I sure did beat it...but unexpectedly

[aniket1984]

This is my first post in the forum. I did not follow the BTG closely during the prep. stage but intend to be the keen contributor and follower during the apping phase. I recently scored 740 (Q:50, V:40) on GMAT. It came as a pleasant surprise as never in my practice tests I scored this much.

My GMAT preparation started around 3 months ago with the score of 630 in MGMAT CAT (Q:46 V:36). I kept realistic targets along the way and with an eventual aim of 720. Following are my scores in subsequent practice tests in the chronological order.

1) MGMAT CAT2: 590 (Q:48or 46, V:33)
2) MGMAT CAT3: 680 (Q:48, V: Dnt remember)
3) MGMAT CAT4: 700 (Q:49, V:36 or 37)
4) MGMAT CAT5: 730 (Q:50, V:39)
5) GMAT Prep1: 710 (Q:49, V:36)
6) MGMAT CAT6: 700 (Q:49, V: not sure)
7) GMAT Prep2: 700 (Q:49, V:36) (taken 4 days before the actual exam)

First thing I did was to join the Manhattan GMAT classroom course which indeed play a huge role in keeping me motivated and building strong sentence correction concepts. I did not want to give a half hearted attempt as I was not going to give it the 2nd time. Now after going through the class I will strongly advise everyone to enroll in some course before the exam as its benefits are 2 folds:

1) You start enjoying the preparation
2) You hear so many different view points on varied issues ranging from best way to approach a problem, reasons to go for MBA, opinion about schools and manu others.

Coming back (enough of digression), my primary sources of preparation were MGMAT books (read through all the verbal and quant cover to cover), OG and Quant & Verbal supplemental. Also, all of my tests were taken in a notch more difficult condition than the actual one (either late in night or early in morning). This was not planned but happened incidentally because of the work reasons but I think that it played to my advantage.

Also, I did devote a lot of time on developing right strategies to tackle the exam. In my later practice exams and on the actual test I was able to finsh both of my sections around 6 min before the finish time. Compare this to my first 3 practice test in which I always guessed last 5-6 questions on quant due to shortage of time. The focal point of my strategy was to abandon the approach after the first attempt (and instead go in for the educated guess) no matter how easy the question was. The use of this startegy during the practice tests allowed me to be prepared for the scenario where I knew that I may have to guess on 30% of the questions. A lack of the above can put you in a tail spin on the exam day. And sencond thing I made sure was never to rush through the questions which included not reading it completely, misinterpreting it in a rush, ignoring the change of units.

After I had my strategy put in place, concepts strong enough and OG questions done, I spent a lot of time practicing from "the thousand sentences". This is when my hit rate on sentence correction questions increased from 40-50% to 70%. And I went through the questions in last 3 days (took off from work and put in an inordinate amount of effort in these 3 days).

Luckily or for other reasons, my strategy worked fine for me. And I strongly believe just practicing the questions is not good enough if you do not spend lot of time on strengthening the concepts and developing implementable strategy.

PS: I did not discriminate between tough and easy qustions. I spent the same amount of time on both types. Never understood the point of practicing 750-800 level questions alone. Chances are that you will get the easier ones wrong on the exam and never actually see the 750 level questions. Also, make sure that you know why you got a question wrong.

Good Luck to all other candidates,
Aniket[/list][/list]

[Simon]

Do you work for MGMAT.

[aniket1984]

@SIMON: "NO"

[pemdas]

skip questions or abandon strategy can make well a difference in scaled scores up to 6-7 points. Then again to be able to score 49-50 one must be prepared fully and experience the full flavor of actual GMAT type questions.

Perhaps your course materials included a lot of OG like questions which helped you keep the right look in exam.

congratulations on your 740th and the best of luck with your apps!

[gmatdriller]

Hi Aniket1984,
congratulations on your awesome score on your recent gmat test.

Kindly advice; did you say you were prepared to guess(worst case) on 30% of the questions?
"The use of this strategy during the practice tests allowed me to be prepared for the scenario where I knew that I may have to guess on 30% of the questions..."

That means on Quant(37 questions) you may guess on 11 questions, right? I thought guessing on 11/37
questions would be way away from 700.

What is the optimal number of guesses on both Quant and Verbal?

Any advice please?

[aniket1984]

Just let me clarify a few things here. I perhaps inappropriately used the term "Guess" very loosely. It was supposed to be analogous to "educated guess". And particularly in my case, I successfully used it for the probs. which had relatively complex Algebraic expressions. For some reason, my first reaction to approach this kind of ques. is not through substitution or plugging in any number, but continue to solve it using the unknown variables (x, y or z) as they are given in the problem. Though, a well intentioned approach and with fewer chances of getting it wrong (for me personally), is very time consuming.

Even during the test and other practice tests, I would first try to solve these ques. without the substitutions. But I made it a point that if unable to solve within 2 mins I would quickly pick up few smart numbers and try to match my answer with the options given. I think that it requires some practice to get adapted to this technique.

I used the same technique for the absolute expressions questions and rate problems (in case there were unknown quantities). Though I am not a big fan of solving the quant. problem in this manner but it has proven to be a very practical and effective approach.

[hoji]

@aniket1984

apparently, you scored higher on the real test on Verbal than on GMATPrep. how do you assess the Verbal section on the real test? is it more or less difficult than GMATPrep?

[aniket1984]

Difficult to judge as it depends on the distribution of questions from one's strong & weak sections. Overall, I feel the 2 to be of same difficulty level. In GMAT prep though you see some questions repeated from OG which can make the things bit easier in practice tests. Besides, the overall fluctuation can depend on lot of environmental and physical factors on the test day. I personally carried a 5 hour energy had one before the quant section. Therefore, I did not confront my biggest nemesis "weariness" during the test.

Also, my biggest pain point in verbal was SC and I made sure to put in a substantial amount of effort in last few days before the test.

I would suggest all the test takers to devote time on identifying the weak topics by assessing the practice test results. Review the concepts for those topics again and make sure you understand why do you get these questions wrong viz. is it failure to identify them, wrong techniques, repeated carelessness because you think of them to be too easy etc.