When D-day was one of my lucky days... (750, Q49, V42)

Although this is my first post in this forum, I have been browsing this forum for quite a while, ranging from doing practice problems to reading other posters' inspiring stories. I think anyone who's planning to take GMAT should use this website.

Anyway, I just took GMAT today. The score is better than I could ever imagine (750, Q49, V42). I can't think of any reason why I got this score other than luck was on my side. Well, I still hope my experience will help anyone who's going to take the exam soon.

The preparation

Study Materials: MGMAT verbal and math sets, OG verbal and math guides, OG12

I started studying GMAT about 3 months ago. Even without doing diagnostics test in OG12 I knew sentence correction would be my biggest weakness. I am an immigrant to the US, and back then I never had the chance to fully understand the grammatical rules. Well, I still took the diagnostic test anyway, and realized that I needed improvement in all areas.

I decided to start with SC first - went over the MGMAT SC book. Anyone who wants to improve their SC skills must read this book.

For CR and RC I also referred to the MGMAT guides, but I don't think they are as helpful. I believe MGMAT's CR strategy is good for fast readers only. I read really slow, and to be honest I don't have time to write down notes as the guide has instructed. The guide's strengthen/weaken questions strategy was still very helpful to me however.

While working on MGMAT and OG's practice problems, I have done several practice exams (less essays) once a week to track my progress. Here are the scores of my first 3 practices:

GPREP1 710 Q50 V37
MGMAT1 660 Q46 V34
MGMAT2 660 Q46 V34

At a point after taking MGMAT2, I was totally devastated because I didn't see any improvements. There was a point that I wanted to give up. Thanks to BTG's posts I understood that scores from practice exams mean nothing. So I regrouped and moved on.

I re-read the whole MGMAT SC guide because I felt I was missing something, and I did. The second time I read made me understand the rules better. I also started to re-do OG's questions, especially those I did wrong before.

In contrast to my preparation for verbal, I did less for math. I knew that I pretty much forgot everything related to number theories, so MGMAT Math guide book 1 was the first math guide I read. I just can't describe in words how wonderful this book is. READ IT! The Inequality guide was very helpful too, since I was not very good at those problems. After going through those 2 books, I felt I was pretty much all set in math.

I took 4 more practice test prior to the D-day:
PPREP1 740 Q49 V41
MGMAT3 680 Q48 V35
PPREP2 750 Q50 V40
GPREP2 690 Q50 V32 <-did this 4 days before exam, and did the essays too

First of all, PPREP's score was definitely not representative because many of the problems can be found in the OG guides. In addition, you may notice that my score was not improving, especially verbal. Again I was very unhappy about this -- I felt like I should have done far better than 32 in verbal...

...Here's where my past exam-taking experience came in. I am currently an actuary, a profession that requires candidates to pass a series of exams. Through my exam experience I realized I began to lose my focus towards the end of my practice exams. Focus is probably the single most important factor during the exam. So I needed to find a way to keep myself awake during the D-day.

D-day

My exam was scheduled at 9:45am. I woke up at the same time as usual, had breakfast and a cup of coffee, and then took subway to the exam center. I listened to my favorite music on my way in order to relax as much as I could. I arrived the test center 30 mins early and the admin allowed me to start earlier...

The essays were okay. The topics the exam picked for me were little easier than those I wrote during my practice exams. I am a slow writer, and therefore timing was critical. I spent the first 5 mins (at least) to plan what I needed to write in each paragraph. The strategy worked well.

During the break, I had a cereal bar and couple candies to energize myself. Like I said, focus is very important and anything sugary helps.

The math section was slightly harder than those in the GMAT Prep, and I was stuck in 1-2 problems. I soon gave up on those questions and moved on -- pacing myself well was more important to get a single hard problem correct anyway. At the end I felt my performance in the math section was not as good as I wanted, but at that time I had something more to worry about -- the dreaded verbal section.

During the second break, I quickly drank a double shot and had couple more candies. I knew that the effect of the double shot would kick in approx. 30 minutes into the verbal section.

And the effect did came at that time. Yay, I was able to avoid a lapse during the verbal section. Still, I did not breeze through the section. I am a slow reader and the long RCs were killing me. I was lucky that the topics were not too boring. Otherwise I would have gone 3-4 wrong answers in a row.

The SCs were okay. The underlined sections were in general short, and so I was able to eliminate wrong answer choices quickly. Couple CRs were quite confusing and I was stuck.

Because of the long RCs and confusing CRs I had to guess on the last 2 questions. That wasn't too bad, I thought, as I needed to guess like 5-6 in one of the practice exams I took.

While I was finishing the questionnaire I thought if I could break the 700 barrier I would be really happy. Once I saw my score I needed to control my emotions so bad as I was about to scream. 750! No way what was I smoking? Luck was really on my side I guess.

I am still in shock right now and am trying to regather my thinking. Perhaps this score will allow me to apply couple b-schools that I regarded as "impossible". I will think about those schools, but now what I should do is to celebrate my hard work and have a good night's sleep. Good luck everyone!

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