I just Beat The GMAT!

Hello everyone!!

I just gave my GMAT score and got a 730( Q50, V39) and had a sigh of relief. I was quite happy considering my aim was to get a score of 720+ and it seemed like a good improvement from 3 months back when I got a 630 on my first GMAT prep (Q47, V31). After a day of drinking at Oktoberfest and 40 hrs of procrastination, I thought that I would share my experience since I got a lot of help from you all. I am still not 100% sober so please excuse any blabbering!!

My Strategy: My aim was to get a score of 720+. My strategy was to maximize my score in Quant and improve my Verbal to the achieve my target score. After reading some posts on this forum, I realized that I would need a combined score of 88 to 89. Hence, I decided to aim for 50¬+ on Quant and 38+ on Verbal. I liked the fact that this put me right around 80 percentile on Verbal. Furthermore, my goal was to excel in CR and RC and ensure that I improved in SC enough to hit 38. As one of my best friends once said: Man proposes, god disposes; in the end I did much better on SC, and probably not as well on RC.

Quant: I am from a technical background so my quant is very strong. However, I brushed up number properties, P&C/Prob. and Geometry from MGMAT books. These books are quite comprehensive and cover all grounds. I found Grockit to be quite useful for Quant as well (I have the same user name on Grockit as well, in case some of you have seen me). They have a good repository of excellent questions with good explanations which I could just practice or practice. Grockit gave me the flexibility to choose the difficulty level and the topic that I want to practice. I would highly recommend it for quant practice.


Sentence Correction: Like everyone, I started out with the MGMAT SC bible. It is by far the most comprehensive resources on the planet for SC preparation. I found it to be a great starting point, however I could only improve my accuracy to 60% which was not good enough. I then tried e-GMAT, after it was recommended by some of the most active members on the forum. e-GMAT helped my improve my accuracy up to 85-95% within a few weeks. I found the course to be very detailed, thoroughly enjoyable and extremely practical. After going through their lessons, I found that I could apply the concepts much more clearly. This is one of the few resources that gives a very practical process to solve SC problems. It was also very helpful that I could ask Payal if I had any doubts, something that's not possible with a book. I would highly recommend it. In the end, my SC was probably the strongest in Verbal

Critical Reasoning: I spent a lot of time on CR since I my goal was to excel in this. I bought the MGMAT and PowerScore guide and read both of them thoroughly. Contrary to some of the other reviews, I found the MGMAT guide to be more practical than PowerScore for GMAT. While I liked the Powerscore Bible, I felt that it was too theoretical and more suited to LSAT. Reading it felt like reading a legal agreement at work, where one has to look at the nitty gritty details. The MGMAT book on the other hand had more OG like problems, better strategies and was easier to follow. About 20 days back I also took a 3 hr class with Rajat from eGMAT and found it to be very useful as well. It gave a final push to my CR accuracy. I also used Grockit for solving problems. Overall, I spent about 30% of my prep time on CR!!

Reading Comprehension: Nothing much here; used MGMAT + Grockit. This became a lot easier once I mastered SC and all the question types in CR. I would also recommend that you subscribe to the paper edition of Wall Street Journal and Economist. These resources have some excellent passages.


Mock tests: I used MGMAT + GMAT prep. As most people have mentioned, I found GMAT prep to be the most accurate predictor. I liked the MGMAT exams for the analysis capabilities. These exams were a great help in tracking and planning my improvement.

Score Stuck in Mocks: I had a strange experience in my mocks that I would like to share. While giving my mocks, my score steadily improved in July, but I reached a saturation point towards the end of August. My GMAT score in Mock tests was suck at 690-700 range, primarily due to lack of improvement in Verbal. What was surprising was that my accuracy, while practicing CR, SC individually was great, but it did not translate correspondingly to the Mock test. I mentioned this to folks at e-GMAT and Rajat suggested that the reason this may be happening is because my mind is not able to switch fast enough from CR to RC to SC in the verbal section. He told me that while attempting a single section our mind is well trained to think in a methodical manner so the accuracy is higher. To ensure a higher accuracy in the exam, one needs to follow a methodical process while solving the problems in the exam to ensure high accuracy. I did that and could immediately see my score jump up and accuracy improve by 15% or so.

BTG: I would like to thank Eric and the people on this forum for their help. I must say that you guys post some excellent questions and doubts. I have not seen any forum that posses such an active community of experts and participants. The people here on this forum provided some excellent questions and have helped me improve.

Special Thanks: I would like to reserve my special thanks to a few individuals:
1. Ron Purenwal: Ron, your explanations are world class and help us tremendously. I sincerely thank you for your details posts.
2. Stacey: I am a fan of your articles, for they are very useful. I loved your article on the difference between 700 and 760 level student. I hope that you continue posting on the forum.
3. eGMAT: Rajat and Payal, Thanks a lot for your help. I did not expect such personalized feedback from a test prep company. Your SC offering and testing strategies are extremely practical and top notch.
4. Rahul and GMATGuruNY: Many thanks for your awesome explanations on the Quant section. I cant thank you enough.
5. Most active members of the GMAT community: Thanks a lot for posting your awesome questions.

Well I can't write any more so bye for now!!


Wanted to update that I got offer from multiple colleges including scholarships.. I have decided to save some money and will go to UC Davis (they offered generous fellowship)

hi mason,
Thanks for the good post.i am having problem with the probability problems.I have learned the concepts but somehow i am not able to apply the concepts.I wanted to ask you whether are probability questions so important and do i need to give s much importance to them.

