I just Beat The GMAT!

Hi mates,

As already posted, I got total 690 yesterday with Q-51 and V-31

I got few PMs for detailed debrief for Quant.

So this is debrief:

Verbal: I learned from mistakes and really improved a lot in verbal SC and CR. I was consistently scoring 35 , 35+ in practice tests including GMAT Prep and was confident for 35+, but got just 31 in actual GMAT and therefore wont say anything about Verbal.

Quant: Truly speaking I have good Maths. background and didn't put great efforts for Quant. However, I was not scoring 51 initially.

My scores:
Princeton CAT 1: 650[Q-50, V-31]
GMAT Prep 1: 650[Q-49, V-30]
MGMAT CAT 1: 670[Q-48, V-34] - Unfortunately I needed to pause the test for 5 minutes during Quant as Quant was pretty tough and I didn't do any practice.

Princeton CAT 1: 690[Q-51, V-35]--- Quant of Princeton is very easy and is of same level as OG.
MGMAT CAT 2: 690[Q-50, V-35]
MGMAT CAT 3: 680[Q-49, V-35]
GMAT Prep 2: 720[Q-51, V-36]
MGMAT CAT 4: 700[Q-51, V-35]
GMAT Prep 1[2nd time]: 760[Q-51, V-42] - some verbal questions were repeated from 1st test.
MGMAT CAT 5: 730[Q-51, V-38]


As you can see I didn't get 51 in initial tests. Then I realized that I need to brush up the concepts and need to increase speed.

Resource for Quant:
1. Basic concepts through OG and Princeton[mainly focused on OG, which has good elementary concepts]
And
2. MGMAT tests. MGMAT tests were really very very helpful and if done in proper way, can alone reach u to 51.
And
3. Problems from beatthegmat forums.

CAUTION:
If you want to score 51, beware of OG and Princeton tests. These two resources hardly provide challenging problems[exceptions are always there].

Analysis of Quant section:
In initial tests, I made 6-7 silly mistakes and 3-4 conceptual mistakes. Silly mistakes are always much more dangerous than conceptual ones as no one can teach u to avoid those mistakes[Though I'll try to provide some tips later in this section ].

I focused on all the problems[including the ones that I solved correctly] of MGMAT tests of Quant section and treated them as concepts and not just problems.


Tips for good Quant score:
The idea to do a problem in Quant is to get the concept and TO EXTEND IT FURTHER[extending is very very important] so that the same idea can be applied to related problems. I noted down such concepts.
e.g. Whenever a question deals with inequality, always keep in mind that "u need to test inequality for proper fractions, negative numbers and positive integers or improper fractions" as the sign changes for these different type of numbers.

Keep in mind that GMAT will hardly give you a problem which is not covered in the concepts you have already covered in STANDARDIZED tests. Though the framing of problem may differ but the concept will be same.[Identifying the concept is key]

Probability and P&C: - I am weak in Probability and P&C but I am good in GMAT Probability and GMAT P&C I hope u got the idea. GMAT wont ask out of box Prob or P&C problems. There are a very limited types and these get repeated. e.g. Choosing 2 red and 3 green balls from 4 red, 5 green and 3 white balls.

so you can easily learn GMAT Prob and GMAT P&C.

If you need 51, you need to be fairly strong in inequalities as normally I have seen 3-4 problems per STANDARDIZED test.

In Work-time problems, you can solve even the seemingly hardest problems by assuming total work as LCM of no. of days taken by all guys. Once you do this, such problems are piece of cake.


How I avoided Silly mistakes
This is the area on which I worked and am really happy to see improvement. I brought down my silly mistakes from 6-7 each tests to 0 or 1 per test.

In DS, problems always think TWICE before marking C or E. Its a common GMAT problem to give an impression that you need both A and B to solve the problem while you can solve just by using A or B[both integers].
e.g. 2a + 3b = 10
21a + 23b = 67[i don't exactly remember the example]
Its very very easy to mark C as we think that we need 2 equations for 2 unknown variables. Try putting values for a and b[if feasible] in equation 2 as only a=1 and b=2 will fit.

or in 2a + 3b=10 and 4a+6b=20, its tempting to mark C but both of the above eqns. are essentially same.

I know these might be pretty obvious problems but one need to be cautious in such problems as such problems lead to SILLY MISTAKES.

I TELL YOU AGAIN THAT GMAT RARELY TESTS STRANGE CONCEPTS AND THE LIMITED CONCEPTS BEING TESTED CAN BE EASILY LEARNED.

Thanks for your patience for reading this post

I am always here for your help. Plz let me know if you want something more.

ALL THE BEST !!