I just Beat The GMAT!

Hey all:

First time poster, long time lurker (like many on the forum, I suppose). Phew! I took the GMAT this morning and got a score of 770, Q50 (93 pctile) V46 (99 pctile). I figured since I got most of my motivation from reading success stories and debriefs from this forum, I would love to give back to the community. I hope to be more active in helping out in the GMAT forum and the admissions forum as well.

Background
- Young (24 years old), 2 years work exp only
- Engineering background from UCLA
- Native English Speaker

Preparation
I got most of my starting information (like a pointer to this forum) from a friend who is now at Haas (my dream school), so naturally I listened wisely. She said to focus on verbal, since most people can do well on quant, it's easier to get a high score on verbal. She also said to use MGMAT materials and OG like it's the Bible.

Materials:
- OG 12th, OG Quant, OG Verbal
- All 8 MGMAT Guides
- GMATPrep CAT's and MGMAT CAT's
- Minimal SC questions from this forum
- Forum flashcards

My attack was based around learning first, then honing. I powered through all 8 MGMAT guides, writing down summaries in a composition book that I would use as my review sheet later on. M-F, I would do the MGMAT routine, Saturday was my CAT day and Sunday was my CAT review day. This was a process I learned from some people on this forum.. I read way too many debriefs so I can't pin down who it was, but it might have been the Sun Tzu art of war guy . After 4 weeks I was basically through them, and started practicing 10 questions of each type (PS, DS, SC, RC, and CR) a day from OG.

CAT Scores:
MGMAT 1 680
MGMAT 2 720
MGMAT 3 730
MGMAT 4 720
GMATPrep 1 740
MGMAT 5 770
MGMAT 6 780
GMATPrep 2 760
GMATPrep 1 (revisited 770)
Actual GMAT: 770

Right around MGMAT4 was when I finished going through the guides. Honestly, I didnt get much out of the SC guide as was touted on this forum, but the flashcards that are available free on this site were the main source of my SC prep. I think after hours and hours of practice, I finally got the hang of the GMAT question style and was able to get at the roots of the questions rather quickly.

Test Day
I didnt get nearly as much sleep the night before as I would have liked, but regardless I woke up feeling ready (my test was at 11am). I used the AWA template for the Argument question, and wrote something like this out:

1. Intro
2. Restate Conclusion
3. Dissect Argument
4. Fix Weaknesses
5. Conclusions

Then I just typed into each subheading and deleted my headings, voila! Essay done. The personal opinion one, I just started writing.

Quant.. I finished with 25 minutes remaining. I have NO idea why, but for some reason the questions seemed relatively straight forward and I saw through most of the traps right away. I think it has to do with MGMAT quant being SO difficult, it makes GMAT feel relatively easy. I took an unscheduled break for 20 minutes, got some caffeine and stretched a bit.

Verbal, I jumped right in without having the 8min break (since I used quite a bit of time).. and verbal was a blur. All I remember was the last question - right after my brain registered the right answer, my heart began pumping at a zillion times per minute as I filled out the UTTERLY REDUNDANT survey section (GMAT, worst placement ever. Suspense can kill a man!) and got my score.

Feel free to ask questions, hope this helps. In the end, honestly: practice is KING. When nerves or anything get to you during the test, resort to what you did during practice, and have confidence. Thanks!
-Rich

Congratulation! My only question is, if you get into Cal, which team are you going to cheer for when Cal plays UCLA?

Congrats.. Excellent score.

great score! congrats. how did you prepare for Quant and Verbal. What study plan do you suggest to do well on both sections?

uwhusky wrote:Congratulation! My only question is, if you get into Cal, which team are you going to cheer for when Cal plays UCLA?

Unfortunately for Cal, I'm a diehard Bruin , although should I get into Cal, which team to root for would be the least of my worries!

skins81 wrote:great score! congrats. how did you prepare for Quant and Verbal. What study plan do you suggest to do well on both sections?

