I've been a silent observer on here for about a month, but I figured since I took the GMAT yesterday I would post my story. Hopefully some people find it helpful.
First off, I was in an interesting situation. I have always been a good test taker, but I have NEVER put in a decent effort in school. I did take algebra, geometry, trig, and AP Stats in high school and did pass the AP Stat exam, but my level of committment was always very poor. So when I started looking at GMAT problems I realized my basic math skills were awful. I didn't know how to factor properly, and had no clue what the rules were for exponents or radicals. I had even forgotten how to add 2 equations together to get rid of 1 variable in algebra. This was all stuff I did in high school, but I'm 24 now and did very little math in college, so i forgot it all. So I decided to take a different approach.
I noticed using the official gmat guide was not helping. I could understand how every problem was done, but doing 1 exponent problem, and then doing 10 problems that didn't involve exponents was worthless. Anything I had learned in that first problem I had forgotten by the time I saw the next exponent question. This is when I decided to go back to the basics. I bought an algebra and a geometry book from amazon. (Like old school, high school text books). I read each one cover to cover, and after that my skills were sufficient for the gmat. I found this very helpful. The repitition of doing each time of problem 10-20 times really made sure I learned everything, and then when I saw it is problems going forward it was easy for me.
None of the verbal stuff I really studied for. RC I was good at because I read a lot, and for some reason always can understand what i'm reading. Sometimes the inference questions though on the manhattan gmat cats tripped me up, but 90% of those problems I got correct. CR also just came naturally to me. If you just sit down, read each problem very carefully, and really think about what is being said, these questions because very unambigious, and really not much studying is needed. Sentence correction...forget it, I was awful at it. Luckily i'm a native english speaker, but I still have no clue what a subordinate clause is, couldn't point out the adjectives in a sentence, and the only thing I can tell is parallel are the hairs on the back of my neck when a setence correction problem gets thrown at me.
I did buy the manhattan gmat sentence correction book and went through a few chapters, but there were practically no examples, and you if didn't already have a strong grammar foundation, it was worthless. So i never really looked at it, and took virtually nothing from it.
In a nuthsell, how I studied.(in chronological order)
Read an algebra book
Read a Geometry book
Did all the PS and DS problems in the official gmat guide.
Attempted the last 50 SC problems in the official guide trying to pick up any patterns.
Took 1 mba.com Practice exam (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT1 (650)
Manhattan gmat CAT2 (700)
Manhattan gmat CAT3 (670)
Manhattan gmat CAT4 (680)
Manhattan gmat CAT5 (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT6 (710)
MBA.com practice exam 2 (660) (2 days before actual exam)
After each exam I went over every math problem I got incorrect, and read the explanation on how to do it. Verbal section I never went over.
Last thing I did was the night before the exam, I looked over the AWA section in the back of the offical gmat guide. Read the picking the side essay, and then read the argument essay and went to bed.
This is where it gets interesting...exam day....
So I sit down and start my first essay. I write an excellent essay citing examples, defending my position, and in the same format the offical gmat guide uses. Finish the first essay with 3 mintues to spare. I was relieved, because I never practiced writing an essay and it came naturally. Second essay questions pops up and i'm all ready to analyzt an arugment....ohh @#$@#[email protected] two is asking me to pick a side on something and defent it. My firt essay I was supposed to analyze the argument, and the second essay I was supposed to pick a side. The offical gmat guide had the pick a side essay first, and the analysis of an argument second, so I figured the actual exam was setup that way as well. So I deff. didn't answer what they were asking in the first essay and I knew it. It took me about 10 minutes to come to that conclusion so I spent the last 20 writing my essay picking a side. Still pulled of at least a solid 5, but who knows what i will score on the first 1. I did point out a lot of holes in the argument, but instead of saying "The argument is flawed because it negletics to account for ********** " I wrote things like "I don't agree with the companies conclusion because other companies have done things differently, and have been sucessful". So i kind of pointed out holes in the argument but indirectly, should be interesting to see how that is graded...that is one thing im reallly pissed about. I was nervous going in there, and just panicked, was worried about time, didn't read the directions fully, and wrote an irrellevant essay. So that's my advice on that....
The actual exam. Math was 10 times easier than anything I saw on manhattan gmat. Verbal section the sentence correction problems were surpisingly easy, but the CR and RC were hard. Usually I can pick out the best answers easily, but these I could narrow it down to 1 or 2 answers, but it was never 100% clear. But I got through everything.
Quant 48 Verbal 40 Overall 710. AWA...waiting for scores, but not optimistic.
I'm not taking the exam again, so hopefully I get lucky and get a 3 and a 5 on the essays and still pull off a 4 average. Also, lets hope grad schools don't care at all about the AWA scores.
But that's my ridiculous GMAT story. Feel free to comment, and I hope you find this post at least entertaining if not useful.
