I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi all,

I just finished the GMAT and am very happy with my score of 760. Due to the fact that people's debriefs from this site have helped me, I decided that I should write my own and post lessons learned from the GMAT process.

First, here is my story:

I am an English speaker who was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. I went to a good Canadian university (called Queen's University) and took Computer Engineering. I did well in school because math always came fairly easy to me.

I have worked for 3 years in the consulting world learning how business works and unfortunately, forgetting all the math that I learned in school.

Last October, I casually decided that I wanted to go to business school (at some point in the distant future), so I took my brother's Kaplan GMAT CD and tried a test for fun. I think I scored a 540, but I don't really remember.

From that point, I picked up the official guide and casually started to do problems. I kept a detailed spreadsheet of every single problem I completed, if I got it right, and how much time I spent on each (I used a stop watch for every problem). Even though it sounds like I was taking it seriously at this point, I really wasn't. I wasn't doing anything to focus on my weaknesses or study any theory (such as sentence correction). I was just doing many many problems thinking that this alone would help my score. I was probably studying once or twice a week at this point - whenever it was convenient with my schedule and I happened to be bored. I read over answers to the problems I got wrong, but did not focus too much on solutions. I probably spent 80%-90% of my time doing problems and 10%-20% reading solutions. Let me be the first to say that this type of studying is NOT effective. From that point, I bought the following books Kaplan 800, Kaplan Premiere Program, and Verbal and Quant Official Guides. I grazed a little over the theory in the Kaplan books, but all-in-all I pretty much kept the same ineffective style of studying. In this time, I probably took a couple of more Kaplan CD tests and brought my score up to 610 or so. This increase (from 540 - 610) was probably caused by being comfortable with the question formats and understanding how to budget my time. Let me re-iterate, my studying during this time was NOT effective and if I had to redo everything, I would not have wasted so much time.

This all changed on June 2nd (or some day in that range) - the day I signed up for the test. I had been studying for a long time, but I still gave myself 2 months to really get down to it. I signed up to write the test on August 2nd. So, at this point, everything changed and I started to take the studying a hell of a lot more seriously. The first thing I did was take a Powerprep test and got a 690 (I knew I had work ahead of me). The next thing I did was to take a GMAT Prep test and I got 710. I was happy with that score, but I thought I could do better. I still did not have a strategy for any of the problems - I would just try to come up with a solution every time I pulled up a problem.

The area I struggled the most with was 100% sentence correction (verbal was definitely weaker than quant, and SC was the primary reason for that). I would say each SC option in my head, and if it sounded good, I would choose that answer. I realized that no matter how many SC problems I did, I was still not improving. That is when I came to Beat The GMAT and read that people just loved the Manhattan GMAT SC book. So, I went to Barnes & Noble and picked it up. That book is the single reason that I did well on the GMAT. I am not saying that everything in it is great (and I will elaborate on this in the Suggested Strategy section), however, it gave me a framework in which to approach SC problems.

During these two months, I practiced everyday. I tried to do two things: (1) Do many problems everyday to keep my mind in GMAT mode, and (2) study strategy for SC.

So, to ensure that I was doing problems everyday, I bought the online quiz bank from Kaplan for $179.99 (when using beat the gmat's discount). These problems are not as good as OG, but they are very effective at testing the key concepts and keeping your mind in GMAT mode. They are also timed and that is great. I loaded up these problems whenever I had free time at work. 20 questions here, 10 there. I would recommend this quiz bank for people who don't have the time to pull out OG and do 40 problems everyday on top of studying strategy and theory. It helped me because I could do 40 problems online (at work) in the morning and then study strategy and theory in the evenings. This way it was split up so I didn't get burnt out.

One weekend, probably about 1 month prior to the GMAT, I wrote an online Manhattan CAT. I did not feel as though the questions represented the GMAT well, especially in quant. I got a 710, and that was probably a pretty accurate representation of my score, however, the test questions were definitely not good preparation for the real test. So, when people say they like Manhattan CATs, they are probably basing their decision on the fact that Manhattan has a good algorithm in determining your score. I didn't care to get a good representation of score, I wanted good practice.

Around that same time, I wrote another two or three Kaplan CD tests. They aren't great either, but I think the questions are slightly better than Manhattan (all-in-all the Kaplan online quiz bank was the best of the third-party products). I probably got 630, 640, and 640 - or something in that range, but I don't really remember. I didn't get discouraged with these scores because I knew that Kaplan does not calculate scores accurately.

