I just Beat The GMAT!

Took the GMAT today, got a 730. I was expecting a 740 - missed by this much !
And yeah, folks - this is the Next Gen GMAT.

1.0 Preface :
I know that many people are gonna ask this question later on. (My buddies on this forum have quite often asked this questions) -> Why did you take the GMAT immediately after the format changed ?

I just did not get any other suitable time for the exam

1.1 GMAT Scores :
Here is my result and unofficial score card :

AWA -> 5.5 -> 77%
IR -> 8 -> 94%
Maths -> 50 -> 92%
Verbal -> 39 -> 87%
Total -> 730 -> 96%

* During my Test preparation - I got 730 once but i got 97% as the percentile score. Dont know why it is varied here.

1.2 Preparation Tips :
Please find below my methods for preparation. If you think it can help your preparation, you are more than welcome to follow it.

Preperation for AWA :
https://gmatclub.com/forum/how-to-get-6- ... 7-140.html
End of story. The above template and word structuring were really helpful. I don't think I spent more than 2 days on AWA preparation. I practiced 2 essays typing in MS word. Stick to the template provided by ChineseBurned in the above link and you will be fine. Also, make sure you use a lot of transition words and connecting words. Make sure your thought flow is clearly supplemented by such words.

Preperation for IR :
IR was not one area where I had sufficient material; neither do i have enough knowledge to even logically attack it. OG 13 provides a 6 month free access to their online portal hosting 50 IR questions. These are the best. They are tough, stressful, irritating and just what you need to get a taste of the original GMATish IR.
The most crucial factor about IR is to forget about numbers and understand the synopsis/description/annotation about what this data means. Once you understand what values each numbers/graph bars stand for - IR questions will demystify and will be a cake walk.
Sounds easy right ? This is where GMAT shows its true colors. One ca easily mistake the meaning of a data while solving the question and land up at wrong calculation result. Oh yeah - GMAT will make sure the wrong answer is present in the answer choices.
If you can - give the Online IR provided by OG13 a try - they are really really tough !

Preperation for Quant :
Preparation for Quant was very straightforward. Practice, Practice, Practice - coupled with - Review, Review, Review. I don't remember the last time I looks at geometry formulas or statistic concepts. Maybe it was 2 months ago. Anyways, my point is - Once you fully understand the concepts tested by GMAT - All that is left to do is quality practice (Preferably Official Question - GMATPrep, OG12, OG13, Math Supplement, mba.com questions). What you need to understand is that GMAT only tests a finite set of concepts which are easy and quite basic. Get this over with at the early stages of your preparation.

Preperation for Verbal :
Oh Boy, this was a nightmare for me. Especially the sentence correction part of it. There seems to be many interlinked ways in which a "grammatically correct" answer can sound weird. Don't worry - a technique called "Detailed Documentation" worked for me. It is similar to Error log - but something which i have made for myself. The details of this method are in the end.

Sentence Correction is a pain in the ass. But one thing which drastically improved my performance is a simple technique. Whenever evaluating correct answers - make sure to look into non-underlined portion of the question for tips. Most of the case, you will find critical clues which will help you answer the question.

Reading Comprehension is an area which can drain you of energy and concentration. Most important thing to do for this section is to stay focused and connect with the passage. Sounds stupid - But trust me, it works ! You don't have to dream about dolphins for 5 min if the passage is about dolphins. You just need to like dolphins - seriously, love them - I myself hate dolphin but what choice do we have ?

Critical Reasoning is an area where you will definitely commit mistakes. Period. This is inevitable. Keep 1 or 2 questions buffer in CR and consider them as goners. I don't mean to suggest and outrageous thing such as leaving out a question or blindly guessing. But what is am saying is something that many people forget to adapt to on a CR question. Once you find the answer - Mark and move on. It is not a mere coincidence that many people who apply for competitive exam choose correct answer but review the answer choices again and again and end up choosing the wrong answer. This is exactly why I did not cross cut-off in IIT-JEE.

I am suggesting this from the bottom of my heart - with all the good will. This is applicable to Verbal questions in general but mostly to RC & CR. Never re-review your answer choices once you have correctly "zoned" in using elimination technique. It is waste of your time and energy.

1.3 G-Day and The Day before :
The Day before the GMAT - Do not read anything. Do not review anything. Do not take practice test.
Strickly - No VERBAL ! You can do a little of maths - but only those easy kind of problems. (Only if you are feeling too bored)
What i did was - Went to office but did little work, Listened to lots of music while at office, Went to movie with friends after office and took my girlfriend for a great Italian dinner. (She was actually more tensed than i was about my exam !)
If you can - visit the center. I knew where my center was - so did not do this activity.

