I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi all,

Just a couple of lines before I take off for an afternoon at work.
I took the GMAT this morning and scored a 730 (q 48, v 42). I'm extremely happy with this score, I was hoping for a 700+ and considered anything above 700 a bonus.

I will be applying for Fall 2007 at INSEAD, Cornell, Chicago, and probably HBS.

Couple of reflections on the test experience (taken in Brussels, Belgium)

- Friendly staff, very comprehensive yet applying security procedures strictly
- Neat place to work
- Paper and pen provided are a mess ! First, the amount of paper given for the Q section is not half as much as I needed; second, those plastic boards easily put ink all over me; third, I didn't like the layout of the paper. I strongly suggest you take some time to think about it, because I had always been practising with tons of paper and was a little disturbed by this paper problem (although the extremely helpful staff immediately gave me more paper when requested). Any disturbance can have severe consequences given the tight deadlines
- AWA was relatively easy (wouldn't like to appear too confident as I'm waiting for my scores). The argument was flawed in the classical way (silly analogies, etc.), the issue was relatively easy to take a stand on.
- Quant was though. I have a strong quantitative background and consistently scored higher in q than in v for all my practice tests. Yet, the second question I had, I already had to guess, and I found almost all Q questions to be difficult (now I'm encline to thinking that it's due to the fact that I was taking difficult questions, but at the time of the exam it sounded differently). Lots of DS are very difficult. What they definitely like: geometry (triangles and circles), ratios, work problems, inequalities, numbers theory (multiples, factors, primes, etc). What I didn't see too much : probabilities (except for 2 or 3 relatively easy questions). I normally have plenty of time enough, but during the test I had to rush and "semi-guess" three times amongst the last questions. I ended up with 1 min left (I don't like ending with the clock ticking).
- On the contrary, Verbal was easier than normal, I thought. The RC's were normal, the CR as well, but the SC part was definitely easier than I expected to. Two RC questions which ressembled a lot like CR questions (a long text and questions like "What would strenghten the argument"). A lot of CR in the form of "what would logically complete the sentence". No "mimic the reasoningé". I rushed through RC and finished in 30 min. I think (I'm used to it).
- Overall, I'm quite pleased with my score, obviously, but if I had to retake it (which I obviously won't), I'd concentrate on time management during the Q section, and as far as preparing is concerned I'd spend less time on probabilities and more on inequalities.

It's not an enjoyable experience, because of the time pressure, but I found practicing rather enjoyable, because it involves exercices and almost no theory.

Here's for my preparation

Background
- Grad in 2000 with a MSc in Management - strong (but rusty) in Maths. Decent English: nothing to be ashamed of, nothing outstanding.
- 2 years consulting, 2 years diplomatic service, 2 years public affairs

Preparation
- Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT. I recommend this book, not so much to practice, but rather to read the theory and understand what the GMAT is all about. The authors have good strategies and their humor help to dedramatize (if this is English at all I don't know) the test. Don't be ashamed of plugging in, etc. On the other hand, the tests are fairly easy and/or not totally comparable with the real GMAT experience
- Once you know a little about GMAT and feel comfortable with the (little) theory, I suggest you start with the Official Guide. I did all the questions in the OG, scored a rough 88% overall (95% in PS, 85% in DS, etc.). When a question was involving a new piece of theory, I was writing it down. There's not a lot of theory involved in the GMAT so it's worth knowing it.
- My scores for V were consistently below Q, so I decided to buy the Verbal OG (the purple one) and did the 300+ exercices. Helped me to improve significantly my V scores, except for SC.
- The days before the exam: took some practice exams (PowerPrep), reviewed formulas to be known by heart (I hate having to study by heart), thought of AWA strategies/frameworks.
- One little tip for the SC: try to rememeber PMPATSIQ. That's what I did, it's the framework for SC from the Princeton Review book and I liked it. It's Pronouns / Misplaced modifiers / Parallel construction / Apples-and-oranges / Tenses / Subject-verb agreement / Idioms / Quantity words: the 8 major types of errors in SC and the order in which you should try to spot them. It worked for me, you never know !

OK that's it pretty much I think. If I think of something else which might be valuable I'll add it.

Last words: a very big thank you for the forum. I read through the forum a lot to see where people were focusing on, to practice new questions, to exchange ideas, find strategies, and al. THANK YOU and KUDOS, this is a great place for poor GMAT students !

Cheers and good luck to everyone!

Piren

PS: test scores- I didn't take many:

PowerPrep1 : 670 (just after Princeton Review). Retook it 1 week before the test since a lot of questions can be different, had a 780 which was obviously biaised since a LOT of the V questions were either already seen in the previous PP1 I had taken or in one of the official guides.
PowerPrep 2 : 750 (yesterday).

congrats man,
its a great score.

one question: now that you have taken the test plus you have a balanced score in both section...
how would you rate the difficulty level in OG11?

the review i read two years back for earler OG was : the questions are ~650 level.
so, what about OG11? in both section plz.

I'd say that Q questions (even the most difficult ones) are a little bit easier in the OG than in the real test, specially in problem solving (there were only 3 PS questions where I was stuck and had to guess in the entire OG, and I had to do it for the 2d question already in the test). But overall, it's similar. Like Eric said, "I almost felt like cheating when taking the test because the patterns were so similar". Well, I couldn' agree more -the patterns are not identical, but they are certainly similar. Those OG questions are definitely great to understand "the GMAT mood". And the OG is also great in that it gives importance to topics which are really covered in the test. It's not as if you had only 3 questions on probability in the OG and had 7 questions about it in the test. Conversely, you have tons of median/mean, factors/multiples, series, problems in the OG and you have them in the test as well ...

As far as V is concerned, the test is on par with the OG, except that I had these mixed RC/CR questions -in fact I don't know where it belongs. Oh, and I probably shouldn't tell but there was ONE SC question in the real test I had had in one of my prep tests or in one of the two books before.

But overall, I think that with a decent hit score in the OG (I'd say probably above 83-85%), you are pretty well in the game to score a 700.

Does this answer your question ?

Thanks for sharing your experience. Good luck

how many days, weeks, or months did you spend preparing?