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takegmat2010
- Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:29 am
Hi All,
Wanted to share my score and my brief GMAT story.
To begin with, I am a non-native English speaker. I work as an engineer in the US, but I wanted to get an MBA, change my current career, etc. a few months back when I almost got laid off, but then things kinda settled down a bit and I again got busy with my job and never really had time to think abt MBA/GMAT. Since I was almost fired, you can imagine I was giving more than 100%, actually more like 120%-150% of my time and efforts to the current job to prove that I am indeed useful to the company, though if I think about it now, I really didn't have to work that hard to prove something that should have been so obvious to my boss! Anyway lately, I started feeling that my current job doesn't really justify my capabilities, and eventually I decided to at least begin with GMAT and may be think about MBA next year or so.
So here is how I did it:
I bought OG 12, MGMAT guides (all of them, though I only used SC and Number properties books). Since I have an engineering background, Quant was pretty straightforward. So I figured very early on that spending time on MGMAT Quant books wouldn't be too beneficial for me, but I guess for those of you that feel Quant is not your strength, you will probably benefit from MGMAT Quant books just like I think I did from the SC book. I also started studying the MGMAT CR book but gave up on this book pretty soon 'cuz the book was discussing too many strategies/concepts for which I had no time. My test date was in 3 weeks (I had to take this date soon cuz I will have a lot happening at my work in the coming months).
But I mostly worked on the OG12. Worked on almost all the questions on Verbal, again not quite on Quant. I created an error log of the kind of questions I was getting wrong. I didn't find this very helpful unfortunately, because I couldn't quite figure out any particular weak area. I was getting answers wrong equally almost in all areas (parallelism, subj-verb, etc. in SC). I was doing relatively well in RC and CR and found SC was more difficult for me personally because English is indeed a funny language, while GMAT English can be even funnier and when you add a non-native speaker to the mix, it can be funniest...so what is it referring to here.?.. but I digress! Anyway, the error log was at least useful in letting me know that I was weak in all SC types so I put in efforts equally in all areas. I also took almost all MGMAT CATs, but I never really cared about the scores. (they ranged from 650s-750s). The reason I didn't care about the scores was that eventhough I had given all the exams under timed conditions, my actual "exam room" conditions (which was really my dining table) were far from quiet or real exam-like; there were several disturbances during my exams, I always had to take phone calls during the exam, take care of some family issues, etc all during the exam, I never could afford 3 hours of uninterrupted time just for myself. As far as GMATPrep was concerned, my scores were 710 on GMATPrep1 and 750 GMATPrep2. Again, not perfect exam conditions.
So when I went to the exam, I was quite confident that I would pass the 700 mark, but I really wanted to hit the 750 mark which I did not. I have a fully packed schedule ahead at my work (project deadlines, trainings, seminars and exams (yes exams!) that I need to worry abt in the next few months. So, I hope to re-take GMAT by this year end or so to achieve my target score of 750+.
I am not sure if this post was useful to anyone since I don't think there is much strategy or anything that I discussed. I spent 3 weeks in total, at least 2 hours during weekdays (1 hr at lunch time, 1-2 hrs after work) and for the 3 weekends that I had, I spent probably 5-6 hours both on Sat and Sun.
Anyway time to go to bed for now.
Peace!
Wanted to share my score and my brief GMAT story.
To begin with, I am a non-native English speaker. I work as an engineer in the US, but I wanted to get an MBA, change my current career, etc. a few months back when I almost got laid off, but then things kinda settled down a bit and I again got busy with my job and never really had time to think abt MBA/GMAT. Since I was almost fired, you can imagine I was giving more than 100%, actually more like 120%-150% of my time and efforts to the current job to prove that I am indeed useful to the company, though if I think about it now, I really didn't have to work that hard to prove something that should have been so obvious to my boss! Anyway lately, I started feeling that my current job doesn't really justify my capabilities, and eventually I decided to at least begin with GMAT and may be think about MBA next year or so.
So here is how I did it:
I bought OG 12, MGMAT guides (all of them, though I only used SC and Number properties books). Since I have an engineering background, Quant was pretty straightforward. So I figured very early on that spending time on MGMAT Quant books wouldn't be too beneficial for me, but I guess for those of you that feel Quant is not your strength, you will probably benefit from MGMAT Quant books just like I think I did from the SC book. I also started studying the MGMAT CR book but gave up on this book pretty soon 'cuz the book was discussing too many strategies/concepts for which I had no time. My test date was in 3 weeks (I had to take this date soon cuz I will have a lot happening at my work in the coming months).
But I mostly worked on the OG12. Worked on almost all the questions on Verbal, again not quite on Quant. I created an error log of the kind of questions I was getting wrong. I didn't find this very helpful unfortunately, because I couldn't quite figure out any particular weak area. I was getting answers wrong equally almost in all areas (parallelism, subj-verb, etc. in SC). I was doing relatively well in RC and CR and found SC was more difficult for me personally because English is indeed a funny language, while GMAT English can be even funnier and when you add a non-native speaker to the mix, it can be funniest...so what is it referring to here.?.. but I digress! Anyway, the error log was at least useful in letting me know that I was weak in all SC types so I put in efforts equally in all areas. I also took almost all MGMAT CATs, but I never really cared about the scores. (they ranged from 650s-750s). The reason I didn't care about the scores was that eventhough I had given all the exams under timed conditions, my actual "exam room" conditions (which was really my dining table) were far from quiet or real exam-like; there were several disturbances during my exams, I always had to take phone calls during the exam, take care of some family issues, etc all during the exam, I never could afford 3 hours of uninterrupted time just for myself. As far as GMATPrep was concerned, my scores were 710 on GMATPrep1 and 750 GMATPrep2. Again, not perfect exam conditions.
So when I went to the exam, I was quite confident that I would pass the 700 mark, but I really wanted to hit the 750 mark which I did not. I have a fully packed schedule ahead at my work (project deadlines, trainings, seminars and exams (yes exams!) that I need to worry abt in the next few months. So, I hope to re-take GMAT by this year end or so to achieve my target score of 750+.
I am not sure if this post was useful to anyone since I don't think there is much strategy or anything that I discussed. I spent 3 weeks in total, at least 2 hours during weekdays (1 hr at lunch time, 1-2 hrs after work) and for the 3 weekends that I had, I spent probably 5-6 hours both on Sat and Sun.
Anyway time to go to bed for now.
Peace!