That was when I read another Beat The GMAT post about using the GMAT Prep software more than 2 times since you get different questions on the CATs. Again, Beat The GMAT gave me great information that was critical to my success. So, now that I knew I could use the software multiple times, I wasn't scared to waste my 2nd test. About 2 weekends prior to the GMAT, I wrote the second CAT on GMAT Prep and got a 740 (this was great, however, I had already seen a few of the problems in OG). I also did this test piecemeal - Quant on Sat and Verbal on Sunday. I kept doing problems everyday and studying SC from Manhattan. The weekend prior to the test, I wrote a GMAT Prep CAT on Sat (750 Q49 V41 - had seen a few problems before) and Sun (770 Q50 V44- had seen many verbal problems before). GMAT Prep is excellent for 2 reasons: (1) it has a large quiz bank and calculates question difficulty exactly like the real GMAT and (2) the interface is identical to the real GMAT interface.

Those last two GMAT Prep tests were the first time that I took AWA seriously and wrote essays. I used the ARCO book for strategy on AWA, but really did not take it that seriously. I think I wrote decent essays on the GMAT, but nothing great. I will update this post when I receive my score for AWA.

I kept studying through to the last night before the GMAT and surprisingly got a good night's sleep. I woke up at 6am, had a bowl of cereal, and did not drink much fluids (to make sure that I did not have to use the bathroom in the middle of any section). I wrote (at 8am) the exam and saw some tough Quant problems, so I was fairly confident with that section. With 10 questions left on Verbal, I just couldn't wait to get it over with. I focused, plowed through those last problems and ended up with a 760 (Q49 V44). In the perfect world, I think I could have obtained a 50 in Quant, but I was really surprised with a 44 in verbal where I was expecting a 41 - 42. I walked out of the place very happy knowing that I didn't need to write the GMAT again.

Practice test summary:

1. Kaplan approx. 540
2. Kaplan approx. 610
3. Kaplan approx. 640
4. Powerprep 690
5. GMAT Prep 710
6. Manhatten 710
7. Kaplan approx. 640
8. GMAT Prep 740
9. GMAT Prep 750
10. GMAT Prep 770

Lessons learned and suggested strategy:

This applies mostly to individuals who are strong in Quant and average in verbal, however, I think that most people will be able to take something out of it.

1A. I do not believe in the "get the first 10 questions right at any cost" philosophy. It is imperative that you have ample time on EACH question on the GMAT. If anything, questions are hopefully going to continue to get harder, and you need to make sure that you have time to think about them. It is my advice that you budget equal time for every single question. I wrote out the following two lists on the cover of my notepad during the test (please note that I consider this extremely critical to my success):

Q: 5:66, 10:56, 15:46, 20:36, 25:26, 30:16, 35:6
V: 5:67, 10:58, 15:49, 20:40, 25:31, 30:22, 35:13, 40:4

The list describes where I should be at the start of the 5th, 10th, 15th, etc... questions. So, at the beginning the 5th quant question, I needed to have 66 minutes remaining to be on track. Notice that the intervals are 10 minutes for every 5 questions on quant and 9 minutes for every 5 on verbal. This way you don't need to memorize the list. I did fall behind in quant, but was able to catch-up. This was key for the last few questions.

Note: The reason that I think it is not important to base too much on the first ten questions is because I do not think the earlier questions are weighted more heavily. They might be, but also, they might not be. Here is an example algorithm for determining score that would put equal weight on each question:

a. Start on a Medium question.
b. Did you get the question right? If yes, move on to harder question. If no, move to easier.
c. Keep doing this until the end of the exam without performing any evaluation.
d. After the test is complete, perform an evaluation on all questions, equally weighting hard questions with hard ones, easy questions with easy ones independent of question location in the test.

If this were the algorithm, what would matter is not getting the first 10 questions right, but making sure that you never go through any streaks of a lot of wrong answers. If you leave no time for the end, you might get 3, 4, or 5 wrong in a row. That means you are getting some really easy questions wrong and knocking your score down significantly. Anyway, this is contrary to what most books and people say, but I am confident that it is the best way to approach the test (at least it was for me).

Also, this could be another point, but I think it applies to this section so I'll put it here:


1B. The hardest thing for someone who is good at Quant is admitting you don't have the answer and then moving on. When you are studying from OG and other books, I would say that 1 in 10 questions is hard. So, if you are timing 10 questions in a block, you save a lot of time on the 9 easy questions and can take your time on the tenth. If you are doing well on the actual GMAT CAT, this will not be the case because every question you see will be hard. A key thing for me was consistently looking back at my timing chart and saying to myself, "I am a little behind, so I need to catch up." Then, when I looked at problem, I would say to myself, "Let's manipulate things for 30 seconds." In other words, try and change the form of quadratics or powers etc.... After 30 seconds, I would say to myself, "Can I think of a strategy to solve this?" If the answer is no, I try to quickly eliminate some options, and then just guess. If you are good at quant, EVENTUALLY can figure out the answer to every question. Unfortunately, you do not have the luxury of time on the GMAT, so it is necessary to learn how to give up on a question and move on.


