GMAT - 760 - 2 Months Experience

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My GMAT journey (2 months prep) and Result (760,
Q50, V44)
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Author: Kaps07 [ 10 Jul 2012, 10:59 ]
Post subject: My GMAT journey (2 months prep) and Result (760, Q50, V44)
I am pleased to share my GMAT experience and hopefully somone will find useful
information here as I found from a lot of debriefs in this forum.
Background: 33 M Indian, Native language - Hindi, B.Tech. from IT-BHU, 10+
years of IT work ex, PMP certified project manager.
Preparation time: 2 months from May 2012 to Jun 2012 with 4 - 8 hrs a day. I
quit my full time and well paying job in April 2012 to pursue MBA from a good
institute. It was a tough deision with lots on stake but I just decided to give it a
solid try. I am happy that the first step, GMAT, is well done but it is still a long
way to go.
Prep material: GMATClub helped me decide on which books and other resources
are good and how people in general plan for the prep. My prep included:
SC - Manhattan, Powerscore, SC Grail, GMAT Club Grammar book
CR - Powerscore
RC - No book, but practised questions from RC99 and OG13.
Ron Purewal's free video lessons - great resource. I saw only few of these videos
as I found them only in the last week of my prep but if you have time, go through
all of them.
Quant - Manhattan, Abhijit Guha (Few topics), Jeff Sackman Extreme challenge
IR - Manhattan Book, free workshop video, and mba.com & OG 13 online
questions.
OG 13, Verbal and Quant OGs V2.
Test Results: dates are in dd/mm/yyyy format
GMATPrep 2.0 CAT1 03/05/2012 Q45 (18 wrong) V32 (12 wrong) 640 - It was
before I started the prep to get the feel and judge my level.
MGMAT CAT1 12/06/2012 Q47 (15 wrong) V38 (14 wrong) 700 - IR (4-6)
MGMAT CAT2 15/06/2012 Q47 (17 wrong) V40 (14 wrong) 710 - No IR
Powerprep CAT1 date ??? Q50 V44 770 - lot of overlap from OG, but still a good
test
Powerprep CAT2 date ??? Q51 V44 770 - lot of overlap from OG, but still a good
test
Veritasprep CAT 24/06/2012 Q49 (6 wrong) V46 (5 wrong) 730 - No IR
Princeton CAT 27/06/2012 Q51 (4 wrong) V47 (10 wrongs) 780 - IR-16 (this IR
score does not make sense!)
Kaplan CAT 26/06/2012 Q?? V?? 740 - IR 7 (I do not recall and cannot access the
breakup now)
GMATPrep 2.0 CAT2 28/06/2012 Q50 (8 wrong) V38 (13 wrong) 730
GMATPrep 2.0 CAT1 01/07/2012 Q51 (4 wrong) V47 (5 wrong) - 780 repeat test
with some repeat questions
GMATPrep 1.0 CAT1 date??? Q?? V?? 770 - some repeats from GMATPrep 2.0
Actual GMAT 09/07/2012 Q50 V44 760 - IR - 8, AWA - 5.5 (IR, AWA rcvd. on 25-
Jul)
I also tried free tests from GMAT club and they were good help.
MGMAT IR in general is not representative of actual GMAT IR. Actual GMAT IR is
not as time consuming as MGMAT IR, otherwise MGMAT CATs are very good for
quant and verbal. My last MGMAT CAT score is same as my real GMAT score.
Reflections on and lessons from the prep and tests:
I have good quant skills but after after 10 years of job, I needed to put some
effort to prepare for GMAT quant. The GMAT quant is a pretty good test of
concepts, application, accuracy and speed. I went through all the Manhattan
quant guides completely once and these books are good. I used Abhijit's Guha
quant book for Permutation, Combination and some Geometry stuff. I solved all OG
13 and Qunat OG problems with time constraint.
Unlike some other guys, I never found extra time on a quant section of a test. At
best, I found the 75 mins adequate to finish the section on time.
MGMAT CAT quant is tough to complete in 75 mins.
