Pummeled the GMAT!!! 770 (Q50, V47, AWA 5.5)

So here it goes…

I am an Indian (living in US) with a computer science background and a non-IT work experience although I have been working for just over a year. I took my GMAT date on Feb 20 and was planning to take the test end of May. But since my parents were visiting, I rescheduled it for May 11.

I had looked at this forum back in Sep 08 and was vaguely familiar with question formats and topics. I spent the first few days in Feb looking at the OG to get more familiar with question formats. I also started looking some of the postings in the verbal and quant section of this forum and started randomly picking and solving the questions. Since I was very comfortable with quant, I only did quant questions

. I tried doing some SC on the forum and couldn’t figure out the head and tail of it!!!

. I also did not care too much about CR or RC because there was too much reading involved in doing those questions!!

Finally in March I realized that GMAT was getting closer and I needed to get my act together. I don’t believe in drawing elaborate plans and like to keep things simple. So I took the first GMATprep test and scored 640-650 (I don’t remember exactly how much I scored)

My breakdown if I remember correctly was Q-47 and V-31.

Almost all the mistakes I made in quant were silly mistakes. Verbal was more interesting. I had got 12 /13 SC questions wrong!!! Even though I am not a native English speaker, I consider my English skills at par with anyone. I got so many SC questions wrong because I didn’t know what mistakes I needed to look for ( I was just looking for the most concise options!)

Just around that time, I received all the books that I had ordered from Manhattan GMAT. As everyone has mentioned earlier, MGMAT SC is the BIBLE!! I could have never done so well in verbal if I didn’t have the Manhattan SC. Over the next couple of months I worked through a number of book in verbal and quant

Quant:

Resources used:

1. My high school math books
2. GMAT Official Guide 11th Edition
3. GMAT Official Guide 12th Edition (get this even if you have the OG 11) it has some great new DS questions and SC)
4. GMAT Official Guide Quant Review
5. Kaplan 800 (not really 800 level) Manhattan quant
6. Kaplan 800
7. GMAT Focus (very good resource)

Things that worked for me in quant:

a. If there is one thing that I was very disciplined about was that I never did even 1 question (both quant and verbal) during my prep since March that wasn’t timed. I put a timer on EACH AND EVERY question that I ever attempted. I felt that any question I did without timing was just a wasted effort. The entire GMAT hurdle rests on timing constraint.

b. When I started studying seriously in March, I started studying from my High school math books.The entire GMAT quant section is based on fundamentals and although Kaplan and MGMAT have some chapters on the topics, they are not 1/10 as detailed as the topics in my high school books. Specifically I studied Geometry, P&C, probability and AP & GP

c. I think it is a good idea to study arithmetic progression (AP) and geometric progression (GP) and understand the 2 or 3 different formulae in it. It helps solve series questions more quickly

d. Even though I don’t believe that the first 5 questions are more important than the other, I spent a little more time on the first 5 questions because when I write any test I know my concentration is at the weakest in the first 10 minutes.

e. I spent less than 2% of my quant prep time on probability and P&C because I had seen some GMAT prep probability questions and they were too easy. Also, I have studied too much probability in the past only to realize that you can take even a medium level probability question and spend your entire life on it and you would still not figure it out.

f. I searched for all the posts by the experts (especially (or specially?) Ron and Ian who, I think, is one of the smartest guys in Math I have ever known) and noted all the key points that they talked bout. This is invaluable!! Do this for sure apart from (a)

g. Since 99% of all mistakes I made in quant were silly mistakes, I kept a log of all the mistakes that I made which was helpful in the last few days.

h. I had some issues with DS questions because I had never done questions where I needed to figure out the “solvability”. I think it’s a great concept since it is closer to what people do in real life. I just practiced a lot of DS questions just to get comfortable with them

i. Also, I practiced with both the GMAT prep test 7 times each. You will be surprised to see that there are very few repeats till the 3rd or 4th attempt. 1 day before the exam, I was hitting 51 in quant at will and it gave me a lot of confidence

j. I did not have a timing strategy for the exam because I knew I could do almost all PS questions in under a minute but DS questions took a long time. In the actual test I am sure I spent 4-5 min on 3-4 DS questions each but still finished right on time because I spent very little time doing the PS part. I am sure I must have eliminated the silly mistakes by working slowly on the DS questions.

