I just Beat The GMAT!

My prep tests scores:

* GMATPrep1 #1 570 34Q 35V
* GMATPrep2 #1 650 40Q 39V
* PowerPREP1 #1 640 47Q 31V
* GMATPrep1 #2 660 45Q 35V
* GMATPrep1 #3 690 47Q 38V
* GMATPrep2 #2 710 47Q 41V
* PowerPREP2 #1 720 49Q 39V
* Kaplan CAT2 540 34Q 25V
* PowerPREP1 #2 710 48Q 38V
* GMATPrep2 #3 730 49Q 40V
* Real GMAT: 760 49Q 44V



Here is my debrief after yesterday's insane performance. I was able to get 760 with 49 in Quant and 44 in Verbal.
I know that personally I get lost in long debriefs, so I'll try to make this as short as possible.

----------------------- My 760 (99%) debrief ---------------------------------

To create my prep strategy, I had to realize that I have three major weaknessess: 1/ I work full time and couldn't take any vacation. 2/ I have problems focusing for long periods of time. 3/ I am not very strong in math. 4/English is my third language after Hebrew and French. so for example idioms are not well known to me.

In addition I had to realize my strong points: 1/ I can study by myself complicated stuff. 2/ I study best while practicing a lot 3/ I love challenges.

With these weaknessess and strengths in mind, I decided to prep for at least 3 months, and to put at least one hour a day. I also decided to prep by myself because I could solve batches of 20 questions, take a long pause and do another batch. I was afraid that in a prep course I will only do what I have to do, and not push myself to my limits.

From now on I'll refer to some crucial points in my prep:

* GMATPrep and PowerPREP: I took every test at least three times and it was the single most helpfull thing that improved my skills. This is amazing and like someone said: you feel like you're cheating when you see the real exam that looks exactly like GMATPrep. I beg you to solve at least twice every test.

* Other CATS: I did Kaplan CAT2 about one week ago, and got 540. Enough said, this test is pure horse crap.

* Books: I started with Princeton Review 2008 which is great for the basics, then I moved to Kaplan Premier 2008 combined with OG11. I worked on this for about a month and then added the verbal and the quant books of OG11 to the prep. Last two weeks I bought MGMAT SC but I will discuss this later.

* Net sources: The best advices came from https://www.beatthegmat.com . I tried to solve difficult questions that were posted, and also put some the question that I couldn't solve. The forum is great and they have a lot of resources to download. One of these resources are the BTG flashcards that I printed, I used them to refresh old material during the last week of prep.

* Simulated conditions: I believe that the GMAT should be approached like a sports competition, and I trained myself that way. For example, I saw that at the end of quant sometimes I have about 1 minute per question, and that my hit rates are very bad at this point, so I solved batches of 5 questions in 5 minutes and tried to adopt smart guessing techniques. This was very useful during the test as I had to guess about 4 questions in the Q part. Another part of the simulated conditions is again the prep tests, that I took at the exact same time of the day as the real GMAT, I also asked my girlfriend to come into the room where I was doing the test and to disturb me, so I can practice room disturbance as well.

* The part that you can improve easily and that the most significant effect on your score is the Sentance Correction part. I saw that I wasn't hitting above 85% during the last month of prep, so I ordered the MGMAT SC book which was great and helped me improve SC to about 95% hit rate. I am sure that it helped me a lot in the real test. Work on verbal this is very easy to improve and improves your score a lot.

* Psychological aspects and stress: I considered the gmat a challenge, and tried not to stress because of it. I knew that the pause between Quant and Verbal can have wierd effects on your mind, so I drank my redbull and did some push-ups, while telling myself that Quant was hard because I performed well, and that I know how to handle Verbal. It's all in your mind so try to control the stress. Answer one question at a time, and don't try to auto-assess during the exam.



That's it for now. I will answer some question on the https://www.beatthegmat.com forum if someone want to ask me something.

Cheers and good luck to you all. Scoring high in the GMAT is an achievable goal for everyone!

Congrats on the good score and best of luck with the applications.

I am wondering why you had to guess 4 questions in quant? Was it because of paucity of time or because the Questions were too difficult to solve?

Awesome score... Well done... I think your strategy of taking this up as a challenge was a good one

WOW! impressive work there!!

do you recommend PowerPrep?
also, did you see lots of repeats with GmatPrep?


i'm using GmatPrep, but I'm trying to figure out what other CAT to use... i was thinking PR...

Always nice to hear when a member does so well. That is an awesome performance. Congratulations.

netigen wrote:Congrats on the good score and best of luck with the applications.

I am wondering why you had to guess 4 questions in quant? Was it because of paucity of time or because the Questions were too difficult to solve?

one of the 4 was very hard. I tried to solve it for two minutes and than gave up and guessed.
The other three I guessed during the last 10 questions when I had less than 10 minutes left. I prefered to solve only easy looking problems so three went as a guess and other 7 I really solved.

lux wrote:WOW! impressive work there!!

do you recommend PowerPrep?
also, did you see lots of repeats with GmatPrep?


i'm using GmatPrep, but I'm trying to figure out what other CAT to use... i was thinking PR...

PowerPrep is great, the only problem with it is that you see some repeats from the OG. However, for me this wasn't a problem because:
1. I saw no more than 4-5 repeats per exam
2. I tend to fail on repeats, don't ask me why. Maybe I think I remember the answer and don't follow the right path of solution. beats me.

Real GMAT star!