2. Develop a framework to approach the questions where you are weak. For example, I am weak in SC, so Manhattan SC helped me develop a framework. The Manhattan SC book is great, but it is just too detailed and it made me make some silly mistakes in practice because I was thinking about way too many things. So, I said forget all the crazy details, just take the 3 key ideas: (1) Look for subject verb agreement, (2) look for pronouns and their antecedents, and (3) make sure sentences are parallel. If those three things are there, just re-read the sentence and ask yourself if it sounds right. Using that strategy, I wasn't bogged down with a million things to look for, yet I still looked for the 3 things that I thought were key. Manhattan SC is a great book (as everyone says), however, you need to pick and choose what is crucial to take out of it because there is just way too much information to be able to use all of it on each SC question.


3. Practice makes perfect with Quant. Doing a lot of quant problems will help you "know" what to do when you first see a problem. For example, if I were to see a 4^12 (4 to the power of 12) anywhere in a problem, I would know that I probably need to convert it to (2^2)^12 = 2^24. Also, if I were to see a greater than sign, I know that I would most likely need to consider that multiplying by a negative number flips it to a less than sign (and vice versa). Although all problems are different, many test similar concepts. You should be able to spot the concept when you first see the problem - this comes with practice.


4. Do not listen to Kaplan and Manhattan and whomever else tells you take lots of notes on RC. For reading comprehension, it is critical to spend your time effectively. So, you need to read the passage with an extremely critical eye while taking very few notes. Every time you read a sentence, make sure you fully understand it. If you don't, re-read it. Same thing with an entire paragraph. Read it, understanding each sentence, then make sure you grasp the entire concept of the paragraph. If you don't, re-read the paragraph. If you are taking too many notes, you are wasting time that you could be using to re-read things. If anything, write down 1 to 5 words for each paragraph. Things like: P1. Study Results, P2: Author Rebuttal, P3: Second Study. If you take this strategy, you will understand the concept of the passage, and you will also have a mental road map of where things are in the passage. When you get to the questions, you JUST read the passage 1 minute ago, so you don't need an entirely written outline to know where things are (your short term memory is good enough for tasks like this). If you take this strategy, you will have lots more time to go back to the passage for each RC question. You can re-read paragraphs once or even twice for each question - this will save a lot of time.

The reason that Kaplan and Manhattan preach writing things down is not because that is the best way for you to get you a high score. They preach these strategies so they can say "We have an effective 5 step strategy that you can apply to every RC question. You will have a written down map of the passage that you can reference." This is much better for MARKETING than saying, "We suggest you don't write much down, just re-read things to understand them and then go back to the passage for every question." Always remember, Kaplan and Manhattan are writing books to sell them and earn a profit, so their intentions are not always to get you the highest score.


5. Do not waste your time casually studying, thinking that you are improving by doing tons and tons of problems and not focusing on learning concepts. I probably could have had the same result if I just studied the last two months as I did. Your first step should be to set a test date (give yourself 2-3 months), and get down to work. Focus everyday and it will be over before you know it. I stressed out way too much and studied very ineffectively for a long time. Do not measure the success of your studying by how many days or hours you put in. Measure it by improvement in your weakest areas. For me, I probably improved 30-40 points on SC alone.


A summary of how I think people should study:

1. Sign up for the GMAT (2 - 3 months before)
2. Buy OG 11, Verbal OG, and Quant OG
3. Do 40 problems every morning (20 Quant and 20 Verbal). If you can do these from OG (any of the three), that is the best, but Kaplan Online quiz bank is a great resource for people who can't pull those books out at work, but can still find time to do some questions. Where you get things wrong, study the solutions intensely and learn why your original decision was wrong. If you know why, you will not make the same mistake again.
4. Keep track of how you do to be able to know where you struggle.
5. Determine your weaknesses.
6. (1 month in) Buy theory books to learn key concepts. For me, it was SC (so I bought manhattan SC), for others it might be quant. If you don't know the theory, you will not be able to choose the right answer. Study theory at night, while continuing to do problems every morning.
7. Throughout this process, do CATs every weekend. Any type of CAT will be good practice, but nothing comes close to GMAT Prep in terms of quality. However, note that with GMAT Prep, once you do it 3 or 4 times, you will start to see lots of repeats. I recommend Kaplan CD as the next best option even though you will not get a good representation of your score.
8. Study AWA from Arco for about 2 weeks, just reading the strategy. It is definitely good to practice these and I probably did not do enough, however, if you are struggling with your GMAT CAT, that should take priority.

Anyway, that is my story and my suggestions. Please feel free to ask me any questions at all. Good luck studying!

