Thank you! - 750 (Q - 51, V - 40), AWA - 6.0

Find out how Beat The GMAT members tackled GMAT test prep with positive results. Get tips on GMAT test prep materials, online courses, study tips, and more.
This topic has expert replies
Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:17 pm
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:1 members
GMAT Score:750

Thank you! - 750 (Q - 51, V - 40), AWA - 6.0

by pandeyba » Wed May 18, 2011 11:10 pm
Dear Friends,

Before you read any further, I must apologize for this long post about my GMAT experience. In the past, I went through several such posts from others and learnt a lot from them so I felt I should also give a detailed account of my experience. For those who go through this post entirely, I hope it will help you in some way.

I recently gave GMAT (on 16th May 2011) and got a score of 750 (Q-51, V-40). In few words, I must admit that I am quite relieved and happy with this score. About AWA, I have written the argument essay well but I kind of got into a block while attempting the issue essay. I am sincerely hoping that the evaluators will not be very strict on those essays and I will have a compatible score.
I wanted to thank all the active and passive contributors to this website for all the practice, help, guidance that I got from their articles. This website is among the few well-managed sites for GMAT aspirants and it was always a pleasure to go through the content here. Though I have not contributed much to the discussions here but I have used most of the verbal forums for practice and analysis of answers.

About myself:
I am 31, male, Indian, and a software professional. I have a total of 9 years of experience in both service and product based companies. I have worked in software development for 4 yrs, then in SAP consulting for 4 yrs and now in pre-sales since last 1 year. I have a good educational background and have also participated in many extra-curricular activities at school, college and workplace. This GMAT attempt was not my first. I had given it a try in May 2007 and had scored 680 then. However, at that point, my profile was not this diverse and also I felt my score was not sufficient for my experience. Let's hope this time I have taken care of at least the score part.

About my exam experience:
I gave the exam at NTTF Bangalore center. This center is located in an engineering college (NTTF Bangalore) on the Hosur Road, next to the toll gate near Infosys office in E-City. All the arrangements at this center are good except for the rest room, which is some distance away from the center and is also shared by the college staff members. Other things such as parking space, computer and mouse, chair, temperature control, center staff are all very good. Overall, I was definitely satisfied with the center.

About my preparation (I will first start with what I did 4 years back and then what I did this time):
In the past I have also given CAT exams for admission to Indian MBA schools and had scored around 95 percentile. My last GMAT attempt was within 6 months of this CAT attempt. CAT, as many of you might know, is a entrance exam for admission to premiere Indian business schools. It covers the mathematics part very well and GMAT Quant is only a subset of what is asked in CAT. Based on this, I knew that my Quant part is mostly taken care so I mostly concentrated on the verbal bit. However, one of the biggest mistakes I made last time was that I was not following any standard GMAT material and most of my practice was based on material such as 1000 SC/CR/RC. These sources could be good for practice but they cannot be the only material one must refer to. I did follow the OG but only in parts and some other online versions of standard content (I guess I was trying to save on the cost). In addition, I also did not take too many standard practice tests and even in the some I took, I skipped the AWA part during the exams. Last and the most serious mistake I made was I never analyzed my exams in detail. So basically, I was doing a lot of practice but not in a structured manner. Lack of full 4 hour practice during practice exams was another very big reason for my failure in the previous attempt as my mind almost got listless in the verbal section during the exam whereas I was doing the same verbal section quite well in my practice exams.

With the lessons from my previous attempt, it was easy for me to work towards the exam this time. I gave myself 4 months of time to prepare (I got serious only in the last 8 weeks). First things first, I contacted some friends and seniors who have given GMAT in the recent past and understood from them how GMAT has changed recently, if at all. I also checked with them what standard material they referred to. I had also referred to this website, and some other websites, to read the review of some of the material I planned to buy. Based on all this, I purchased the latest edition of the following - OG, Princeton Review, Manhattan SC Guide. With these I also got 4 PR exams, 6 MGMAT exams and 2 GMATPrep exams. I have also referred to 63 RC passages, ETS paper tests, 1000 SC & 1000 CR. Like last time, I mostly worked on Verbal this time as well. I mostly followed the CR & RC strategy from PR and SC from MGMAT. For Quant, I had no strategy as I was mostly able to solve all the problems from all the sources. Rest all of my preparation was similar to what everyone else does - practice questions, refer to websites and forums to understand and analyze, etc.

