-
judowned
- Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 3:20 pm
- Thanked: 2 times
- GMAT Score:720
I found these forums to be very informative and helpful in my GMAT preparation and I would like to give back a little bit. Here is the overview of my preparation and thoughts on the test itself.
Materials Used:
OG 12th Edition
OG Verbal Review 2nd Edition
OG Quantitative Review 2nd Edition
8 Manhattan GMAT Guides
2 Official GMAT practice tests
My background:
I was confident going into my GMAT preparation that I would be able to get a good score. I have always done well on standardized tests and consider myself to be a fairly smart guy overall. I have only taken math up to calculus 1 and I am a native English speaker but I do not consider my grasp of the finer points of English to be very good and I have not taken a math course in over a year. I am a full time student who also works full time so I wanted to maximize my score in the shortest time possible.
My Preparation:
I studied for twenty four days totaling about fifty hours. I am sure I could have improved my score with another month of studying but I didn't have that luxury. I took my first practice test after studying for two weeks and scored a 700 after that I scheduled my test for two weeks later. The practice tests were helpful in getting me used to testing conditions, I felt completely at ease when the test came.
Quant:
My quant preparation consisted of reading through all the Manhattan GMAT quant guides and doing a lot of practice problems. I only saw one problem on the actual test that I didn't recognize and the level of difficulty overall seemed to be less than what I saw in the MGMAT problems. I only went through about half of the OG problems before I ran out of time but they were very helpful in familiarizing myself with the setup of the problems.
Verbal:
For my verbal preparation I concentrated completely on sentence correction. I did not spend more than five minutes on any other verbal section. I read through the MGMAT sentence correction book twice and did every single OG sentence correction problem at least twice. Those that I missed I kept track of and a couple days later would go through them again until I was getting 90% correct. I am an avid reader which helped me a great deal, I didn't focus much on the actual mechanics of sentence correction but trained myself to be more of an educated guesser who went by feel.
Test Day:
I had noticed in my studying that I always felt that best between 1 and 5 in the afternoon and scheduled my test for that window. I arrived early and did some light study in the car while I waited but generally relaxed and visualized the score I wanted to get. I brought a snack and a mountain dew with me, both of which turned out to be a good idea. Four hours is a long time and the caffeine and food kept me alert. The test itself did not hold any great surprises for me as most of my practice problems were straight for the OG. I thought the math was about the same difficulty but I did find the sentence correction to be more challenging. Most of my problems had underlined portions that were longer than I had expected, I always prefer the shortest possible and these were rather long. Other than that the only problem I had is that one of the test administrators was rather cute and around my age. I distracted myself flirting with her on my breaks and it took a little extra effort to refocus on the test. Not a good idea to break my focus!
I'm sure that my situation isn't typical but I found the GMAT to be very approachable and the Manhattan GMAT to be very helpful. Best of luck to the rest of you!
Materials Used:
OG 12th Edition
OG Verbal Review 2nd Edition
OG Quantitative Review 2nd Edition
8 Manhattan GMAT Guides
2 Official GMAT practice tests
My background:
I was confident going into my GMAT preparation that I would be able to get a good score. I have always done well on standardized tests and consider myself to be a fairly smart guy overall. I have only taken math up to calculus 1 and I am a native English speaker but I do not consider my grasp of the finer points of English to be very good and I have not taken a math course in over a year. I am a full time student who also works full time so I wanted to maximize my score in the shortest time possible.
My Preparation:
I studied for twenty four days totaling about fifty hours. I am sure I could have improved my score with another month of studying but I didn't have that luxury. I took my first practice test after studying for two weeks and scored a 700 after that I scheduled my test for two weeks later. The practice tests were helpful in getting me used to testing conditions, I felt completely at ease when the test came.
Quant:
My quant preparation consisted of reading through all the Manhattan GMAT quant guides and doing a lot of practice problems. I only saw one problem on the actual test that I didn't recognize and the level of difficulty overall seemed to be less than what I saw in the MGMAT problems. I only went through about half of the OG problems before I ran out of time but they were very helpful in familiarizing myself with the setup of the problems.
Verbal:
For my verbal preparation I concentrated completely on sentence correction. I did not spend more than five minutes on any other verbal section. I read through the MGMAT sentence correction book twice and did every single OG sentence correction problem at least twice. Those that I missed I kept track of and a couple days later would go through them again until I was getting 90% correct. I am an avid reader which helped me a great deal, I didn't focus much on the actual mechanics of sentence correction but trained myself to be more of an educated guesser who went by feel.
Test Day:
I had noticed in my studying that I always felt that best between 1 and 5 in the afternoon and scheduled my test for that window. I arrived early and did some light study in the car while I waited but generally relaxed and visualized the score I wanted to get. I brought a snack and a mountain dew with me, both of which turned out to be a good idea. Four hours is a long time and the caffeine and food kept me alert. The test itself did not hold any great surprises for me as most of my practice problems were straight for the OG. I thought the math was about the same difficulty but I did find the sentence correction to be more challenging. Most of my problems had underlined portions that were longer than I had expected, I always prefer the shortest possible and these were rather long. Other than that the only problem I had is that one of the test administrators was rather cute and around my age. I distracted myself flirting with her on my breaks and it took a little extra effort to refocus on the test. Not a good idea to break my focus!
I'm sure that my situation isn't typical but I found the GMAT to be very approachable and the Manhattan GMAT to be very helpful. Best of luck to the rest of you!