k. Finally, I believe the best approach to quant is always brute force. Try to get familiar with the fundamentals and then practice 2000 questions (timed) and you will be ready for GMAT quant

Verbal

Resources used:

1. GMAT Official Guide 11th Edition
2. GMAT Official Guide 12th Edition (get this even if you have the OG 11) it has some great new DS questions and SC)
3. GMAT Official Guide Verbal Review
4. Manhattan SC

Things that worked for me in Verbal:

a. OG and nothing but the OG!!! Apart from Manhattan SC, I did not touch any non OG resource. This is because I strongly believe, that the way GMAT frames the answer choices in CR and RC is very unique. If you follow the logic correctly you can pin point each and every answer in CR and RC every time. This is definitely missing in Kaplan and Manhattan. I took their tests and couldn’t believe how illogical some of their answers were. My success rate in all CR and RC questions in OG and GMAT prep was 95%-97% while my success rate in Manhattan CR and RC questions was 75%-80%.

b. For SC I did the Manhattan book and understood it. I still don’t know the meaning of all the terms (clause, infinitives, participle etc.) but I just understood how the sentences were constructed(Modifiers and pronouns are the most important chapters). It improved my SC performance dramatically. GMAT SC is really easy if you remember some key rules!

c. CR: I started with a few OG questions on CR to figure out what the deal was. As I kept doing the CR questions, I realized I was hardly getting any question wrong. In the end I did not read even 1 line of theory/strategy on CR. It just came to me. If you simplify CR then they are essentially conversations that we have in everyday life. If someone is talking about an issues, it is not too difficult to figure out what he/she has assumed or what I need to say to strengthen or weaken the argument.

d. RC: I never took notes on RC and never read any strategy. When I had written the GRE few years ago, I realized that if I read the passage really slowly and understood the meaning of the passage then answering questions wasn’t too difficult. I always read the first few lines and the last few line 2-3 times because those most times talked about the “main point” and “mood” of the passage

e. Just to reemphasize, I almost shielded myself from non OG questions in verbal because I thought I would get into bad habits doing them

The Big Day!!

My exam was at 8am. I know most people like to take the exam in the afternoon. I am not a morning person too but I just tried to focus n the job at hand. The more you think about weather, time of day, or other people in the exam center etc. the more they will affect your exam. I just took those things out of my system.

Got up at 5:30am and took my Mustang (hence the name) out for a spin on the empty freeway with Metallica- “Turn the Page” playing on the stereo and the windows rolled down. It was the ultimate stress buster!!

I came home and practiced few questions from the GMAT prep test that I took last day. Got ready and left for the centre.

AWA was a sail. Just look around for some templates. Quant was very similar to GMAT. Couple of probability questions at the end. Couple of median and mean questions on bar graph. 2-3 questions on circle. A number of DS questions were yes/no? 2-3 question on AP GP.

Verbal was very similar to OG GMATprep. Started with a few medium SC. 4 RCs evenly distributed. All were medium length except 1 which was around 80 lines. I received 1 boldface CR around the end of the exam but I have never had issues with them.

Practice Test scores:

1. GmatPrep 1: 650
2. Manhattan CAT 1: 700
3. Manhattan CAT 2:630 (Had to end the quant section after #28)
4. Manhattan CAT 3:730
5. Manhattan CAT 4:710
6. Manhattan CAT 5:730
7. Manhattan CAT 6:700
8. Kaplan CAT 1: 560 (yeah right!!)
9. Kaplan CAT 2: 660
10. GMATPrep 2: 740 (1 week before exam)
11. Actual GMAT: 770

So this is my loooong debrief. If you have more questions, please free to ask me and I will try to answer them the best I can.

Thanks guys again for all your help!! You all are fantastic!!

All the people about to write the GMAT, I wish you all the best! Just chill and don’t stress too much. It’s not worth it. Just TURN THE PAGE!!!!

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