500--->610

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500--->610

by kushal.adhia » Thu Nov 11, 2010 5:19 am
I JUST BEAT THE GMATTTTTT!!!
ok, well maybe I didn't.

610 (Q47, V28) may not be a great score or even a good score but then as far as i was concerned, any score above 600 was good. I am looking at a Master's in Management so I didn't really need that high a score. I feel I owe BTG a debrief because of all the help I received from the users and the experts.

Ok, enough of the small talk, down to business..

I studied for the GMAT for 4 months, (!!!!) well technically two cos for the first two months I didn;t do anything much. I joined a Kaplan classroom course in Chennai, India and used the kaplan course book and the 12 OG. And i took a total of 15 practice tests (ok ok, I know a 610 after 15 tests is not much). I got 9 tests with the kaplan course and my scores on it ranged from 500 to 590. I also took one Mgmat free test (620) and GMATPrep about 5 times (450-650).

If you're reading this (and thanks for reading this far) take the GMATPrep as many times as humanly possible. I was really nervous before the test and once I saw that the actual test screen looked EXACTLY like the gmatprep test screen, I settled down and started the essays.

The day before test day was just another normal day, went through the strategies for math and verbal, watched a couple of videos and did a couple of quizzes and went to bed early. Test Day. Woke up early, and was at the test centre abt 45 mins early. Went through all the security procedures :roll:

What I don't understand is the logic behind scanning the palm or palm veins or whatever they're called every time i enter and exit the testing room. I mean, the breaks are for 8 mins just about enough for a piss, a bite and a drink of water. Does GMAC really think that I am gonna get someone to go take my test instead of me???? I mean, my photo's displayed on my computer, for god's sake... These procedures themselves take about 2-3 mins and this means that the break's only for like 5 min at the most.

Anyway, I am late by a minute or so for the quants section so i begin to wonder if i would be able to finish the test on time and happily spend 5 mins on the first question, which was quite stupid in hindsight. Anyway, I start flying thru the questions and find them getting easier, so i started worrying if i had messed up. I finish the section a minute early and go on break again.

Next was the killer. The verbal section tore me apart today. This was again quite surprising as i always thought i was better at verbal than at math. I had no clue about the RC passages and struggled a bit with CR. On the whole, verbal was a huge failure today. Maybe a couple more questions right and i would have hit a 650... but then tough luck i guess...
Last edited by kushal.adhia on Tue Dec 28, 2010 9:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
Source: — I just Beat The GMAT! |

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by doitright » Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:19 am
hi there,

could you reccomend any suggestions for a verbal focused prep?
My story: https://www.beatthegmat.com/from-460-q32 ... 69863.html[/url]

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by kushal.adhia » Thu Nov 11, 2010 9:35 am
Hi

Just went thru ur story.. First of all an 80 point increase in a month is a HUGE improvement. Trust me, its no joke.

Obviously ur strength is quants, so in my opinion, u can lay off quants for a while. And by lay off i don't mean forgetting about quants totally; spend lesser time than normal on it.

With verbal, a little more practice and you should be able to do better.
I'm sorry that I can't really recommend anything for a verbal focussed prep cos as u can see, my verbal scores were nothing great.

All i can say is that while going thru the OG set a time of 2 mins for CR questions and 1-1.5 mins for the SC questions. RC is another area you can use to increase your score, but RC was the whole reason for a low score in my case.

Maybe you were just drained out mentally. The gmat is an extremely stressful test and you must mentally refresh urself during the breaks.