750 (Q48, V44) - My Studying Paid Off! - The Beat The GMAT Forum - Expert GMAT Help & MBA Admissions Advice

My Studying Paid Off!
After about 2 months of studying, I took the GMAT on Saturday, June 19th, and I managed to achieve my target score of 750!!!

Quantitative: Scaled Score = 48 (83rd Percentile)
Verbal: Scaled Score = 44 (97th Percentile)
Total: Scaled Score = 750 (98th Percentile)

I managed to increase my score by 100 points from my first practice test's score of 650. The Beat the GMAT community has played a key role in helping me study for the GMAT and attain my target score. The posts made to this forum have been extremely helpful and encouraging, and I would like to share my experience to help and encourage all of you.

My Background
I am a 30-year old who is looking to make a career change from IT to Accounting in a couple of years. I graduated college over 8 years ago with a BS in Computer Science, and I have been employed as a Web Developer and Support Analyst/Team Lead for the past 8 years in the finanical industry. In my current position, I work about 50-60 hours per week and I am always "on call" (this is in quotes because I seem to always be the go-to-go guy at 3 or 4 in the morning when the applications that I support have issues). I am married to a wonderful wife who is a doctor finishing up her second year of residency. She has been my greatest supporter during the past couple of months as we have worked on balancing my studying with her career, my career, and our two-year old son. I am planning to start business school in about two years during the summer of 2012 to obtain a Master's degree in Accounting or Accountancy.

Starting Out
About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to start a new career in accounting. To help me achieve this goal, I decided that going back to school for a Master's degree in Accounting would be the best way to do that. To get into business school, I knew that I would need to take the GMAT. However, it took me almost a year to finally take the GMAT because I found it too easy to make excuses to put it off until the fall, then the winter, then the spring, and then finally the summer (or at least a few days before its beginning). I don't remember exactly how it happened, but about a week before Easter this year, I woke up one morning and decided that it was time for me to get serious about business school and start studying for the GMAT. I cracked open two GMAT books (Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition and Kaplan's GMAT 800 which is copyrighted 2002) that I puchased in 2003 when I flirted with the idea of pursuing an MBA, and I began getting familiar with the GMAT Test. I spent about 3 weeks reading through Part One: The GMAT in Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition. About 2 weeks into my prep, I searched Google for advice regarding GMAT study plans, and I came across a helpful blog post (https://beatthegmat.blocked/2005/08 ... ience.html) from the Beat the GMAT site. This post is what introduced me to the Beat the GMAT community and helped me devise a study plan. I also read posts recommending that the Offical Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition was a necessity, so I ordered the book through Amazon.com. I also read posts talking about the special pen and erasable notepad that are used for the actual GMAT test in lieu of a pen/pencil and scratch paper, so I decided to purchase the Manhattan GMAT Test Simulation Booklet from Amazon.com at the same time.

Taking My Baseline Test
After becoming comfortable with the format of the GMAT exam, I determined that it would be wise for me to take about 2-3 months to study and practice for the GMAT before I actually took it. In order to develop a productive study plan, I felt that it would be helpful to take a full-length practice exam first. By taking the exam first, I believed that i would be able to help identify my strengths and weaknesses. I also felt that the results of the test would give me a better idea of a realistic target score for myself. Before taking my first test, I had dreams of scoring in the high 700's or 800. I downloaded the PowerPrep software (I believe that this was the software used before the GMATPrep software came out), and I took Practice Test #1 on April 17th. I scored a 650 (Quant=47; Verbal=34) on the test. This first practice test score quickly deflated my expectations of attaining a score of 800. After a few minutes of wondering what went wrong, I dove back into the test to figure out what questions I got wrong to determine my biggest weaknesses. First, I reviewed every question that I got wrong. Before looking at the correct answer and explanation, I tried answering the incorrect question again without any time limits to see if I had made a careless mistake. I copied all of the incorrect questions down on paper so I could review them again and identify the concepts that gave me trouble. Finally, I reviewed all of the questions on the test and categorized them by question type (e.g. Problem Solving, Data Sufficiency, Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, or Critical Reading), and I tallied the number that I got wrong and right by type. Here is how the results broke down for me:

Data Sufficieny: 11 Right, 5 Wrong = 68% Right
Problem Solving: 18 Right, 3 Wrong = 85% Right
Total Quant: 29 Right, 8 Wrong = 78% Right
Sentence Correction: 11 Right, 5 Wrong = 68% Right
Critical Reasoning: 4 Right, 7 Wrong = 36% Right
Reading Comprehension: 13 Right, 1 Wrong = 92% Right
Total Verbal: 28 Right, 13 Wrong = 68% Right

Looking soley at the percentages by question type, I ranked the following question types in order of weakest to strongest:
Critical Reasoning
Sentence Correction
Data Sufficiency
Problem Solving
Reading Comprehension

With my baseline score of 650 and a good assessment of my strengths and weaknesses based on question types, I was ready to devise my study plan and schedule my actual GMAT exam.