My scores in the practice exams are as follows (this time I attempted AWA very seriously in all the exams):
PR 1 - 620, PR2 - 680, MGMAT1 - 620, MGMAT2 - 690, MGMAT3 - 640, MGMAT4 - 750, PR3 - 640, MGMAT5 - 720, GMATPrep1 - 730, PR4 - 680, MGMAT6 - 710, GMATPrep2 - 710
In all these exams, Quant score was either 50 or 51. Verbal scores were in the range of 30 to 42. AWA I did not get evaluated.

About the actual exam:
There are only two things to mention.
1 - I was not used to typing on the desktop keyboard. I have been using laptop since last 6 years.
2- I tried to eat an energy bar in a great hurry during the 8 minutes break (between Quant & Verbal sections) and did not drink enough water as I wanted to avoid visiting the rest room. This felt like a good idea but it caused me a bad headache and I gave the verbal section with a nasty headache. Anyways, I am glad the exam went well.

Few suggestions from my side:
1: Take complete 4 hour exam and analyze each exam in complete detail
2: Refer to standard material for building any strategy. Also, refer the standard material to understand the true nature of GMAT questions.
3: Identify your weakness and practice a lot.
4: Don't get disheartened by the score of practice tests. Use the tests to identify your mistakes.
5: Don't worry about colleges, admissions etc during GMAT preparation. Keep them for later.
6: A failed GMAT attempt is not the end of the world. One can always come back strong. :-)

Thanks and regards,
Sandeep
Last edited by pandeyba on Thu May 19, 2011 5:05 am, edited 3 times in total.

Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2011 7:57 am
Location: bangalore

by sandeep1306 » Wed May 18, 2011 11:51 pm
Hey Sandeep,

congratulations for an awesome score.If possible,Can you please share your study plan as well?


Thanks
Sandeep

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:17 pm
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:1 members
GMAT Score:750

by pandeyba » Thu May 19, 2011 1:32 am
Hi Sandeep,

Thanks a lot for your wishes. Looks like this is going to be a equally long post.

I started studying 4 months back in which first two months I was not so serious and in the last 2 months I had to pick up the speed. I got lucky that there was little work at office during this time. This helped me a lot because office was usually the time when my brain took rest :-). I could also spend some time to read newspapers and editorials.

In the first two months, I mostly concentrated on reading the theory/strategies from all the sources I could lay my hands on. This was for both verbal and quant. In addition to reading the strategies I also worked on improving my accuracy without timing the questions. I consciously stuck to reading the standard material (mostly OG/PR) so that I could understand what qualifies as a valid GMAT question and what does not. There was no specific plan that I had for these two months but everyday I would pick up two sections from verbal and work on 15 questions each from both the sections. I would work on Quant problems whenever I was not in a mood to study seriously or when I wanted to do something between two verbal sections.

In the nest two months, I rarely went back to reading theory and mostly concentrated on solving a lot of questions. I had already read the theory enough number of times. I continued on the same plan of picking 2 verbal sections every day and doing Quant in between. Somewhere after 2 weeks, I started timing my questions. This happened after I took first two MGMAT exams and realised that my scores were poor because I was not completing the sections entirely even though I knew the answers to every question. One thing that happened to me all these 4 months and I guess it happens to many is that my accuracy in different sections kept going up and down. When I was doing good at CR, SC would start going bad and when I improved my SC, RC would. The best way to counter was to keep preparing all the sections on a daily basis and not worry too much about the trend. Around 2.5 weeks before the exam, I started working on all the three verbal sections everyday in a timed environment. Last week before exam, I went through the theory for the last time and solved the problems (all verbal and difficult Quant questions) from OG/PR once more.

In addition to this I took one exam every weekend in an exact GMAT environment. I wrote AWA essays, timed the sections and the breaks and I even took the exam at the same time when I would take the actual GMAT (1 to 5 PM). This helped me in getting used to sitting and concentrating for 4 hours and eventually when I went for the main exam, it almost felt like one of the practice exams. Rest of the weekend I would analyse the exam questions. I am poor at analysing the trend and more often than not it was confusing me so I didn't analyze the results much wrt trends and all that. In MGMAT, one advantage is that they give the level of question so only thing I used to check was what is the accuracy in each level.

