All,
My background:
- I am average Asian Indian student with decent aptitude and working full time.
- I gave GMAT this week and scored 610 m48 v26.
I know lot of people must have posted similar queries but I think I need to post my experience to get the right advice.
I think 610 score is not enough for an international student to get into a good college. So I am planning to give GMAT again sometime mid September or early October 2008.
This was my approach for my first exam:
- I browsed some forums and read the study approach of the people who scored good marks (700+).
- My study material - OG11, Princeton Review, GMATPrep, Princeton Test (2005 version), Manhattan Verbal (Just read the content only), Amateur approach to SC(Just read the content only) and 4 Test paper in PDF format (source mba.com).
- After finishing OG11 and Princeton for the first time, I gave a GMATPrep test in which I scored 620 m42 v31.
- I tried to improve SC by reading "Manhattan" and "Amateur approach to SC". I read the content of the two books and gave one more GMATPrep. Score 660 m44 v33.
- At this moment I realized, my quant is not good and I was struggling DS questions.
- To improve quant, I finished OG11 and Princeton again and I scored 680 in GMATPrep.
- On the verbal side, I was struggling with SC where my score was between 50% and 60%. To improve it, I finished Princeton and OG again.
- One more GMATPrep and my score were 690.
- With every score my quant was improving and my verbal was constant between 31 and 36. I also noticed that I was pretty constant in CR and RC but SC result was still the same around 60%.
- Finished a reading of Manhattan and solved SC from OG again. This time while solving the OG, my SC result was more than 85%.
- Gave one test of Princeton review. Score 580 m41 v30.
- Revised some more quant and next test, score 650 m51 v30. In the verbal section, SC was 90% but CR where I was scoring close to 90% went to 50%.
- My RC result is constant around 75%.
- On the test day, while giving the paper I felt quant was very tough and I was quite upset when I finished quant. While giving verbal, I felt very calm because the answers I was marking look to me correct and gave me a relief that I am scoring well in verbal which will compensate my overall score but the score was other way around 610 m48 v26.
I was completely devastated by verbal score which I never thought to be so low. I thought over it and my analysis is my verbal concepts are very weak and quant which went good still needs some more improvement.
I need your advice on how to prepare these coming months to score better and more than 700 in the next exam (which I think I can achieve).
-Should I opt for more material and if yes which ones?
-Should I go for private tutoring? I am quite lazy searching forums and that’s one of the reasons for which I never extensively searched a forum.
-What modifications I should be including in my current study plan.
-Since I have given GMATPrep 6 -7 times, the questions are repeating and are not my true score. Which other tests should I opt for measuring my ability correctly?
I am very determined to get a good score in GMAT and would appreciate your invaluable advice to take my score from 610 to 700+.
Thanks for your help and support.
A
:
My background:
- I am average Asian Indian student with decent aptitude and working full time.
- I gave GMAT this week and scored 610 m48 v26.
I know lot of people must have posted similar queries but I think I need to post my experience to get the right advice.
I think 610 score is not enough for an international student to get into a good college. So I am planning to give GMAT again sometime mid September or early October 2008.
This was my approach for my first exam:
- I browsed some forums and read the study approach of the people who scored good marks (700+).
- My study material - OG11, Princeton Review, GMATPrep, Princeton Test (2005 version), Manhattan Verbal (Just read the content only), Amateur approach to SC(Just read the content only) and 4 Test paper in PDF format (source mba.com).
- After finishing OG11 and Princeton for the first time, I gave a GMATPrep test in which I scored 620 m42 v31.
- I tried to improve SC by reading "Manhattan" and "Amateur approach to SC". I read the content of the two books and gave one more GMATPrep. Score 660 m44 v33.
- At this moment I realized, my quant is not good and I was struggling DS questions.
- To improve quant, I finished OG11 and Princeton again and I scored 680 in GMATPrep.
- On the verbal side, I was struggling with SC where my score was between 50% and 60%. To improve it, I finished Princeton and OG again.
- One more GMATPrep and my score were 690.
- With every score my quant was improving and my verbal was constant between 31 and 36. I also noticed that I was pretty constant in CR and RC but SC result was still the same around 60%.
- Finished a reading of Manhattan and solved SC from OG again. This time while solving the OG, my SC result was more than 85%.
- Gave one test of Princeton review. Score 580 m41 v30.
- Revised some more quant and next test, score 650 m51 v30. In the verbal section, SC was 90% but CR where I was scoring close to 90% went to 50%.
- My RC result is constant around 75%.
- On the test day, while giving the paper I felt quant was very tough and I was quite upset when I finished quant. While giving verbal, I felt very calm because the answers I was marking look to me correct and gave me a relief that I am scoring well in verbal which will compensate my overall score but the score was other way around 610 m48 v26.
I was completely devastated by verbal score which I never thought to be so low. I thought over it and my analysis is my verbal concepts are very weak and quant which went good still needs some more improvement.
I need your advice on how to prepare these coming months to score better and more than 700 in the next exam (which I think I can achieve).
-Should I opt for more material and if yes which ones?
-Should I go for private tutoring? I am quite lazy searching forums and that’s one of the reasons for which I never extensively searched a forum.
-What modifications I should be including in my current study plan.
-Since I have given GMATPrep 6 -7 times, the questions are repeating and are not my true score. Which other tests should I opt for measuring my ability correctly?
I am very determined to get a good score in GMAT and would appreciate your invaluable advice to take my score from 610 to 700+.
Thanks for your help and support.
A
:
