Got a 730 ! Thanks everyone

[wilderness]

Hi,

I took the GMAT 2 days ago and thank God got a 730 (96 perce). Was really much higher than I was expecting. I did not get such a score in any of the real practice tests (saving the easiest).

Must thanks all the people here who helped so much with the preparation.

A special thanks to Ian Stewart, Tatiana Becker and of course to Eric. Still trying to figure out what magic genie Ian has

It would not have been possible without all your help.

I dont think I have many tips to give. There are abundant on the forum. Just 2 things I want to mention, which although are somewhat contradictory, but if you are able to strike a balance between the 2, you have found the clue.

• 1. Know yourself.
  Only then can you know which tip is for you and which has to be modified to suit you.
  
  2. When everyone else is saying that this approach is a better approach, then they might actually be right.
  e.g. two tips that somewhat troubled me throughout the preparations were
  i) doing SC by error elimiation rather than finding the fault and thinking of a correct sentence and then locating that sentence.
  ii) for CR and RC, read options E --> A. During the preparation it did not really seem very advantageous to me to use both these options. But I stuck to them because I could not think of a better method. And I believe both of these helped me really on the real exam.
  
  And LASTLY for the Quant, before solving any question, spend 3 seconds thinking what are the different ways to sovle the problem and what would be easiest for this given data. Spending 5 extra seconds would be a very good investment and by the time of the exam, it would be a habit rather than an additional effort and you would save a lot of time by avoiding difficult possibilites.

Best of luck and thank you all.

Step 1 finished. Now I have to move on to the other steps. I have yet to even short-list the schools. So I guess a lot is still to be done.

[Ian Stewart]

Congratulations, wilderness -- very well done!

[wilderness]

Thanks Ian and many many thanks ^10 for all your support during the preparation.

[jsl]

730 (96 perce). Was really much higher than I was expecting. I did not get such a score in any of the real practice tests (saving the easiest).

Well done wilderness! That's a great score - I'd love to get the same! Could I get some of your advice?

1. What were your practise scores and who did you take the tests with (Kaplan, MGMAT, etc?)? I have heard several stories of actual scores being higher than practise scores and I wondered if there was a correlation.
2. How many days, months (or years!) did you spend preparing for the GMAT?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

[wilderness]

Thanks jsl.

I did not mention my schedule because personally I dont think it is something that should be followed. I did not organize the preparation well and only put in real effort at the last moment. So just mentioning it here for sake of explanation withe CAUTION: Follow at your own risk message.

I have had a plan of doing an MBA since the last many years and so it was understood that I will have to take the GMAT sooner or later. I bought the firts book 2 years ago ! Barons. (not a recommended book btw) but I did not even open it for 1 year. Last year bought the GMAT review 11th edition, but that was also left to hibernate for another year... Until this spring when I finally decided its now or never. But for the first few months, it was impossible to find any time at all. I was in office in the morning, doing language course in the evening and only the weekend gave me any free time. And the weekend was dedicated to social life. So another 2 months passed by until April ended.

As May started, I began to get somewhat worried, because I knew I only had time till end July to do it. I had some things already some plans for August and I knew I will have no time then. So if it had to be finished by July and it all seemed a very short time. In mid May I attended a short 1-day course about GMAT and that I guess was a real starting point.

Some actions which I thought were helpful to me were
1) I set beatTheGMAT and SC correction blog as my home page. So everytime I opened the Internet explorer, there was a good chance that I would at least do something about GMAT, even if my purpose of going online was not preparing for GMAT.

2) I made flashcards very early. I had learned their importance during my language course, so I knew they would be helpful here. Infact I printed the beatTheGMAT flashcards back in March, even before I had really picked momentum for preparation.

3) I have been reading the Economist magazine religiously for more than 2 years now. It was not intended for GMAT, its just that I found it interesting and soon developed a habit. The weekend seemed incomplete without listening to it (Ever since they started the podcast, its been an important taks for Friday evening to download the latest Economist and listen to the main stories). I think that helped me a lot in refining my expression. I got a 5.5 in the essay and I think I know the silly mistake I made that led to the loss of 0.5. I realised it when the time was almost up.

4) During all my Quant practise tests, I used to start good, then somewhere between Question 7 and 20 I used to spend an awful lot of time on some questions so that by qurestion 20 I was really very short of time. So I knew this was my biggest weakness. In the actual Exam I made it a point of not spending more than resonable time on any questions, come what may.

5) When I was tired and did not want to write anything, I would just practise guessing i.e. I would take the OG and start with the low number of PS or DS and try to guess the answer without using any paper whatsover, relying on mental calculations, apporximations and intelliegnt guesses. I think it helped me a lot, because like it or not, you have to guess on some questions, except if you have prepared reallly well. CAUTION: I dont know whether the gurus recommend this, but I found guessing practise to be useful.[/list]

Practice Test .

800 score: I always got a Q 43, V 37 precentile in these tests. I took 5 of them and never managed to cross that threshold.
GMAT Prep: My scores are not true because in the first test I gave myself endless time to do it and before the second I had already done the OG 11, so many questions were repeated.

Kaplan: I got average 610 in those test, they are much tough then the actual ones, but here is the catch. HOw to you perform under pressure ??? If you are able to rise to the occassion and perform better under pressure than usual, then you will score higher than what Kaplan is showing you. But there are many people who get tense and then make mistakes which they would not have made during practise tests. In that case, their scores will not be much higher. I was lucky on the day I was much more composed and focused that I was during any of the practise tests.

In short, 730 has more to do with the blessing of God and prayers of my elders and less with my work.