Devising a Study Plan
The results of my baseline test helped me lay out the schedule of my study plan. I decided that two months of studying would be sufficient, and I logged onto the GMAT web site to find testing dates that would work for my schedule. I identified some time slots in the afternoon on Saturday, June 19th that would work for me, so I set that date as the target end date of my study plan. I wrote up the following schedule for my study plan which shows the question types to focus on each week.

Week 1 (April 18th - April 24th): Critical Reasoning
Week 2 (April 25th - May 1st): Critical Reasoning & Sentence Correction
Week 3 (May 2nd - May 8th): Sentence Correction
Week 4 (May 9th - May 15th): Data Sufficiency
Week 5 (May 16th - May 22nd): Data Sufficiency & Problem Solving
Week 6 (May 23rd - May 30th): Problem Solving
Week 7 (May 31st - June 5th): Reading Comprehension
Week 8 (June 6th - June 12th): Concept Review & AWA
Week 9 (June 13th - June 19th): Concept Review & AWA

For each area of focus, I decided that I would practice about 20 questions per day from the 3 books that I owned (Official Guide, Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition, and Kaplan's 800). As I would move on to a new question type, my plan was to continue practicing about 5 questions each day from the previous question types that I had practiced in the past.

On April 20th, I registered for my GMAT test two months in advance to ensure that I secured my slot to take the test on June 19th. Also, by registering for the test at that time, I placed more pressure on myself to follow through with my study plan since I just dropped $250 to register for the test.

While answering practice questions, I recorded all of my answers in spreadsheets to track right/wrong answers, amount of time spent answering each question, general feeling about my answer (e.g. Good, Slow, Not Sure), error type (e.g. Careless Error or Concept Error), and comments about the question indicating either the concept and/or strategies for getting similar questions correct the next time. I used a GMAT Timer application during my first two weeks of studying, but switched to the OG Stopwatch on the Manhattan GMAT Practice Center website which I received access to after purchasing the Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction GMAT Strategy Guide book.

Official Guide Diagnostic Test
To reaffirm the assessment of my strengths and weaknesses among the Verbal question types, I decided to take the Verbal Diagnostic Test that is in the Offical Guide on April 18th. The results of my Diagnostic Test were as follows.

Reading Comprehension: 16 Right, 1 Wrong = 94% (Excellent OG Rating)
Critical Reasoning: 11 Right, 6 Wrong - 65% (Above Average OG Rating)
Sentence Correction: 14 Right, 4 Incorrect - 78% (Above Average OG Rating)

The OG Diagnostic Test results reaffirmed my strengths and weaknesses in Verbal. However, I felt more confident in improving my weakest area, Critical Reasoning, since I made a 29% improvement in the number of questions that I answered correctly from the first practice test that I had taken the previous day.

Critical Reasoning
I had trouble finding resources to help me improve in the Critical Reasoning portion of the GMAT. Some resources referred to study guides related to the LSAT since that test is supposed to have more difficult Critical Reasoning questions. I decided to look to two resources that I already had available to me: Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition and Kaplan's 800. The former resource provided a good overview of the different types of Critical Reasoning questions (e.g. Stengthen/Weaken, Assumptions, Inferences). The most useful piece of advice that I found was to read the question stem first before reading the argument. I think that this tip may have helped me save 30-60 seconds per CR question since I didn't find myself re-reading the argument as often. Kaplan's 800 book provided great examples of difficult CR problems, and I think that helped me most in mastering the Critical Reasoning section. One of the best strategies that helped me with Critical Reasoning questions was applying the Denial Test to Assumption questions. The one question type that I had the most trouble with was the bold-faced question, but fortunately, I didn't encounter any bold-faced questions on my actual GMAT exam.

Sentence Correction
During my first day of studying the Sentence Correction portion of the GMAT, i quickly discovered that the books (Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition, Kaplan's 800, and Official Guide) that I owned at the time did not contain enough detail to help me improve. When I read posts in the Beat the GMAT forums and searched online for book reviews, I found that the Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction GMAT Strategy Guide was the book to purchase. I was able to find a good price for this book on Amazon.com, and I received the book (Fourth Edition) at the beginning of Week 3 of my study plan. I devoted extra time to study Sentence Correction because I wanted to go through each of the concepts presented in the Manhattan GMAT book. This book was invaluable to me, and I strongly believe that it helped push my Verbal scaled score from 40/41 to 44, which is roughly 40-50 points. The majority of concept errors that I encountered while taking practice tests and answering practice questions were related to idioms and pronouns. The Manhattan GMAT book was an excellent study guide for mastering these concepts as well as subject-verb agreement, parallelism, modifiers, verb tense, mood, & voice, and comparisons. The two best strategies that I learned for Sentence Corrections questions are:
1. Read the entire question first, including the portion that is not underlined.
2. Split the answer choices at the beginning and end. This strategy is usually reliable at eliminating 2 or 3 answers that you know are wrong right off the bat.

