I just Beat The GMAT!

I've been a silent observer on here for about a month, but I figured since I took the GMAT yesterday I would post my story. Hopefully some people find it helpful.

First off, I was in an interesting situation. I have always been a good test taker, but I have NEVER put in a decent effort in school. I did take algebra, geometry, trig, and AP Stats in high school and did pass the AP Stat exam, but my level of committment was always very poor. So when I started looking at GMAT problems I realized my basic math skills were awful. I didn't know how to factor properly, and had no clue what the rules were for exponents or radicals. I had even forgotten how to add 2 equations together to get rid of 1 variable in algebra. This was all stuff I did in high school, but I'm 24 now and did very little math in college, so i forgot it all. So I decided to take a different approach.

I noticed using the official gmat guide was not helping. I could understand how every problem was done, but doing 1 exponent problem, and then doing 10 problems that didn't involve exponents was worthless. Anything I had learned in that first problem I had forgotten by the time I saw the next exponent question. This is when I decided to go back to the basics. I bought an algebra and a geometry book from amazon. (Like old school, high school text books). I read each one cover to cover, and after that my skills were sufficient for the gmat. I found this very helpful. The repitition of doing each time of problem 10-20 times really made sure I learned everything, and then when I saw it is problems going forward it was easy for me.

None of the verbal stuff I really studied for. RC I was good at because I read a lot, and for some reason always can understand what i'm reading. Sometimes the inference questions though on the manhattan gmat cats tripped me up, but 90% of those problems I got correct. CR also just came naturally to me. If you just sit down, read each problem very carefully, and really think about what is being said, these questions because very unambigious, and really not much studying is needed. Sentence correction...forget it, I was awful at it. Luckily i'm a native english speaker, but I still have no clue what a subordinate clause is, couldn't point out the adjectives in a sentence, and the only thing I can tell is parallel are the hairs on the back of my neck when a setence correction problem gets thrown at me.

I did buy the manhattan gmat sentence correction book and went through a few chapters, but there were practically no examples, and you if didn't already have a strong grammar foundation, it was worthless. So i never really looked at it, and took virtually nothing from it.

In a nuthsell, how I studied.(in chronological order)
Read an algebra book
Read a Geometry book
Did all the PS and DS problems in the official gmat guide.
Attempted the last 50 SC problems in the official guide trying to pick up any patterns.

Took 1 mba.com Practice exam (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT1 (650)
Manhattan gmat CAT2 (700)
Manhattan gmat CAT3 (670)
Manhattan gmat CAT4 (680)
Manhattan gmat CAT5 (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT6 (710)
MBA.com practice exam 2 (660) (2 days before actual exam)

After each exam I went over every math problem I got incorrect, and read the explanation on how to do it. Verbal section I never went over.

Last thing I did was the night before the exam, I looked over the AWA section in the back of the offical gmat guide. Read the picking the side essay, and then read the argument essay and went to bed.

This is where it gets interesting...exam day....

So I sit down and start my first essay. I write an excellent essay citing examples, defending my position, and in the same format the offical gmat guide uses. Finish the first essay with 3 mintues to spare. I was relieved, because I never practiced writing an essay and it came naturally. Second essay questions pops up and i'm all ready to analyzt an arugment....ohh @#$@#[email protected] two is asking me to pick a side on something and defent it. My firt essay I was supposed to analyze the argument, and the second essay I was supposed to pick a side. The offical gmat guide had the pick a side essay first, and the analysis of an argument second, so I figured the actual exam was setup that way as well. So I deff. didn't answer what they were asking in the first essay and I knew it. It took me about 10 minutes to come to that conclusion so I spent the last 20 writing my essay picking a side. Still pulled of at least a solid 5, but who knows what i will score on the first 1. I did point out a lot of holes in the argument, but instead of saying "The argument is flawed because it negletics to account for ********** " I wrote things like "I don't agree with the companies conclusion because other companies have done things differently, and have been sucessful". So i kind of pointed out holes in the argument but indirectly, should be interesting to see how that is graded...that is one thing im reallly pissed about. I was nervous going in there, and just panicked, was worried about time, didn't read the directions fully, and wrote an irrellevant essay. So that's my advice on that....

