I just Beat The GMAT!

I received my official score a week ago, and here're my experiences and learnings.

I am an Engineering grad, working in one of the top FMCG firms. I have completed CIMA and CFA (all 3 levels).

I am not a native English speaker and I am a numbers lover. The Quant questions were really challenging, but with sufficient practice, I could somewhat tackle them. The Verbal section was my Kryptonite. My strategy may not work for all, but may work for those who find Verbal tough.

Strategies

I had different strategies for each component:

Quant - Know the various types of questions and the common pitfalls.
The mistakes I made were always careless ones, and it never stopped, even though I only used to make generally 2-8 mistakes in a test. (Negatives, Zeros, forgetting the starting words of a question - e.g: Forgetting that X is a positive integer and answering assuming that X is an integer - including 0, and negatives)

Verbal -
CR - Practice as many types of questions as possible.
RC - I was really slow on RC, so I powered my way through many challenging passages - specially the Kaplan ones which always had an array of unfamiliar words.
SC - SC was not time consuming, but on my 1st attempt, they were demoralizing, as I didn't get some of them right and I knew I was wrong when I hit submit for every question. I overcame this by memorizing the idioms - which contributed to most of the errors.

There were 2 strategies that helped me a lot -

Strategy 1 - Taking as many tests as possible, as many times as possible. Yes you heard me right; taking the same test thrice actually helped me.
From the list below, you can see that I have tried 4 types of tests, and to tell you the truth, I even did all the Verbal sections a second time when I retook. E.g - I took the MGMAT Verbal sections twice just on my retake. You may think that the point is lost when a person faces the same question which he/she just answered 2 weeks ago. I won't disagree, but the learning comes when your mind feels the exact time pressure and recalls what went wrong the first time, and what the correct method is. This is much better than passively revising the error log.
I always made it a point to time my tests, and always included the IR and AWA sections. Including the IR and AWA is vital, as these are there mainly to take your energy away. So specially if its towards the end, always practice with AWA and IR, and learn to increase your endurance and mental stamina.

Strategy 2 - Error log
Everyone talks about the error log, but here's my two cents worth anyway. I wrote the errors and the learnings. I noted the ones which were tough and the recurring errors. These I transferred on to another book. Then I used to go through this shortlisted error log very often.

I wish I knew -

I regret having been too cautious on taking the entire practice exam, including AWA and IR. This was good to build stamina, but on my first take, it drained too much of my valuable energy which I could have used on studying my PRECIOUS - Verbal.

On my first take, I focused more on mastering the test format, before mastering the individual components. So I mixed up PS, DS, SC, RC and CR questions every time I did questions and made it into timed question banks. Say breaking the OG questions into 10 of SC, 10 of RC, 10 of CR, 10 of DS and 10 of PS in 100 minutes. Doing all questions at once prevented me from mastering individual components of the test - SC/CR/RC. On my retake, I did SC only at a stretch, followed by RC only and CR only respectively. I never thought I could form a pattern for SC and RC. But on my retake, as I practiced a string of questions at a stretch, I found everything falling into order ( Not perfect order, but at least something acceptable).

Period of study -
1st time - 2.5 months.
Retake - 1.5 months.

Books used
GMAC - OG 13th Edition, Verbal review 2nd edition, Quant review 2nd edition.
Manhattan - GMAT Complete Strategy Guide Set 5th Edition, Advanced Quant.
Kaplan - GMAT premier 2013, GMAT premier 2014, GMAT800.
Powerscore verbal bible.

Actual and practice test scores
1st Time
Actual - 710, Q51, V34, AWA 6, IR 8

MGMAT
Test 1 - 640, Q48, V30.
Test 2 - 620, Q48, V28.
Test 3 - 710, Q50, V36.
Test 4 - 750, Q51, V41.
Test 5 - 720, Q51, V37.

Kaplan
690
690
700
710
740

GMAT Prep
740
740

Retake
Actual - 760, Q50, V42, AWA 6, IR 8

MGMAT
Test 1 - 740, Q51, V40.
Test 2 - 720, Q45, V43.
Test 3 - 690, Q47, V37.
Test 4 - 730, Q51, V39.
Test 5 - 720, Q49, V39.
Test 6 - 720, Q51, V37.
MGMAT After resetting for the 2nd time
Test 5 - 740, Q46, V45.
Test 6 - 760, Q49, V45.