Data Sufficiency
Out of all of the question types on the GMAT, this was the most foreign type to me. Practice Data Sufficiency questions as much as you can! I believe that you will become more comfortable with this question type over time. The best advice that i can offer you for this question type is to memorize the answers and automatically eliminate answers after evaluating each piece of information. Also, be sure to evaluate the two pieces of information (Statements (1) and (2)) as independent of one another first. It is very helpful to draw a grid with A, B, C, D, E written in 5 columns.

1. If you determine that Statement (1) is sufficient, eliminate choices B, C, and E immediately.
2. If you determine that Statement (1) is not sufficient, eliminate choices A and D immediately.
3. If you determine that Statement (2) is sufficient, eliminate choices A, C, and E immediately.
4. If you determine that Statement (2) is not sufficient, eliminate choices B and D immediately.

Problem Solving
As a Computer Science major in undergrad and a current IT professional, I found that the Problem Solving section of the GMAT was straightforward. Kaplan's GMAT 2003 Edition book had a nice GMAT Math Reference section that covered 100 topics. I reviewed these topics and made flashcards of the topics that had given me trouble in my practice questions and tests. When I took my actual GMAT test, it seemed like there were 3 or 4 problems related to groups. During my practice sessions, I discovered that I was taking too much time on these types of questions, so I reviewed these topics, and I found some useful strategies for answering group questions quickly.
1. Draw Venn Diagrams to visualize the problem.
2. If the problem involves 2 groups with overlapping members with members possibly belonging to both or neither group (look for the keywords "both" and/or "neither"), remember the following equation: Group A + Group B + Neither - Both = Total. This equation helped me on both a Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency problem on my actual GMAT test.
3. If the problem involves groups with distinct "either/or" categories (e.g. male/female & dentist/doctor), organize the information into a grid (Male, Female, & Total across the top of the grid, and Dentist, Doctor, & Total along the side of the grid...fill in the grid with the pieces of information and calculate any pieces of information that can be derived from the information filled out in the grid).

Reading Comprehension
Other than practice tests, I didn't focus my studies on Reading Comprehension since it was my greatest strength among the different GMAT question types. People have different ways of reading and comprehending material, so I'm not sure that there is really a one size fits all approach to this question type. The way that I attack this question is by reading the entire passage first before looking at the first question. While reading the passage, I try to identify the topic, the primary purpose, and the author's position. Sometimes I zone out while reading these passages, especially if I have trouble getting interested. When I catch myself zoning out, I stop myself, take a deep breath, regain my focus, and re-read from the beginning of the paragraph where I zoned out. I am usually able to answer the questions within a minute after reading the passage, and I find that I gain extra time to complete the Verbal section. If you can be an active reader while reading the RC passages, I think that you will be able to answer the Reading COmprehension questions easily.

Practice Tests
Including my baseline test, I took four GMAT practice tests during my two months of studying.

Practice Test #1 - April 17th - PowerPrep Test #1 (650: Q47/V34)
Practice Test #2 - May 1st - PowerPrep Test #2 (730: Q49/V41)
Practice Test #3 - May 22nd - GMATPrep Test #1 (700: Q44/V41)
Practice Test #4 - June 5th - GMATPrep Test #2 (710: Q47/V40)

I feel that I improved significantly in Verbal and marginally in Quantitative because my study plan focused more on the Verbal sections than the Quantitative sections. In retrospect, I think that I should have performed an assessment of my Quantitative strengths and weaknesses at a concept level (e.g. Groups, Prime Factorization, Probabiilty, etc.) near the beginning of my study plan. Throwing out the highest and lowest Quantitative scaled scores, I was scoring a 47, and when it came to the actual test, I only improved by 1 point when I scored a 48.

After taking my last practice test two weeks before my official exam, I felt like I had reached a plateau where I wasn't able to improve my score by more than 10 points. During the last two weeks of my prep, I went through my previous practice tests and problem sets to identify concepts that consistently gave me trouble (either getting the question wrong or taking more than 3 minutes to answer it). On the Quantitative side, I decided to focus my concept review on group problems and prime factorization. On the Verbal side, I decided to focus my concept review on idioms and pronouns. Although I continued to work on problem sets (primarily all questions classified as Hard in OG), my study plan changed when I began writing flashcards and diving into my study guides with more detailed focus on the particular concepts that gave me the most trouble. Based on the results of my official GMAT exam, I feel that the concept reviews performed during my last 2 weeks of studying helped me break through the low 700's barrier and reach my goal of a 750 on the GMAT.

