinkray, and welcome to the community!

A lot of students score lower than they hope to on the diagnostic test, and it's great that you're taking it in stride and not letting the first attempt discourage you too much. This isn't because the algorithm is skewing you lower - you just don't have the concept mastery yet to score a 750. Don't worry, you'll get there with hard studying!

There are a ton of great resources on this site, so you've come to the right place. Managing your time and organizing your tools will be key to your strategy for success, and we've put together some tips that have worked for our students in the past here: https://bit.ly/rfWfQO. You already seem to be doing a good job of keeping your attitude positive, and browsing through the success stories in the "I Beat the GMAT!" forum always helps for inspiration and motivation. One of our student spotlights actually profiled a student who was in a position similar to the one you're in now who ended up increasing his score by 160 points. If you're interested in learning about his study strategy, check out https://bit.ly/qdBl3p.

Also, just an FYI about our scoring algorithm, Knewton considers the highest previous Official GMAT Score you have before you start the program as your baseline for improvement. So if you scored higher on the official GMAT than on our free CAT, we'll use that score for our 50 point improvement increase guarantee. Hope this helps, best of luck, and feel free to reach out whenever!

Jessie
Please "thank" this post if it helps you!
https://www.knewton.com/people/jessie

following the BTG 60 day plan for my preparation on Quant,need your input on the following :

Book : MGMAT The Fractions ,Decimals and Percent guide 4th edition
Chapter : 3 , Percent Strategy ,Page 55 (Percent problem set)
Question5 :A 7% car loan, which is compounded annually, has an interest payment of $210
after the first year. What is the principal on the loan?

my query: this is a fairly straight forward problem but by question is at what point should i be able to figure out that this problem is not to be solved using the compound interest formula?