G-Day(my slot was morning - 9:00 AM) - Have a heavy breakfast and tea/coffee/juice - whatever suits you. Just don't get dehydrated. That is the last thing you want on a GMAT. I took a red bull - now i know 1 was not enough. I should have taken some chocolate bars/energy bars. Manhattan GMAT has a set of techniques to get you relaxed. Practice these - will be helpful during Real Exam. Also - don't forget to ask the test administrator for Ear-Plugs. They work for noise cancellation and are very effective.

Detailed Documentation: Whenever I am done with a practice test - I open up spreadsheet and enter all the errors I have committed. With details and answer three headers related to the error:
Details on the Error, Reasons for the Error & To-Do Improvement.
In case anyone wants a template of this file, you can download it below:
(No copyrights applicable : Free document : Creative Commons of Penguinfoot)

Finally, Remember : You can practice 1001 questions, but if you don't review your errors - you are not gonna make any progress.

Do let me know in case i can be of any help to my fellow community members. I have a month before i start applying to colleges.

Awesome score You made it !!!

Super cool! Waiting for the full debrief! Esp your IR strategy and did you use the GMATClub tests for Quant?

All the best for apps buddy! Happy for you

@Sam2304 & @hifunda - Posted detailed Debrief.
Let me know your thoughts.

Hi! Awesome post! Seems like you just did beat the GMAT. What were your mock scores in the GMATprep? Im taking my GMAT this 25th and Im freaking out! My quants section is good! But my verbal I find hard! Surprisingly, I do well in RC's. But, CR and SC are my weak points.
Since I have less than 20 days, what do you think is best for me to improve my verbal score? Im currently scoring 650 ( 47-q and 32-v)! And, is the OG sufficient for practise or should I take a look at other books as well?
Also, how much time should I spend preparing for the IR section?
Im aiming at a 700+!
Any help would be useful! Thanks

Saana wrote:What were your mock scores in the GMATprep?

I took somewhere a lil more than 10 Mock tests. Scores are below :

Mar 24th : Kaplan Online Companion - CAT 2 : 670 (Q49, V30)
Mar 31st : GMATPrep - CAT 1 : 700 (Q49, V36)
Apr 6th : GMATPrep - CAT 2 : 710 (Q49, V37)
Apr 14th : Kaplan Online Companion - CAT 3 : 670 (Q45, V34)
Apr 21th : GMATPrep - CAT 1 (Retake) : 730 (Q50, V39)
Apr 28th : GMATPrep - CAT 2 (Retake) : 720 (Q50, V38)
May 5th : GMAT Prep 2.0 - CAT 1 : 720 (Q50, V37)
May 12th : GMAT Prep 2.0 - CAT 2 : 730 (Q50, V38)
May 19th : Kaplan Online Companion - CAT 4 : 690 (Q50, V32)
May 26th : GMAT Prep 2.0 - CAT 1 (Retake) : 720 (Q50, V38)
Jun 4th : GMAT Prep 2.0 - CAT 2 (Retake) : 760 (Q50, V44)

Saana wrote:Im taking my GMAT this 25th and Im freaking out! My quants section is good! But my verbal I find hard! Surprisingly, I do well in RC's. But, CR and SC are my weak points.
Since I have less than 20 days, what do you think is best for me to improve my verbal score? Im currently scoring 650 ( 47-q and 32-v)! And, is the OG sufficient for practise or should I take a look at other books as well?

First of all, 20 days is a good amount of time to improve. But to do that - you need to ask yourself this question : "What are my areas of improvement?"
Just saying CR & SC are my weak points and RC is my strong point is not correct.
Of course, there will be some areas in CR which u are good and some areas in which u are bad. Find out those areas. Similarly for SC and RC. Once you know these areas, use material/practice on these materials. Furthermore, you should also review your performance with regular practice tests.

I would suggest sticking to the original material for practice. I have done OG12 (1), OG13(2) & Verbal Supplement(2). Once i am done with material - I keep reviewing the questions again. You may take a day or two off between practices to relax and maybe one more day to revise concepts.
But remember - Stick to the Official GMAC questions for "quality" practice.

Also if you see, i have taken GMAT tests like 8 times. Inevitably, there were repeats. But i found that GMAT practice are the closest to the actual test.
*Real GMAT interface is simlar to the interface of Old GMATPrep*

Saana wrote:Also, how much time should I spend preparing for the IR section?