This is more or less how I prepared. Some additional material I refered was
Aristotle free CR sample questions
198 700-800 Quant questions
63 RC passages (a compilation from 1000 RC)

Hope this information is of some help to you.

Best regards,
Sandeep

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2010 3:21 pm
Thanked: 1 times

by skbjunior » Fri May 20, 2011 8:12 am
Congratulations pandeyba! Awesome score, esp. Q51 wow. Good luck for your applications.

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2011 4:53 pm

by nonpareil » Sat May 21, 2011 4:42 am
Congratulations Sandeep.
All the best for your admissions applications!!

Legendary Member
Posts: 768
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2009 3:46 am
Thanked: 21 times
Followed by:7 members

by GMATMadeEasy » Sat May 21, 2011 5:25 am
Sandeep, this is a great post and gives a great insight from strategy perspective.

and Congrats for a wonderful score.

What was your strategy about RC ? Were there any thing that you recommend in particular ? And the last one, I have seen this 63 RC compilation from 1000RC , which is not a recommended source. But how about the quality of these 63 RCs you have mentioned ?

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2011 2:40 am

by careers.asd » Sat May 21, 2011 8:36 am
pandeyba wrote:Hi Sandeep,

Thanks a lot for your wishes. Looks like this is going to be a equally long post.

I started studying 4 months back in which first two months I was not so serious and in the last 2 months I had to pick up the speed. I got lucky that there was little work at office during this time. This helped me a lot because office was usually the time when my brain took rest :-). I could also spend some time to read newspapers and editorials.

In the first two months, I mostly concentrated on reading the theory/strategies from all the sources I could lay my hands on. This was for both verbal and quant. In addition to reading the strategies I also worked on improving my accuracy without timing the questions. I consciously stuck to reading the standard material (mostly OG/PR) so that I could understand what qualifies as a valid GMAT question and what does not. There was no specific plan that I had for these two months but everyday I would pick up two sections from verbal and work on 15 questions each from both the sections. I would work on Quant problems whenever I was not in a mood to study seriously or when I wanted to do something between two verbal sections.

In the nest two months, I rarely went back to reading theory and mostly concentrated on solving a lot of questions. I had already read the theory enough number of times. I continued on the same plan of picking 2 verbal sections every day and doing Quant in between. Somewhere after 2 weeks, I started timing my questions. This happened after I took first two MGMAT exams and realised that my scores were poor because I was not completing the sections entirely even though I knew the answers to every question. One thing that happened to me all these 4 months and I guess it happens to many is that my accuracy in different sections kept going up and down. When I was doing good at CR, SC would start going bad and when I improved my SC, RC would. The best way to counter was to keep preparing all the sections on a daily basis and not worry too much about the trend. Around 2.5 weeks before the exam, I started working on all the three verbal sections everyday in a timed environment. Last week before exam, I went through the theory for the last time and solved the problems (all verbal and difficult Quant questions) from OG/PR once more.

In addition to this I took one exam every weekend in an exact GMAT environment. I wrote AWA essays, timed the sections and the breaks and I even took the exam at the same time when I would take the actual GMAT (1 to 5 PM). This helped me in getting used to sitting and concentrating for 4 hours and eventually when I went for the main exam, it almost felt like one of the practice exams. Rest of the weekend I would analyse the exam questions. I am poor at analysing the trend and more often than not it was confusing me so I didn't analyze the results much wrt trends and all that. In MGMAT, one advantage is that they give the level of question so only thing I used to check was what is the accuracy in each level.

This is more or less how I prepared. Some additional material I refered was
Aristotle free CR sample questions
198 700-800 Quant questions
63 RC passages (a compilation from 1000 RC)

Hope this information is of some help to you.

Best regards,
Sandeep
How close 198 700-800 Quant questions is with actual quant/DS q's, pls share

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:17 pm
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:1 members
GMAT Score:750

by pandeyba » Mon May 23, 2011 5:41 am
Hi GMATmadeeasy,

Saw your message regarding RC 63 only today. I was on a weekend break from anything that is related to MBA :-)

To answer to your question, I found the RC 63 passages worth a practice. The passages are definitely longer than what I got in the main exam but are of good difficulty level. Around 3 weeks before the final exam, my RC accuracy suddenly took a deep dive and I was desperately looking for any practice material. I tried to buy some standard content but none of them could be shipped to me within 2 weeks so I had to resort to RC 63. One of the biggest minus of this source is that there are too many questions per passage so it is very difficult to practice the questions in a timed environment. I used this source only to improve my accuracy and it definitely helped me in doing that.