Kaplan
760
760
710
760
760

GMAT Prep
740
740
GMAT Prep extra tests pack
720
770

Kudos + special mention - I took 15 of the GMAT Club tests. I think the Quant helped me a lot by throwing up various types of questions. The verbal was good for understanding different concepts, but confusing at times. I always had 4-6 Quant questions left when the timer was done.
GMATCLUB Quant, and MGMAT Quant were extreeeeemeeely tougher than actual. But I guess this was one of the reasons, I finished Quant way before time was up. Kaplan RC passages were incredibly challenging, and specially for me, there were too many unfamiliar words. But the more Kaplan RC passages I did, the more I learnt about paraphrasing and summarizing in my mind and on paper.

Here's my timing strategy

Time to go ---- Minimum questions complete
Quant
60 ----------------------- 8
45 ----------------------- 15
30 ----------------------- 23
15 ----------------------- 30

Verbal
60 ----------------------- 8
45 ----------------------- 17
30 ----------------------- 25
15 ----------------------- 33

If you're a bit behind planned number of questions, take a few guesses and get back on track. Remember that GMAT penalizes more for 2 wrong answers back to back, rather than 2 spread out wrong answers. Furthermore, GMAT's greatest penalty is for not finishing the test. So if you go slow, get many correct questions but don't finish the exam, then your score will drop drastically.

I'd be more than happy to answer any queries.

Good luck

Nice to hear such inspirational stories.

I am looking to give my GMAT in Jul 2nd week. I feel that my Verbal part is not that good, can you kindly guide me through the best material for learning Verbal from scratch.

Thanks,
Amit

My verbal is also poor. I am having problem in SC. Can you please guide me?

Thanks
Komal

In regards to the GMAT club tests you said you took do you have to purchase these?

-Alma

Hi Ananth
Congrats on a great score and I wish you get into your dream school.
I want to ask your RC Strategy.I think RCs are the one's that are decreasing my Verbal Score.
Also any tips that you can provide to improve on RCs would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Hello Ananth,

Congratulations on your score. Being an engineering grad you mentioned having cleared CFA and CIMA. Can you provide further information on this? You could consider dropping in an email to me and we could get connected at [email protected]

Thanks,

Nikhil.

Great score and insightful post. Thanks for sharing.

Kudos on your score and thank you for sharing insight from the preparation. Agree with your strategy of giving the same tests again ! Its note that one's going to remember the answers all the time especially if you spread out your preparation.

Hi Amit,

As indicated in my post above, you can purchase refer the books below :

GMAC - OG 13th Edition, Verbal review 2nd edition, Quant review 2nd edition.
Manhattan - GMAT Complete Strategy Guide Set 5th Edition, Advanced Quant.
Kaplan - GMAT premier 2013, GMAT premier 2014, GMAT800.
Powerscore verbal bible.

Furthermore, you can try the GMATCLUB toolkit download too. It comes with some good flashcards, and helps keep your momentum high as well.

I would recommend MGMAT for starters. Their content based curriculum makes a sound approach.


Hi Komal,

I was bad at SC too. So I went for a foolproof strategy, but time consuming one though. You can try.

1. Learn the content.
2. Do as many questions as possible. I actually did each one of the questions, at least twice.
3. Try the ones which you get wrong, repeatedly.
4. Memorize the idioms.

Hope this helps.


Hi Alma,

Yes, you do have to purchase these. They are offered for free on certain days, you can check this out on their blog. Anyway, I would recommend you to buy, as the answer explanations are key.


Hi Manihar,

I struggled with RC too - specially the timing. On detail questions, it would take me 3-4 minutes at times to just trace back the key words. On global questions, I would sometimes get confused between 2 close answers.

I would recommend Kaplan. Kaplan RC is way tougher, to a demotivating level. So be aware of that. But I think one could comfortably say that if a person can get through Kaplan's RC, that person can do the same comfortably with the actual GMAT.

Get to know the important stuff in RC. The 'scoring method' for global questions, knowing how to connect key words for detail questions, and being on the alert on scope shifts.

My greatest learning with RC is that 'Opinions' are more important than 'Facts'. But this is only in RC. This would be the opposite of a CR inference type question, which values 'facts'. (Just wanted to inform, to avoid confusion).

Hey
Thanks for an insightful advice
Can you tell me which kaplan book(name of the book) to look for RCs.
Also have you practiced RC1000 and SC1000.
I know these are not official sources but people still do it for more practice.

Great Score!!!

Now is your time to drench yourself in glory. Anyhow, what was the time-gap between your actual exam and your retake?

Thanks!

Hey Vivek,

The time gap is the time I applied to 4 of Top 10 B schools and got dinged.