Hi Mason,
Congratulations on the great score!!

I couldn't agree more with :
'He told me that while attempting a single section our mind is well trained to think in a methodical manner so the accuracy is higher. To ensure a higher accuracy in the exam, one needs to follow a methodical process while solving the problems in the exam to ensure high accuracy. I did that and could immediately see my score jump up and accuracy improve by 15% or so'

I face the same problem while solving an entire Verbal section as against individual questions of one type.
This is deeply affecting my score. After one RC passage I feel the fatigue in my eyes and I struggle to concentrate on the next question.
It would be great if you could share your strategy to ensure accuracy.

@rima.mehta: I was in the same boat a month or so back before speaking to Rajat@e-gmat. He asked me to first improve my accuracy in RC and then worry about timing. He also told me how a having a standard process helps a lot for the same. In addition, he also recommended that I spend a lot of time revising questions that I get incorrect and write down the following:

1. A standard process for solving problems. My standard process for RC used strategies from the MGMAT book.
2. For questions that I answered incorrectly write down "Why did I do this question incorrectly?"
3. How would I approach f I were to face a similar question again?

It took me 2 painful days to do the above, but after concentrated effort on RC for a couple of days I felt that I had turned a corner on RC. The first day I did MGMAT problems while the second day I did passages from Grockit.

Writing down and doing this over and over again helped me improve my accuracy in RC. I already had the above in SC from e-GMAT.

@mrinal: I do remember atleast 1 question on probability. It was a mid level question nothing very difficult. I would recommend that you re-read the course material and solve problems right away. Make sure that you spend time analyzing the problems that you do incorrectly

great score
congrats

Thanks!! your posts and posts from others like reply2spg, arora007, gmatmachoman, pradeep kaushal.. etc helped.

wow first of all great score!!! was the quant similar to gmat prep?

wow first of all great score!!! was the quant similar to gmat prep?

Yes, quite similar, probably 10% more difficult.

Hi Mason,
Will definitely start keeping track of how I approached the question and what I did wrong.
Thank you so much

You are welcome Rima. I believe that that road to continuous improvement is Critical Review (of your mistakes). As long as one can do a good job at that and not repeat the same mistakes, it should be possible to score 700+..

to mason

how can u practice grockit quant questions???

Three steps!!

1. Login with your user id and password.
2. Click on Study --> Solo practice --> Specific skills.
3. Practice and enjoy.

Note you don't need a premium membership for this. Contact Grockit if you have questions. Ideally they should have had a video showing this.

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Update on 31st May:

BTG is all changed now.. Eric you are doing some great work. I see this as a completely different forum than the one in my times (was it just 6 months back) .. love the new home page.. am still getting used to the badge system..

Got into multiple colleges with generous offers.. again thanks to the help from everyone on this forum. Have decided to pursue UC Davis due to their generous scholarship

007.r.mason wrote:Hello everyone!!

..............................
Critical Reasoning: I spent a lot of time on CR since I my goal was to excel in this. I bought the MGMAT and PowerScore guide and read both of them thoroughly. Contrary to some of the other reviews, I found the MGMAT guide to be more practical than PowerScore for GMAT. While I liked the Powerscore Bible, I felt that it was too theoretical and more suited to LSAT. Reading it felt like reading a legal agreement at work, where one has to look at the nitty gritty details. The MGMAT book on the other hand had more OG like problems, better strategies and was easier to follow. About 20 days back I also took a 3 hr class with Rajat from eGMAT and found it to be very useful as well. It gave a final push to my CR accuracy. I also used Grockit for solving problems. Overall, I spent about 30% of my prep time on CR!!

Hi R.mason,

congratulations for a fab score!!may you get an admit in a college you want to get into!!

Since, you have used both power score CR bible and MGMAT CR guide, can you please elaborate the differences in the strategy.I am using power score CR bible but i find that their approach is too cumbersome and when faced with a time crunch, no one tends to remember the 15 step approach and how to identify the question type and all.Its way too methodical for a 2 minute question.

whats your opinion?


Thanks,
Sandeep

Sandeep,

The MGMAT CR book is a lot more to the point. It has a lot less (or in my case just enough) theory and is a lot faster to complete. Its easier to remember as well. Again, this book was a perfect fit for me since my logical reasoning skills were decent to begin with. All I was looking for in a book were the right frameworks to modulate my thought process and the MGMAT book provided the same. I felt that the theory in powerscore book was trying to change my thought process and I did not want to do that. Hence I gave up on it. Again, this does not mean that the Powerscore book is not good, it just was not a good fit for me.

There is one thing that I learned while preparing for the GMAT is that everyone has different needs and one should use the resources that fit one's needs and learning style. If, like me you feel more comfortable with MGMAT CR book then do not hesitate to use that. If it fits your learning style then go for it. In the end its the end score that matters and not the book that you used.

I would also recommend that you evaluate the Veritas book. Although they do not cover theory in good detail they do have good questions. Also, e-GMAT recently launched a CR course (it was not there when I gave the exam) which I would recommend that you check their free trial out as well. If it is of the same quality as their SC course then you might benefit a lot from it.

I hope this answers your question. Again, take up the resources that help you get a good score because 2 years from now your score will be the only thing that will matter.