Days Leading Up to the GMAT
Two days before I took my exam, I limited my studying to about an hour each night with a quick review of my flashcards and templates for the AWA essays. I tried taking it as easy as possible, eat healthy, and get plenty of sleep. On the night before I took the GMAT, I went to bed about 2 hours earlier than I normally do. I managed to get about 10 hours of sleep, which I think helped me feel mentally alert and physically rested for my exam which was scheduled at 3PM. I started out my morning with a light breakfast of fruit and water. After breakfast, I exercised by taking a 30-minute bike ride around my neighborhood. In the late morning, About 4 hours before my exam, I went to the barber shop to get my hair cut, which included a 5-minute upper back and neck massage. The massage was a great way to release the tension in my mind and body since thoughts were racing through my head about scoring below, at, and above my expectations. My wife continued to provide words of encouragement throughout the day to make me feel more confident about the test. I packed a bag of some fruit snacks, fruit strips, and a bottle of water so I would have something to eat and drink during the two exam breaks. Since the testing center was about 45 minutes from my home and my appointment time was at 3PM, I left around 1:15PM, and arrived at the testing center right around 2PM.

Taking the GMAT
When I arrived at the test center, I was asked which test I was taking, and I was given a sheet indicating the testing center's policies and procedures for the GMAT exam. On the back side of the sheet, a breakdown of the times for each section, tutorials, instructions, submitting/cancelling scores, and breaks were provided. At my testing center, the break times were set at 8 minutes, which is what I had expected. The testing center administrator asked me to provide my driver's license, scanned both my left and right palms, and took my picture after I finished reading the test center's policies and procedures. I was directed to an empty locker where I could store my wallet, cell phone, keys, and snacks during the test. I went back to the testing area with my locker key and driver's license in my pockets, and I met another testing center administrator who scanned my right palm. She led me to my testing station, logged into the computer, and started the test's tutorial. I went through the tutorial, selected the five programs that I wanted to send my scores to, and started the AWA section of the test.

There were no unexpected surprises with the AWA section. I started the section with the Analysis of an Argument essay and ended with the Analysis of an Issue essay. I felt pretty good about my Analysis of an Argument essay, and I think that I should score in the 5 range. I struggled with the Analysis of an Issue essay because I couldn't come up with strong examples to support my argument. The Analysis of an Issue essay was the most dissappointing section of the exam for me, and I think that I will be scoring in the 4 range. After finishing my essays, I took my first break, ate some fruit snacks and a fruit strip, and I refocused my attention on the next section of the GMAT: Quantitative.

The Quantitative section was about as difficult as the two GMATPrep practice tests I had taken during the previous month. I think I came across at least 3 problems relating to groups or sets, so I was elated that my concept review was worthwhile since I was very confident in my answers to the questions (1 was a Data Sufficieny question, and 2 were Problem Solving questions). I had about a minute and a half left when I reached the 37th question, which I am pretty sure that I got wrong because nerves kicked in and I forced myself to take an uneducated guess. When the second break came, I went through the same routine that I followed during my first break. I splashed some cold water on my face, which I think helped make me more alert and ready for the final 75 minutes of the test.

The Verbal section seemed easier than it had in any practice tests that I had taken. I think that there was one Reading Comprehension and one Critical Reasoning question that I was not 100% certain about. As for Sentence Correction, I came across only a handful questions (maybe 3 or 4) that gave me any problems. I was a little nervous when I finished this section since I didn't feel like I saw many difficult questions, which typically indicates that you are scoring high. I started the 41st question with about 3 minutes remaining in the exam, and I took my time to make sure that I was 100% confident in my answer for the Sentence Correction question. When the section ended, the butterflies started fluttering in my stomach as I was anxious to see what my final score was. When the score finally showed up on my screen, I was in disbelief. After rubbing my eyes to make sure that I wasn't seeing things, I felt a sense of excitement and relief at the same time. I walked out of the test center with the unofficial results in my hand and a wide smile on my face.

Conclusion
Once again, I would like to thank the Beat the GMAT community for helping me achieve a 750 on the GMAT. I hope that my debriefing and advice will help you beat the GMAT too. Having a network of people supporting you through your GMAT test prep and beyond is invaluable. I would especially like to thank my wife, my mother-in-law, and my son for being so understanding and supportive.

Resources
Goodman, Eric and Staff of Kaplan, Inc. GMAT 800.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
Graduate Management Admission Council. The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 12th Edition.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2009.
Manhattan GMAT Prep, Inc. Sentence Correction GMAT Strategy Guide, Fourth Edition.
New York: MG Prep Inc., 2009.
Staff of Kaplan, Inc. Kaplan GMAT 2003 with CD-ROM.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

750 (Q48, V44) - My Studying Paid Off!

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