The actual exam. Math was 10 times easier than anything I saw on manhattan gmat. Verbal section the sentence correction problems were surpisingly easy, but the CR and RC were hard. Usually I can pick out the best answers easily, but these I could narrow it down to 1 or 2 answers, but it was never 100% clear. But I got through everything.

Quant 48 Verbal 40 Overall 710. AWA...waiting for scores, but not optimistic.

I'm not taking the exam again, so hopefully I get lucky and get a 3 and a 5 on the essays and still pull off a 4 average. Also, lets hope grad schools don't care at all about the AWA scores.

But that's my ridiculous GMAT story. Feel free to comment, and I hope you find this post at least entertaining if not useful.

Hey! The only 2 things I disagree with in your post are the analysis of MGMAT SC and the tag of ridiculous.

Your post was in no way ridiculous. In fact it is important for the forum to have different kind of posts rather than the same I format we see all the time. Hats off to you mate.

Actually MGMAT SC is good at indicating what GMAT tests. There are some places where our naked ear would tell us something, but the book will open up on what GMAT expects. But then since you found the SC questions easy, you surely must have a point!

Good score! Good to note that you had a positive difference between GMAT Prep 2 test and actual GMAT.

A sore point about your first essay but then glad to see you realized before the second one and did not let it affect your test performance.

vineeshp wrote:Hey! The only 2 things I disagree with in your post are the analysis of MGMAT SC and the tag of ridiculous.

Your post was in no way ridiculous. In fact it is important for the forum to have different kind of posts rather than the same I format we see all the time. Hats off to you mate.

Actually MGMAT SC is good at indicating what GMAT tests. There are some places where our naked ear would tell us something, but the book will open up on what GMAT expects. But then since you found the SC questions easy, you surely must have a point!

Good score! Good to note that you had a positive difference between GMAT Prep 2 test and actual GMAT.

A sore point about your first essay but then glad to see you realized before the second one and did not let it affect your test performance.

I probably should have worded the mgmat SC paragraph differently.

"The MGMAT SC book was worthless to ME. I didn't have the basic skills needed to understand the book, and due to the lack of actual examples (My offical gmat guide was 11, and the book referenced gmat guide 12), I was unable to take much away from it. I can pretty much gurantee that if you understand everything in that book, you will ace the sentence correction portion of the gmat, but that book's material was just WAYYY beyound what I was capable of comprehending with my current grammar skills. So for people with a strong grammar background who want to push their scores to the next level, deff. give it a shot, but for people who have weak grammar skills, I would start with a more elementry book first. I did find the 6 free mgmat CAT exams very helpful, and they came with the book)

great job!

Just curious... what kind of splits were you getting on your practice tests?

redmark wrote:great job!

Just curious... what kind of splits were you getting on your practice tests?

Math was always between 42-46 on the MGMAT exams. The majority were 42-44.

My verbal ranged from around 37-41. (Usually I would get about 13 questions wrong on the verbal section, 10 of which were sentence correction). Setence correction on the actual gmat was easier, CR and RC were more difficult for me.

I strongly believe that if you can easily do the math on the MGMAT cat exams, the gmat quant section will be simple. The questions on the actual gmat seemed a lot less complicated than the cat questions. I struggled with a lot of the MGMAT quant sections, but just practicing at that harder level, and going over every incorrect answer was benefitial.

Also, don't get discouraged by a low mba.com prep exam. I took the second one 2 days before the test, tried very hard on it, and scored a 660. I then read all over the internet that the mba.com exam was the best indicator of your actual score. So I thought for sure I was going to be in the 640-680 range. I was very surprised when I saw the 710 on exam day.

Ah ya now I agree with you

I was just going through other posts in the forum. Your post really is a refreshing change!