Great Post.

Thanks.

Great score and great post.

Thank you for the lessons learnt. Especially the timing list. Uptil now, I was just doing my best and always ended up 10 mins extra with me. But now, with time list in my hand or notebook. !, i am sure i wud b able to do better than before.

Thanx a lot.
-i.dreem

Congrats mgross for a great score.

I had given GMAT Prep 2 yesterday and scored 690 (Q49, V34). I found GMAT Prep 2 relatively easy but then I committed numerous silly mistakes.

How different is the Real GMAT from GMAT Prep? Is the difficulty level the same or Real GMAT is harder than GMAT Prep.

Thanks
Amit

Hi erjamit,

Great question. I have to say that I felt the Real GMAT was exactly the same as GMAT Prep. If you gave me two tests where one of them was GMAT Prep and one was the real GMAT, I would definitely not be able to guess which is which. There are two things to compare: (1) The CAT itself and how it determines question difficulty and (2) the questions. With respect to both of those categories, I have to say that GMAT Prep does a perfect job at representing the real test.

-mgross

Awesome score mgross ... and thanks a lot for patiently keying in your strategies and experience ....

Thanks for this information. This is really helpful since it implies I have to be little more careful and watch out for silly mistakes, pitfalls and catchy answers.

I liked your timing strategy and I also followed the same for the CAT. But it didn't worked out very well for me bcoz I think I was really surprised by easy questions and was feeling a false sense of success thinking I have answered correctly. This is very dangerous as I have realised.

Hi all, I appreciate everyone's feedback on the post. It was the least I could do considering I learned a lot from this website and everyone who is posting.

erjamit,
You obviously got a great score in quant: 49 - and this will be tough to beat. Basically, in my experience, the difference between a 49, 50, and 51 might be 1 or 2 questions. So, I would focus on verbal - you have room for improvement there. What are your weaknesses? How is your SC strategy? I think that for people who are strong in quant, we can take a quant approach to SC. By that I mean a formulaic approach. 1. Do the verbs agree to the subjects? 2. Are the pronouns singular or plural and do they unambiguously align to antecedents? 3. If there is a list or comparison, is everything in the sentence parallel? If you can answer those questions for each SC problem, you should be able to up your verbal to V37 or V38 without even improving in other areas.

If you want to improve in RC, you have to make sure that when the question asks anything with the words "suggest" or "infer" that you do not stray too much from the passage. Also, anything "suggested" or "inferred" needs to be true 100% of the time. If you say to yourself, "Well, I guess that answers holds true most of the time" or "I can see that being the case" then you are probably diving into one of GMATs traps. An inference needs to be true 100% of the time.

Hopefully this information will help.

-mgross

I too am an anglophone from Montreal. What high school did you go to?

Hi mgross

I have recently run into one of the study problems you outlined. I have rigorously done all the DS and PS questions from the OG after I took the initial GmatPrep. I expected my score on the second GmatPrep to be far greater than my first score because I had worked through 300+ problems. When I found out my score had only increased 10 points, I felt robbed and bitter and pissed off.

I think I will take your recommnedation and begin to write down the types of problems that I do incorrectly.

Do you have any other suggestions with respect to this way of studying?

Thanks for your feedback~

Hi tlt2372,

Definitely keep track of what you are getting right and what you are getting wrong. That is the only way to know where you need to go back and learn theory. Bucket the ones that you got wrong into different categories (geometry, absolute values, exponents, tables, missing information, rates/work, permutations and combinations, sequences and series, division with remainders, etc...). Once you bucket them, determine where you are having the most trouble. Then, make sure you do not do any more problems in these categories. Go straight to the solutions in the back of OG for the ones you got wrong and go over them in detail as per how you bucked them. What I mean is go through all the solutions for geometry first instead of going through the solutions in order of everything. That way, you will see the consistent strategy used for geometry problems. You will see that the Pythagorean theorem is used all the time in triangle problems. You will learn that an inscribed angle in a circle is equal to half the degrees of that arc. You will start to notice these similarities and then they will pop out to you next time you see a similar problem.

Let me know if this helps.

-mgross

also, get access to the manhattan gmat OG tracker. It's this mega spreadsheet where you just fill in your answer choice and the time it took you to answer the question and it spits out stats about where you're doing well, poorly, etc. Very handy.

Thanks! I am going to start this new way of keeping track of things - your post really helped!

Excel 2007. I recently heard that MGMAT has something to track as well, I had no idea, so I built this.

Hi mgross,

Congrats on your great score and thanks for sharing your prep experiences.

I cant seem to open your spreadsheet. Could you please check the content of the zip file and send it again please? The file extension in the zip file is .xlsx, which I renamed to .xls, but this still wouldnt work.

Thanks,
BM