I just Beat The GMAT!

I just took my GMAT test today and scored a 710(45q41v). I will say that I learned quite a bit on my trip.

I started out earlier in the summer and I thought I would study for the GMAT. I bought the Manhattan series and the OG guide(+companions). I didnt really study though. I mostly glanced over the material and went to the beach.

In August reality hit. Half way through the month I decided to actually study and got after it. My first test was a Manhattan and i scored a 620 with a ton of distractions. I knew I needed 700+ to get were I wanted so I went to work.

The first step was to go through quant guides. The Manhattan series is really strong for that. I worked on CR but didnt feel like I needed the RC. The SC book didnt really work for me. I was already pretty decent at SC and decided to just skip it. I scored a 690 then a 650 while sick. I bought the advanced quant book and booked my test day. The advanced quant book didnt help much as it just taught me to guess a little better. I took my GMAC prep test and hit 680 with a lot of background noise.

I noticed that my sentence correction was pretty strong. However, I was looking in the back of the OG guide and noticed that a higher verbal score had more weight with your total score. I decided to try the GMAT pill after reading up on their SC program. I will say that it helped but it is probably better for a non-native speaker. It helped me streamline a bit though.
My last last prep I scored a 710.

The day before my test I was really nervous. I had read so many horror stories on here and was worried about my score. The test center was a very strict place but luckily the people there were nice.

Essay and IR went by quick. I accidently showed up a minute late for quant and was feeling really sick. I hadnt slept much from my nerves and was feeling nauseous. Quant felt horrible. I rushed in the beginning and had to rush at the end. I knew how to work the last 3-4 but had to just jam down answers.

On my break I took a moment to think. I know that verbal was my strong point and I felt like I needed to be at my best. The verbal flew by and I clicked report score. It took forever to load my score. I was dreading the 620-650 I expected to see. I was already working out when I could take the test again.
Then the 710 popped up. If you didnt have to be so quiet there I would have jumped out of my seat.
Dont get discouraged and trust yourself to pull through.

Nicely done! Congrats on the score.

Congrats!

Did the quant look similar to the OG?

Yes it was very similar. I think I was also a bit unlucky in that my test had a lot of things in my weaker areas. I felt like far more than 40% were DS though that could have been my imagination

Thank you so much for responding. That's very helpful to know. And congrats on your awesome score

Congrats for the good score !! AS you told that your SC was very good, can you please give some SC Strategies, I am pretty Bad at SC, I am following manhattan SC book but still not able to improve on that..

The Manhattan book is very good but did not really fit my learning style.
If you have the money available to you then I would say that the GMAT Pill does offer decent value.


My tips for approaching SC would be as follows. First the verbal section is ridiculously important to get a 700+. If you look in the back of the OG guides you will see that the percentile rankings favor a higher verbal score. So if you do really well on verbal but so so on math you cans till get a good score.

Anyways, I would learn to look at the major problems that sc presents. Most of the time sc can only give you certain problems with the sentence. For example, you may have a question that is testing the difference between WHICH and THAT. As you read the sentence you should think ok they are testing me on the difference between THAT and WHICH. After you finish reading the problem sentence I would decide which word is correct. Then I would eliminate all of the answer choices that are incorrect.

At this point say I have two options left. I would now scan both sentences and see how they differ and make a decision based on this. Once I have chosen an answer I would read through the whole sentence and make sure it made sense and sounded correct.
I think this has a lot of advantages. First it saves me a lot of time. I am not really reading a lot of the answer choices because I am scanning them.
Second this doesnt let our ear fool us on the initial run through.

I also regularly read the Economist anyways. I believe you can get an app for it and read free articles. I think this improved my ear and made it slightly more reliable.

Thanks a lot !! I will follow your Strategy. I Hope that your Strategy will work for me.