Congrats! Be sure to post what you scored in AWA. Just wanna know how much we can afford to screw up AWA.

Congrats mate!!
i still cant stop laughing afetr reading this:

the only thing I can tell is parallel are the hairs on the back of my neck when a setence correction problem gets thrown at me.

kudos to you man.. your post is quite unique and refreshing way of telling your part of the story..

@DCman :

None of the verbal stuff I really studied for. RC I was good at because I read a lot, and for some reason always can understand what i'm reading.

Thanks for great debriefing. What is your general reading style, and what reading style did you follow in the exam? Your approach might be helpful for some may be.

GMATMadeEasy wrote:@DCman :

None of the verbal stuff I really studied for. RC I was good at because I read a lot, and for some reason always can understand what i'm reading.

Thanks for great debriefing. What is your general reading style, and what reading style did you follow in the exam? Your approach might be helpful for some may be.

First, I read the entire passage once through. I read it VERY carefully. I made sure to understand every setence of it. If I didn't understand what was being said, I re-read the sentence before continuing. This takes some time, but by the end of each passage I had a very good understanding of exactly what it was about and all the arguments it made. Then I would read the question, and most times the answers were very apparent. If they weren't, or the question refereced a particular setence or paragraph, I would quickly re-read that sentence/paragraph. Reading it the second time was always very quick since I understood it well the first time. Then I would just go back and answer the question after I found what I needed.

I REALLY spent a good amount of time on the RC and CR questions. The SC problems never took me more than a minute, so I had extra time to devote to them. whenever I finished the verbal section with 10 minutes to go on the practice tests I scored poorly, if I used the entire time I was always around the 90% percentile. So my advice would be, don't rush, make sure to understand everything even if you need to read the question or parts of the passage multiple times, and just pick the answer that is most logical.

Hope that helps. And by no means don't take my way to be the best. That is just how I did it, and it worked for me personally.

vineeshp wrote:Ah ya now I agree with you

I was just going through other posts in the forum. Your post really is a refreshing change!

Congrats! Be sure to post what you scored in AWA. Just wanna know how much we can afford to screw up AWA.

Yeah, that should be interesting lol....I'll deff. post it once I get it. Lets hope whatever schools I apply to don't care about it.

Well done, mate. Good score and great effort preparing. Just point out in your optional application essay your mistake on the GMAT; they will even have access to the essay and notice that you wrote a great assay.
Best of luck and no worries!

Thank you. Unique way od story telling. Feel motivated.

JRavachi wrote:Well done, mate. Good score and great effort preparing. Just point out in your optional application essay your mistake on the GMAT; they will even have access to the essay and notice that you wrote a great assay.
Best of luck and no worries!

Actually, this is kind of funny, but I got my AWA score today...

...5.5/6.

Makes me wonder how they grade the essays. I feel like if you write a lot, make lots of good points, but don't answer the question directly, you can still do well. I know for a fact my first essay didn't even answer what was being asked of me. Perhaps you can infer flaws in the argument based on what I wrote, but in no way did I directly state what the flaws in the argument were. But it looks like I won't need an essay explaining my low AWA score. I guess I can use that optional essay to explain my low GPA instead lol.

DCman401 wrote:

JRavachi wrote:Well done, mate. Good score and great effort preparing. Just point out in your optional application essay your mistake on the GMAT; they will even have access to the essay and notice that you wrote a great assay.
Best of luck and no worries!

Actually, this is kind of funny, but I got my AWA score today...

...5.5/6.

Makes me wonder how they grade the essays. I feel like if you write a lot, make lots of good points, but don't answer the question directly, you can still do well. I know for a fact my first essay didn't even answer what was being asked of me. Perhaps you can infer flaws in the argument based on what I wrote, but in no way did I directly state what the flaws in the argument were. But it looks like I won't need an essay explaining my low AWA score. I guess I can use that optional essay to explain my low GPA instead lol.

LOL. So you screwed up an essay and got a 5.5. Best insight of the day! I am not spending a minute preparing for AWA now.