First off, I was in an interesting situation. I have always been a good test taker, but I have NEVER put in a decent effort in school. I did take algebra, geometry, trig, and AP Stats in high school and did pass the AP Stat exam, but my level of committment was always very poor. So when I started looking at GMAT problems I realized my basic math skills were awful. I didn't know how to factor properly, and had no clue what the rules were for exponents or radicals. I had even forgotten how to add 2 equations together to get rid of 1 variable in algebra. This was all stuff I did in high school, but I'm 24 now and did very little math in college, so i forgot it all. So I decided to take a different approach.
I noticed using the official gmat guide was not helping. I could understand how every problem was done, but doing 1 exponent problem, and then doing 10 problems that didn't involve exponents was worthless. Anything I had learned in that first problem I had forgotten by the time I saw the next exponent question. This is when I decided to go back to the basics. I bought an algebra and a geometry book from amazon. (Like old school, high school text books). I read each one cover to cover, and after that my skills were sufficient for the gmat. I found this very helpful. The repitition of doing each time of problem 10-20 times really made sure I learned everything, and then when I saw it is problems going forward it was easy for me.
None of the verbal stuff I really studied for. RC I was good at because I read a lot, and for some reason always can understand what i'm reading. Sometimes the inference questions though on the manhattan gmat cats tripped me up, but 90% of those problems I got correct. CR also just came naturally to me. If you just sit down, read each problem very carefully, and really think about what is being said, these questions because very unambigious, and really not much studying is needed. Sentence correction...forget it, I was awful at it. Luckily i'm a native english speaker, but I still have no clue what a subordinate clause is, couldn't point out the adjectives in a sentence, and the only thing I can tell is parallel are the hairs on the back of my neck when a setence correction problem gets thrown at me.
I did buy the manhattan gmat sentence correction book and went through a few chapters, but there were practically no examples, and you if didn't already have a strong grammar foundation, it was worthless. So i never really looked at it, and took virtually nothing from it.
In a nuthsell, how I studied.(in chronological order)
Read an algebra book
Read a Geometry book
Did all the PS and DS problems in the official gmat guide.
Attempted the last 50 SC problems in the official guide trying to pick up any patterns.
Took 1 mba.com Practice exam (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT1 (650)
Manhattan gmat CAT2 (700)
Manhattan gmat CAT3 (670)
Manhattan gmat CAT4 (680)
Manhattan gmat CAT5 (640)
Manhattan gmat CAT6 (710)
MBA.com practice exam 2 (660) (2 days before actual exam)
After each exam I went over every math problem I got incorrect, and read the explanation on how to do it. Verbal section I never went over.
Last thing I did was the night before the exam, I looked over the AWA section in the back of the offical gmat guide. Read the picking the side essay, and then read the argument essay and went to bed.
This is where it gets interesting...exam day....
So I sit down and start my first essay. I write an excellent essay citing examples, defending my position, and in the same format the offical gmat guide uses. Finish the first essay with 3 mintues to spare. I was relieved, because I never practiced writing an essay and it came naturally. Second essay questions pops up and i'm all ready to analyzt an arugment....ohh @#$@#[email protected] two is asking me to pick a side on something and defent it. My firt essay I was supposed to analyze the argument, and the second essay I was supposed to pick a side. The offical gmat guide had the pick a side essay first, and the analysis of an argument second, so I figured the actual exam was setup that way as well. So I deff. didn't answer what they were asking in the first essay and I knew it. It took me about 10 minutes to come to that conclusion so I spent the last 20 writing my essay picking a side. Still pulled of at least a solid 5, but who knows what i will score on the first 1. I did point out a lot of holes in the argument, but instead of saying "The argument is flawed because it negletics to account for ********** " I wrote things like "I don't agree with the companies conclusion because other companies have done things differently, and have been sucessful". So i kind of pointed out holes in the argument but indirectly, should be interesting to see how that is graded...that is one thing im reallly pissed about. I was nervous going in there, and just panicked, was worried about time, didn't read the directions fully, and wrote an irrellevant essay. So that's my advice on that....
The actual exam. Math was 10 times easier than anything I saw on manhattan gmat. Verbal section the sentence correction problems were surpisingly easy, but the CR and RC were hard. Usually I can pick out the best answers easily, but these I could narrow it down to 1 or 2 answers, but it was never 100% clear. But I got through everything.
Quant 48 Verbal 40 Overall 710. AWA...waiting for scores, but not optimistic.
I'm not taking the exam again, so hopefully I get lucky and get a 3 and a 5 on the essays and still pull off a 4 average. Also, lets hope grad schools don't care at all about the AWA scores.
But that's my ridiculous GMAT story. Feel free to comment, and I hope you find this post at least entertaining if not useful.
