Dana,
I would like to appreciate your effort in organizing the TOEFL forum. Honestly speaking, your inputs were of great help while preparing for the TOEFL. I would like to share my experience of taking TOEFL as it would benefit someone.
I took the GMAT in Feb 2010 and scored 660. I appeared for the TOEFL on April and scored 95 (R-26, L-24, S-24,W-21). Since most of the schools in the US have a minimum requirement of 100 I decided to re-take the exam.
I appeared for the exam on July 10th 2010 and scored 102 (R-24, L-27, S-24, W-27). Basically if you can crack the GMAT, TOEFL is nothing. All you need is some patience. I got a bit restless in my 1st attempt as there were some 9 listening sessions. As few might know, ETS has some of these questions for practice/evaluation purpose and they don't count towards your score. I certainly wished there were some breaks between Reading and Listening, I felt asleep during the listening section (during 1st attempt).
I bought the Official guide for TOEFL and borrowed Princeton Review from one of my friend. Both these books were handy during preparation. Princeton had more practice questions than the OG. Reading and listening were straight forward and pretty easier to crack provided you had the stamina to look at the monitor for couple of hours. So make sure to take the practice test for longer duration i.e. do all the sections in single stretch rather than taking regular breaks for each of those (I committed this mistake in my 1st attempt).
Be prepared for speaking otherwise you will find it difficult. People will be shouting during speaking section so just relax and be concise while conveying your main point. More importantly keep practicing on a regular basis.
Finally make use of the templates that Dana had suggested in the initial threads. That was of great help. I practiced a lot for Writing this time as my AWA score in GMAT was only 4.5 and I had to score more in TOEFL writing section to offset that. Unfortunately, OG didn't have enough practice questions for this section and I relied on Princeton, which was very good for writing. Make sure to listen and note down the points during the integrated essay writing. I missed few key points during my 1st attempt and that resulted in poor score. To hone your listening skills you may listen to CNN news etc.
-Deepak
I would like to appreciate your effort in organizing the TOEFL forum. Honestly speaking, your inputs were of great help while preparing for the TOEFL. I would like to share my experience of taking TOEFL as it would benefit someone.
I took the GMAT in Feb 2010 and scored 660. I appeared for the TOEFL on April and scored 95 (R-26, L-24, S-24,W-21). Since most of the schools in the US have a minimum requirement of 100 I decided to re-take the exam.
I appeared for the exam on July 10th 2010 and scored 102 (R-24, L-27, S-24, W-27). Basically if you can crack the GMAT, TOEFL is nothing. All you need is some patience. I got a bit restless in my 1st attempt as there were some 9 listening sessions. As few might know, ETS has some of these questions for practice/evaluation purpose and they don't count towards your score. I certainly wished there were some breaks between Reading and Listening, I felt asleep during the listening section (during 1st attempt).
I bought the Official guide for TOEFL and borrowed Princeton Review from one of my friend. Both these books were handy during preparation. Princeton had more practice questions than the OG. Reading and listening were straight forward and pretty easier to crack provided you had the stamina to look at the monitor for couple of hours. So make sure to take the practice test for longer duration i.e. do all the sections in single stretch rather than taking regular breaks for each of those (I committed this mistake in my 1st attempt).
Be prepared for speaking otherwise you will find it difficult. People will be shouting during speaking section so just relax and be concise while conveying your main point. More importantly keep practicing on a regular basis.
Finally make use of the templates that Dana had suggested in the initial threads. That was of great help. I practiced a lot for Writing this time as my AWA score in GMAT was only 4.5 and I had to score more in TOEFL writing section to offset that. Unfortunately, OG didn't have enough practice questions for this section and I relied on Princeton, which was very good for writing. Make sure to listen and note down the points during the integrated essay writing. I missed few key points during my 1st attempt and that resulted in poor score. To hone your listening skills you may listen to CNN news etc.
-Deepak