If you are planning to use this source for practice, I would suggest that you google the answers to the questions instead of directly refering the material.

My strategy for RC was infact a borrowed one - go through the passage as quickly as possible, take 1-2 word notes of each passage (I took the notes only in the beginning and didnt do this later) and then start answering the questions. One thing I noticed in the main exam was that every passage had a 'primary purpose' question and to answer this question one has to understand the overall flow. Best way to understand that is to take note of the keywords.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Sandeep
Last edited by pandeyba on Mon May 23, 2011 6:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:17 pm
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:1 members
GMAT Score:750

by pandeyba » Mon May 23, 2011 5:53 am
Hi Careers.asd,

If you are targetting very high scores in Quant then you have to practice a lot of 700-800 level questions. In the standard material that I refered, I found very few questions of this level. 198 questions are good for 700-800 level practice. In Quant, it is more important to practice lot of questions irrespective of whether they are representative or not. The idea is to practice the concept and this source definitely helps to do that.

Only one suggestion I would make is not to refer to answers directly from the material and instead search for answers on the Google.

Best regards,
Sandeep

Legendary Member
Posts: 549
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2010 7:00 am
Thanked: 16 times
Followed by:3 members

by ssgmatter » Mon May 23, 2011 7:27 am
Congrautlations Man!!

Any idea about the Knewton prep course???

Please advise

Best-
Best-
Amit

Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 87
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 11:18 am
Thanked: 6 times

by Victory_GMAT » Mon May 23, 2011 6:36 pm
pandeyba wrote:Dear Friends,

Before you read any further, I must apologize for this long post about my GMAT experience. In the past, I went through several such posts from others and learnt a lot from them so I felt I should also give a detailed account of my experience. For those who go through this post entirely, I hope it will help you in some way.

I recently gave GMAT (on 16th May 2011) and got a score of 750 (Q-51, V-40). In few words, I must admit that I am quite relieved and happy with this score. About AWA, I have written the argument essay well but I kind of got into a block while attempting the issue essay. I am sincerely hoping that the evaluators will not be very strict on those essays and I will have a compatible score.
I wanted to thank all the active and passive contributors to this website for all the practice, help, guidance that I got from their articles. This website is among the few well-managed sites for GMAT aspirants and it was always a pleasure to go through the content here. Though I have not contributed much to the discussions here but I have used most of the verbal forums for practice and analysis of answers.

About myself:
I am 31, male, Indian, and a software professional. I have a total of 9 years of experience in both service and product based companies. I have worked in software development for 4 yrs, then in SAP consulting for 4 yrs and now in pre-sales since last 1 year. I have a good educational background and have also participated in many extra-curricular activities at school, college and workplace. This GMAT attempt was not my first. I had given it a try in May 2007 and had scored 680 then. However, at that point, my profile was not this diverse and also I felt my score was not sufficient for my experience. Let's hope this time I have taken care of at least the score part.

About my exam experience:
I gave the exam at NTTF Bangalore center. This center is located in an engineering college (NTTF Bangalore) on the Hosur Road, next to the toll gate near Infosys office in E-City. All the arrangements at this center are good except for the rest room, which is some distance away from the center and is also shared by the college staff members. Other things such as parking space, computer and mouse, chair, temperature control, center staff are all very good. Overall, I was definitely satisfied with the center.

