-
007.r.mason
- Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
- Posts: 57
- Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:25 pm
- Thanked: 5 times
- GMAT Score:730
Hello everyone!!
I just gave my GMAT score and got a 730( Q50, V39) and had a sigh of relief. I was quite happy considering my aim was to get a score of 720+ and it seemed like a good improvement from 3 months back when I got a 630 on my first GMAT prep (Q47, V31). After a day of drinking at Oktoberfest and 40 hrs of procrastination, I thought that I would share my experience since I got a lot of help from you all. I am still not 100% sober so please excuse any blabbering!!
My Strategy: My aim was to get a score of 720+. My strategy was to maximize my score in Quant and improve my Verbal to the achieve my target score. After reading some posts on this forum, I realized that I would need a combined score of 88 to 89. Hence, I decided to aim for 50¬+ on Quant and 38+ on Verbal. I liked the fact that this put me right around 80 percentile on Verbal. Furthermore, my goal was to excel in CR and RC and ensure that I improved in SC enough to hit 38. As one of my best friends once said: Man proposes, god disposes; in the end I did much better on SC, and probably not as well on RC.
Quant: I am from a technical background so my quant is very strong. However, I brushed up number properties, P&C/Prob. and Geometry from MGMAT books. These books are quite comprehensive and cover all grounds. I found Grockit to be quite useful for Quant as well (I have the same user name on Grockit as well, in case some of you have seen me). They have a good repository of excellent questions with good explanations which I could just practice or practice. Grockit gave me the flexibility to choose the difficulty level and the topic that I want to practice. I would highly recommend it for quant practice.
Sentence Correction: Like everyone, I started out with the MGMAT SC bible. It is by far the most comprehensive resources on the planet for SC preparation. I found it to be a great starting point, however I could only improve my accuracy to 60% which was not good enough. I then tried e-GMAT, after it was recommended by some of the most active members on the forum. e-GMAT helped my improve my accuracy up to 85-95% within a few weeks. I found the course to be very detailed, thoroughly enjoyable and extremely practical. After going through their lessons, I found that I could apply the concepts much more clearly. This is one of the few resources that gives a very practical process to solve SC problems. It was also very helpful that I could ask Payal if I had any doubts, something that's not possible with a book. I would highly recommend it. In the end, my SC was probably the strongest in Verbal
Critical Reasoning: I spent a lot of time on CR since I my goal was to excel in this. I bought the MGMAT and PowerScore guide and read both of them thoroughly. Contrary to some of the other reviews, I found the MGMAT guide to be more practical than PowerScore for GMAT. While I liked the Powerscore Bible, I felt that it was too theoretical and more suited to LSAT. Reading it felt like reading a legal agreement at work, where one has to look at the nitty gritty details. The MGMAT book on the other hand had more OG like problems, better strategies and was easier to follow. About 20 days back I also took a 3 hr class with Rajat from eGMAT and found it to be very useful as well. It gave a final push to my CR accuracy. I also used Grockit for solving problems. Overall, I spent about 30% of my prep time on CR!!
Reading Comprehension: Nothing much here; used MGMAT + Grockit. This became a lot easier once I mastered SC and all the question types in CR. I would also recommend that you subscribe to the paper edition of Wall Street Journal and Economist. These resources have some excellent passages.
Mock tests: I used MGMAT + GMAT prep. As most people have mentioned, I found GMAT prep to be the most accurate predictor. I liked the MGMAT exams for the analysis capabilities. These exams were a great help in tracking and planning my improvement.
Score Stuck in Mocks: I had a strange experience in my mocks that I would like to share. While giving my mocks, my score steadily improved in July, but I reached a saturation point towards the end of August. My GMAT score in Mock tests was suck at 690-700 range, primarily due to lack of improvement in Verbal. What was surprising was that my accuracy, while practicing CR, SC individually was great, but it did not translate correspondingly to the Mock test. I mentioned this to folks at e-GMAT and Rajat suggested that the reason this may be happening is because my mind is not able to switch fast enough from CR to RC to SC in the verbal section. He told me that while attempting a single section our mind is well trained to think in a methodical manner so the accuracy is higher. To ensure a higher accuracy in the exam, one needs to follow a methodical process while solving the problems in the exam to ensure high accuracy. I did that and could immediately see my score jump up and accuracy improve by 15% or so.
BTG: I would like to thank Eric and the people on this forum for their help. I must say that you guys post some excellent questions and doubts. I have not seen any forum that posses such an active community of experts and participants. The people here on this forum provided some excellent questions and have helped me improve.
Special Thanks: I would like to reserve my special thanks to a few individuals:
1. Ron Purenwal: Ron, your explanations are world class and help us tremendously. I sincerely thank you for your details posts.
2. Stacey: I am a fan of your articles, for they are very useful. I loved your article on the difference between 700 and 760 level student. I hope that you continue posting on the forum.
3. eGMAT: Rajat and Payal, Thanks a lot for your help. I did not expect such personalized feedback from a test prep company. Your SC offering and testing strategies are extremely practical and top notch.
4. Rahul and GMATGuruNY: Many thanks for your awesome explanations on the Quant section. I cant thank you enough.
5. Most active members of the GMAT community: Thanks a lot for posting your awesome questions.
Well I can't write any more so bye for now!!
