GMAT out of the way, boozing out of the way now some serious stuff.
There are some awesome posts on this website. But my experience might help or if it does not people might be happy to just read the post. Brace yourselves for a long post.
I took GMAT in September last year and I prepared for 3 months. I used OG11, Kaplan, Manhattan SC guide, some Manhattan books etc… I did a lot of tests a few Kaplan, all 6 MGMAT tests, and GMAT prep tests. I was aiming for a 700+ score and my score varied between 660 and 730 (not on Kaplan). On GMAT prep I got 680, 720, (a few repeats) 760 and 760 (a lot of repeats). On the real test I scored 640. I was bummed out. My verbal was like 29 or something. I was hoping to get a 40.
I figured out that the real exam is a different beast all together and I didn’t simulate the real exam conditions. This was a minor point in the big scheme of things. I believe the first time I never did get comfortable with CR and RC. My performance on the practice tests varied a lot and I couldn’t pin point what was wrong. I just kept taking more tests and re-reading all the material as much as I can. I did go through my mistakes but not carefully enough, didn’t understand why I made the mistake and why the correct choice is the answer. My math was good and I got as good as I could on SC.
I decided to take some time off from GMAT. In December I started thinking about taking the exam again and then I came across beat the GMAT forum. There were two posts that helped me a lot. One by gileyal (psychology of the exam) and the other by john1234 (overall strategy) I enjoyed the holidays and started to look into GMAT seriously around first week of Jan. I prepared for the exam for exactly one month.
Preparation:
Although there was a gap of 3 months I thought the concepts I learnt from the first time were very clear. I identified areas I felt I wasn’t comfortable with. I only used GMAT prep tests for test practice.
Math:
I was making mistakes in sets/functions, venn diagrams, geometry, co-ordinate geometry and probability. I had spent enough time on word problems and inequalities. I got a hang of those already. Instead of focusing on quantity I just focused on the above areas and spent a lot of time understanding the concepts. I used OG11 and beat the gmat forum for practice. In all my gmat prep tests I got 50 or 51.
Verbal:
SC: Only used AASC, sahil’s notes and OG 11
CR: power prep CR bible (I highly suggest this as it gave more ammunition to work with to solve CR questions) and Kaplan LSAT (only worked on the real LSAT questions)
RC: I used some suggestions posted on the beat the gmat forum.
I spent 50% of my time on CR, 40% on SC and 10% on RC.
Although RC was also my weak point I felt improving CR also had an effect on my RC.
When I did GMAT prep I got all RC correct (nope I did not see repeat passages from my earlier preparation)
After spending a week working through CR bible and SC notes
First week I practiced using OG 11 (GMAT prep1 -> 710)
Second week I practiced LSAT for CR + OG11 (retook GMAT prep1 -> 770)
There were repeats but I did get a lot of new questions right
Third week I did some LSAT RC + OG 11 + GMAT prep1 review (GMAT prep2 -> 740)
Final week I reviewed all my mistakes (GMAT prep 2 -> 770)
A lot of repeats but the first 10 questions of verbal were all new and got all of them right.
With this I felt pretty confident going into the test week
Two days before the test + test day:
I did not do anything two days before the test. I looked at how to write my essays and briefly reviewed the notes I made along the way.
On test day I arrived at the center 45 minutes earlier. They let me in after 15 mts (cool)
I finished my essays and took a break. I had my energy bar. Please eat or drink what ever you usually do. I don’t think this has anything to do with the exam.
Quant: I am absolutely sure I got the first 7 questions right. All these questions were from my strong areas (exponents, ratios, etc…) and none from my weaknesses. I worked through a tough problem and worked through the rest. I reached question 10 and looked at my time.
Now I enter into a major mess. This is what happens if you blindly follow something.
I have the habit of writing the expected time for very five questions. I incorrectly wrote that I should have 66 mts when I reach question 10 but I only had 57 mts. Long story short I thought I have used 10 mts more than I need to. From 10 to 30 I don’t know how and what I did. I guessed a few and wasn’t comfortable at all. I never had to rush through quant before. I look up I am at question 30 and time left is 25 minutes. This was absurd and I realized I messed up. I thought of cancelling my scores but then decided to go ahead and complete the section. I am pretty sure I got all the rest right and they were very easy. I had 8 mts left and I thought I am going to do poorly on quant.
I took a break and told myself just go do the verbal as well as I could. May be I will get my best verbal.
Verbal: I think I did well until the 10th question and some how lost focus here. The quant mess up has really bummed me. Somehow I got through until question 30 (wasn’t feeling good at all) I had 15 minutes for the last 12 questions. I refocused and got through to 41 in time. Honestly I had a dejavu. I thought verbal didn’t go that well.
There was one tough RC and most of the SC and CR were not that hard (again I don’t know how I got through from question 10 to 30)
I wasn’t expecting a 700+ score and when I saw 710 I just said that’s it I am done with GMAT. I was surprised with a 49 on Quant. I was a bit unhappy with 38 on V. But hey as I said no complaints. I think rest of my application is strong enough that 710 should suffice.
Lastly thanks to Stacey (great posts), Ian and Stuart. There are some awesome fellow GMATters (don’t care about usage anymore ) that contributed a lot to this forum. Thanks also to the founders. Awesome work guys.