About my preparation (I will first start with what I did 4 years back and then what I did this time):
In the past I have also given CAT exams for admission to Indian MBA schools and had scored around 95 percentile. My last GMAT attempt was within 6 months of this CAT attempt. CAT, as many of you might know, is a entrance exam for admission to premiere Indian business schools. It covers the mathematics part very well and GMAT Quant is only a subset of what is asked in CAT. Based on this, I knew that my Quant part is mostly taken care so I mostly concentrated on the verbal bit. However, one of the biggest mistakes I made last time was that I was not following any standard GMAT material and most of my practice was based on material such as 1000 SC/CR/RC. These sources could be good for practice but they cannot be the only material one must refer to. I did follow the OG but only in parts and some other online versions of standard content (I guess I was trying to save on the cost). In addition, I also did not take too many standard practice tests and even in the some I took, I skipped the AWA part during the exams. Last and the most serious mistake I made was I never analyzed my exams in detail. So basically, I was doing a lot of practice but not in a structured manner. Lack of full 4 hour practice during practice exams was another very big reason for my failure in the previous attempt as my mind almost got listless in the verbal section during the exam whereas I was doing the same verbal section quite well in my practice exams.

With the lessons from my previous attempt, it was easy for me to work towards the exam this time. I gave myself 4 months of time to prepare (I got serious only in the last 8 weeks). First things first, I contacted some friends and seniors who have given GMAT in the recent past and understood from them how GMAT has changed recently, if at all. I also checked with them what standard material they referred to. I had also referred to this website, and some other websites, to read the review of some of the material I planned to buy. Based on all this, I purchased the latest edition of the following - OG, Princeton Review, Manhattan SC Guide. With these I also got 4 PR exams, 6 MGMAT exams and 2 GMATPrep exams. I have also referred to 63 RC passages, ETS paper tests, 1000 SC & 1000 CR. Like last time, I mostly worked on Verbal this time as well. I mostly followed the CR & RC strategy from PR and SC from MGMAT. For Quant, I had no strategy as I was mostly able to solve all the problems from all the sources. Rest all of my preparation was similar to what everyone else does - practice questions, refer to websites and forums to understand and analyze, etc.

My scores in the practice exams are as follows (this time I attempted AWA very seriously in all the exams):
PR 1 - 620, PR2 - 680, MGMAT1 - 620, MGMAT2 - 690, MGMAT3 - 640, MGMAT4 - 750, PR3 - 640, MGMAT5 - 720, GMATPrep1 - 730, PR4 - 680, MGMAT6 - 710, GMATPrep2 - 710
In all these exams, Quant score was either 50 or 51. Verbal scores were in the range of 30 to 42. AWA I did not get evaluated.

About the actual exam:
There are only two things to mention.
1 - I was not used to typing on the desktop keyboard. I have been using laptop since last 6 years.
2- I tried to eat an energy bar in a great hurry during the 8 minutes break (between Quant & Verbal sections) and did not drink enough water as I wanted to avoid visiting the rest room. This felt like a good idea but it caused me a bad headache and I gave the verbal section with a nasty headache. Anyways, I am glad the exam went well.

Few suggestions from my side:
1: Take complete 4 hour exam and analyze each exam in complete detail
2: Refer to standard material for building any strategy. Also, refer the standard material to understand the true nature of GMAT questions.
3: Identify your weakness and practice a lot.
4: Don't get disheartened by the score of practice tests. Use the tests to identify your mistakes.
5: Don't worry about colleges, admissions etc during GMAT preparation. Keep them for later.
6: A failed GMAT attempt is not the end of the world. One can always come back strong. :-)

Thanks and regards,
Sandeep
great congrats!!!! man you nailed it down!

Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:17 pm
Thanked: 6 times
Followed by:1 members
GMAT Score:750

by pandeyba » Mon May 23, 2011 10:07 pm
Hi Ssamatter,

I have not referred any Knewton material so I am not in a position to comment.

Best regards,
Sandeep

Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon May 23, 2011 10:07 pm

by tgkarthik » Mon May 23, 2011 10:11 pm
Hello Sandeep..
Congrats and gud luck for your applications!!
Cheers,
Karthik

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
Site Admin
Posts: 6773
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:30 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Thanked: 1249 times
Followed by:994 members

by beatthegmat » Tue May 24, 2011 9:49 am
Congrats! :)
Beat The GMAT | The MBA Social Network
Community Management Team

Research Top GMAT Prep Courses:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-prep-courses

Research The World's Top MBA Programs:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/school

User avatar
Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 94
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:51 pm
Thanked: 24 times
Followed by:7 members
GMAT Score:750

by havok » Tue May 24, 2011 10:06 am
Great score, good work!
Class of 2016 - Business School Candidate

Click here to see how I Beat The GMAT!