Wanted to update that I got offer from multiple colleges including scholarships.. I have decided to save some money and will go to UC Davis (they offered generous fellowship)
I just gave my GMAT score and got a 730( Q50, V39) and had a sigh of relief. I was quite happy considering my aim was to get a score of 720+ and it seemed like a good improvement from 3 months back when I got a 630 on my first GMAT prep (Q47, V31). After a day of drinking at Oktoberfest and 40 hrs of procrastination, I thought that I would share my experience since I got a lot of help from you all. I am still not 100% sober so please excuse any blabbering!!
My Strategy: My aim was to get a score of 720+. My strategy was to maximize my score in Quant and improve my Verbal to the achieve my target score. After reading some posts on this forum, I realized that I would need a combined score of 88 to 89. Hence, I decided to aim for 50¬+ on Quant and 38+ on Verbal. I liked the fact that this put me right around 80 percentile on Verbal. Furthermore, my goal was to excel in CR and RC and ensure that I improved in SC enough to hit 38. As one of my best friends once said: Man proposes, god disposes; in the end I did much better on SC, and probably not as well on RC.
Quant: I am from a technical background so my quant is very strong. However, I brushed up number properties, P&C/Prob. and Geometry from MGMAT books. These books are quite comprehensive and cover all grounds. I found Grockit to be quite useful for Quant as well (I have the same user name on Grockit as well, in case some of you have seen me). They have a good repository of excellent questions with good explanations which I could just practice or practice. Grockit gave me the flexibility to choose the difficulty level and the topic that I want to practice. I would highly recommend it for quant practice.
Sentence Correction: Like everyone, I started out with the MGMAT SC bible. It is by far the most comprehensive resources on the planet for SC preparation. I found it to be a great starting point, however I could only improve my accuracy to 60% which was not good enough. I then tried e-GMAT, after it was recommended by some of the most active members on the forum. e-GMAT helped my improve my accuracy up to 85-95% within a few weeks. I found the course to be very detailed, thoroughly enjoyable and extremely practical. After going through their lessons, I found that I could apply the concepts much more clearly. This is one of the few resources that gives a very practical process to solve SC problems. It was also very helpful that I could ask Payal if I had any doubts, something that's not possible with a book. I would highly recommend it. In the end, my SC was probably the strongest in Verbal
Critical Reasoning: I spent a lot of time on CR since I my goal was to excel in this. I bought the MGMAT and PowerScore guide and read both of them thoroughly. Contrary to some of the other reviews, I found the MGMAT guide to be more practical than PowerScore for GMAT. While I liked the Powerscore Bible, I felt that it was too theoretical and more suited to LSAT. Reading it felt like reading a legal agreement at work, where one has to look at the nitty gritty details. The MGMAT book on the other hand had more OG like problems, better strategies and was easier to follow. About 20 days back I also took a 3 hr class with Rajat from eGMAT and found it to be very useful as well. It gave a final push to my CR accuracy. I also used Grockit for solving problems. Overall, I spent about 30% of my prep time on CR!!
Reading Comprehension: Nothing much here; used MGMAT + Grockit. This became a lot easier once I mastered SC and all the question types in CR. I would also recommend that you subscribe to the paper edition of Wall Street Journal and Economist. These resources have some excellent passages.
Mock tests: I used MGMAT + GMAT prep. As most people have mentioned, I found GMAT prep to be the most accurate predictor. I liked the MGMAT exams for the analysis capabilities. These exams were a great help in tracking and planning my improvement.
Score Stuck in Mocks: I had a strange experience in my mocks that I would like to share. While giving my mocks, my score steadily improved in July, but I reached a saturation point towards the end of August. My GMAT score in Mock tests was suck at 690-700 range, primarily due to lack of improvement in Verbal. What was surprising was that my accuracy, while practicing CR, SC individually was great, but it did not translate correspondingly to the Mock test. I mentioned this to folks at e-GMAT and Rajat suggested that the reason this may be happening is because my mind is not able to switch fast enough from CR to RC to SC in the verbal section. He told me that while attempting a single section our mind is well trained to think in a methodical manner so the accuracy is higher. To ensure a higher accuracy in the exam, one needs to follow a methodical process while solving the problems in the exam to ensure high accuracy. I did that and could immediately see my score jump up and accuracy improve by 15% or so.
BTG: I would like to thank Eric and the people on this forum for their help. I must say that you guys post some excellent questions and doubts. I have not seen any forum that posses such an active community of experts and participants. The people here on this forum provided some excellent questions and have helped me improve.
Special Thanks: I would like to reserve my special thanks to a few individuals:
1. Ron Purenwal: Ron, your explanations are world class and help us tremendously. I sincerely thank you for your details posts.
2. Stacey: I am a fan of your articles, for they are very useful. I loved your article on the difference between 700 and 760 level student. I hope that you continue posting on the forum.
3. eGMAT: Rajat and Payal, Thanks a lot for your help. I did not expect such personalized feedback from a test prep company. Your SC offering and testing strategies are extremely practical and top notch.
4. Rahul and GMATGuruNY: Many thanks for your awesome explanations on the Quant section. I cant thank you enough.
5. Most active members of the GMAT community: Thanks a lot for posting your awesome questions.
Well I can't write any more so bye for now!!
Wanted to update that I got offer from multiple colleges including scholarships.. I have decided to save some money and will go to UC Davis (they offered generous fellowship)
Last edited by 007.r.mason on Tue May 31, 2011 8:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Aim high!!
Achieve excellence!!
Achieve excellence!!