I have not put more than 10 hours of efforts into IR. But what is more important is that you take practice tests with IR and essay - when you are practicing - maybe on a weekend.
Make sure u sit down those 4 hours and complete every section.
If u have the OG13 & its online material - you can complete the IR online practice in 2 days or divide the same into 4 days. Whatever is comfortable with you.

Tenacity towards GMAT will take you a long way.

Thank you for that detailed reply. I shall get down to working on my weak areas and retaking the tests!
I dont have the OG 13 but I do have some material for IR.
Thanks once again

My Pleasure.
Let me know if i can be on any additional help.

Congrats a lot man... Well done...

One Question to ask as i have not given gmat prep. Is there any difference b/w gmatprep1.0 and gmatprep2.0 in terms of verbal and quant questions. Or the questions are pretty similar.

There are some overlap questions between GMATPrep 1.0 and 2.0, but the quality of questions is the same. Moreover, there are Pros & Cons to GMATPrep 2.0 over GMATPrep 1.0 :

Pro :
-> Good in-built reporting mechanism to evaluate your performance
-> IR Practice section inside the Practice tests
-> In-built practice questions usage options

Cons :
-> Cannot review wrong answers once you exist the test screen
-> Only 1 IR practice module. The same repeats for Practice test 1 & 2

Nevertheless, we cannot conclude that one is better than the other. You should be wise to use both tests (multiple times) and leverage the best available practice options.

Hi
I scored 650 on both my prep and my MGMAT (1)
But today when I took my MGMAT2, I scored only a 570
Im very worried. i have reviewed my performance and Im planning to take a test again in a few days.
Is this dip normal?

I have two questions

Was the IR as difficult as it is available in GMATPrep or was it much tougher ?

Did you face any bold face questions while answering verbal ?

Saana wrote:Hi
I scored 650 on both my prep and my MGMAT (1)
But today when I took my MGMAT2, I scored only a 570
Im very worried. i have reviewed my performance and Im planning to take a test again in a few days.
Is this dip normal?

A dip is normal. But a 70 point dip is not. I also had dip(s) during my preparation but it was mostly 20 or 30 points - not 70.

Saana wrote:Im very worried.

Don't be. Be concerned. Have a positive attitude towards the GMAT. You should look at it this way : "You get to learn lots of new things"

If i was you, i would reflect on what factors contributed to the under-performance.
I would like to re-state a commonly used anecdote of my grandma : "The more you fail, the more you learn".
You may have a bad day or you may be ill. Such factor do affect your GMAT score - and they so very powerfully. Whatever the reason is : Fix it (The american way).
Keep me updated on your performance. I am sure you are going to come back strong from this little tripp-over.

sam2304 wrote: Was the IR as difficult as it is available in GMATPrep or was it much tougher ?

IR was not as tough as the ones in GMATPrep 2.0. The biggest challenge for me was time management. If you see the structure of questions in GMAT IR - you will notice that Table Analysis and Multi-Source reasoning are time consuming. Graphs and Two-Part analysis are not.
On the contrary view, Table Analysis and Multi-Source Reasoning are not tricky - they are head-on questions and you just need to read the question and premises properly to answer them. Whereas two-part analysis are very tricky. You can't jump to conclusion on two-part analysis easily.

I got the following question frequency : [As per my memory]
1 Multi-Source reasoning (Of course, i used up a lil more than 4 minute on this question)
3 Table Analysis
3 Graph Questions (I found them rather very easy than the normal IR practice questions)
5 Two-Part Analysis (Some of them very damn tough to crack)

The IR section rather left me thinking that i was doing two-part analysis wrong. At the end of the exam - I remembered an IR question which was quite puzzling (I love puzzles). I realized i committed a big mistake on it. For sure i know i answered 1 question wrong on IR. Waiting for the score.

sam2304 wrote: Did you face any bold face questions while answering verbal ?

Many.
I think 3 questions in CR were boldface & 4 questions in RC were passage highlights. So yes - GMAT is moving towards this trend.
Also, something i noted : Meaning is the new trend for GMAT. Idioms were almost not at all present - except for the commonly used ones - like vs such as, consider X Y, compare to vs compare with, ...

Pardon me for the long answer - kinda got caught up jotting down my thoughts.

I was actually a bit tired before I started the test and kept getting distracted. Ill go over my weak areas and take a new one again!
Thanks!