High Level Overview:

Quant & Verbal
Reading through the MGMAT guides - writing down anything good for memorization and review later on
Doing 10 of each problem type from OG books, reviewing mistakes as is normal on these forums.

Hi richwang...

Congratulations!! An amazing score

Can you please describe your verbal preparation ?

Thanks!

Congrats!!Amazing score..

namita09 wrote:Hi richwang...

Congratulations!! An amazing score

Can you please describe your verbal preparation ?

Thanks!

Hi namita:
Verbal: Like I mentioned, I literally read every page of the MGMAT guides for CR, RC and SC. the RC guide wasn't too helpful, and the SC guide wasn't great either. I've heard good things about the Powerscore CR and SC Bibles, so check those out if you need more help. Other than that, this forum has great advice and practice q's in the Verbal Forum. I tried to be consistent with my readings of the Economist, but it wasn't that consistent either

Thanks everyone for the kind words.. I'm confident that with hard work, each of us can achieve this and better. Hang in there, the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight! Ironically, I feel restless after having nothing to study after 3 months of prep ...

Congrats for your score and thanks for your debrief.

Could you please tell us what your success rate on OG 12 were? SC 80%, CR 90% etc...?

Hi. your strategy for the AWA seems to be the easiest i av read so far. could u please send me a copy of the template you used. Could u also give me some advice for sentence correction. MY test is on Tuesday.

must82 wrote:Congrats for your score and thanks for your debrief.

Could you please tell us what your success rate on OG 12 were? SC 80%, CR 90% etc...?

You're welcome.. hmm.. success rates.

SC: around 90% for the first half, probably 85% for the latter half.
RC: around 95%
CR: around 90% first half, probably 75-80% second half (my bane..)

PS: 95%
DS: 90%

More than hit rate, I think the emphasis in my preparation was in learning strategies to spot traps and loopholes. For example, when a SC question would try to bait me to pick up a small flaw to emphasize concision or original meaning (hint: grammar rules >> stylistic preference!) or when a DS question would try to get me to say C when really B is sufficient.

femiGiwa wrote:Hi. your strategy for the AWA seems to be the easiest i av read so far. could u please send me a copy of the template you used. Could u also give me some advice for sentence correction. MY test is on Tuesday.

Sure.. I used https://www.beatthegmat.com/argument-ess ... 38032.html loosely, but after CAT practices I whittled my template down to that. A little more about my own AWA template..

Example: "[Premise 1] [Premise 2] [Therefore, conclusion] ". Evaluate argument...

I would write
1. Introduction
2. Restate argument. I would go through each premise and then conclusion, using different words to show that I understood the message and what the underlying assumptions tying the premises together were.
3. "Although the author makes good points, there are flaws in his premises and assumptions that we must address." Go into Premise 1, and offer alternative reasons why this premise could be false. Suggest a lack of evidence in particular. Do this for Premise 2, as well as any assumptions in between these and the conclusion.
4. "If the author were to insert some more evidence, the logic gaps in the premises and assumptions could be reduced to improve the overal effect of the argument." Introduce some sources of new evidence that can plug logic gaps, etc.
5. In conclusion, blahblahblah. Restate briefly the premises and their flaws, conclude with how you viewed the statement (Normally I end with "Although the author makes some convincing points, the flaws in the premises and underlying assumptions render us unable to accept his argument as valid." <- taken square from the above URL )

Hope this helps... good luck!

richwang wrote:
More than hit rate, I think the emphasis in my preparation was in learning strategies to spot traps and loopholes. For example, when a SC question would try to bait me to pick up a small flaw to emphasize concision or original meaning (hint: grammar rules >> stylistic preference!) or when a DS question would try to get me to say C when really B is sufficient.

One of the best advices.

Hello,

Congratulations on your great score. I am wondering, how did you
go about the study guides? Did you mix them up (so many pages
of each a day), or just focus on one study guide until you completed it?
Also, how far were you into the study guides during your first test?

Best regards and thanks for providing your strategy!