I am not a native English speaker, so I needed to put extra effort in Verbal. I
started with Sentence Correction and spent most of my verbal prep time in SC. I
had 80 - 90 % accuracy in OG, SC Grail problems, MGMAT CATs but to my horror I
had 60 % SC accuracy in GMAT prep test, Kaplan test and Princeton test. I learnt
my lesson and started to focus on RC and CR as well and I found my holy grail of
verbal. After improving on these two areas, I was able to raise my verbal score to
45 in last 3 MGMAT CATs and 44 in the actual GMAT. I am a slow reader but I kind
of memorize the passage after one read and it worked well for me. Even if I took 4
- 5 mins for long passages, I needed only 30 t0 40 secs to answer each question.
Contrary to popular opinion, I benifited much more from RC and CR with little effort
than from SC with lot of effort. My advice to prospective test takers is to analyse
your trade offs well. For RC please pay attention to the twisted sentences,
because they are good targets to frame a question from. Even if you need to read
these sentences twice, do so to understand exactly what the heck they mean.
For CR, powerscore book is awesome ! Learn and use the techniques such as ,
reverse causality, assumption negation, variance test on evaluate, etc.
Some advice for prospective test takers: Understanding timing consideration in
GMAT is very important. Learning to quit and guess after a time limit (say 3 mins
on a question) is very important. Also focus on the question at hand, do not think
about the past question or the remaining questions or anything else for that
matter. If you are not focused, you can mistake precent by for percent to,
overlook or assume number properties ( interger, odd, even, positive etc.), miss
important words in CR like some, most, never, etc. I limited my liquid intake during
test not to be distracted by an urge to go to rest room during a section as I had
this issue during practise tests. Some people advise drinking glucose, etc but pay
attention to how it affects you during the pratice tests and see what works for
you. The test does take a toll on your mind when you reach verbal, so build your
stamina of enduring this test for 4 hours.
IR experience on real GMAT: As I am a slow reader, I had issues of timing on this
section in GMAT Prep or MGMAT but the real GMAT IR was easy. Unfortunately I
had 2 MSR prompts ( 6 questions in total from MSR) and the second MSR had big
passages on two tabs so I had to guess on the second MSR prompt but I had a
good attempt on the rest of the 9 questions.
Finally, thanks to the GMAT Club and other forum members to be a great source of
inspiration, information and fun. I hope that I can contribute more here now. I
have attached a basic spreadsheet with my plan of study.
Attachments:
study plan.xls [16 KiB]
Downloaded 1618 times
To download please login or register as a user
Author: Viru [ 10 Jul 2012, 11:08 ]
Post subject:
Re: My GMAT journey (2 months prep) and Result (760, Q50,
V44)
Congrats Kaps !!!
I plan to write GMAT in next 2-3 months ..thanks for the study plan ..!! Will be
very helpful
Cheers ..
Author: anordinaryguy [ 10 Jul 2012, 11:10 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Congratulations Kaps07 !!!, You are surely on your way (pursue MBA from a good
institute)....
Author: Kaps07 [ 10 Jul 2012, 22:25 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Thank you guys for the wishes ! I thought to add few more details:
Pearson Test Center in Delhi: This is near AIIMS and I visited the place one day
before the exam. There is no parking place around the center. I had to park my
car about 600 mtrs away from the center on roadside because there was no other
option. The test center is small, has about 10 seats and just one toilet . This
center should have better facilities. Staff at the center was good. I am still not
sure about the overall process of taking breaks and resuming tests, because as
soon as the PC is unlocked after the break the next session starts. I am sure that
I returned in less than 5 minutes to my seat in each break but still found the next
session running as soon as the PC was unlocked. I did not bother to ask but it is
worth checking if you want to utilise all 8 mins of your break time.
Selecting 5 schools to report score on the GMAT day: It is a simple select from
the drop downs and fairly easy. You can check the samething on mba.com. Decide
on these schools before the GMAT day. Stupidly enough, I forgot one of the 5
schools I wanted to send the scores and selected 1 different school , which
was lower on my priority. Anyway it is not the end of the world and I will have to
pay a fee to send that extra score now.
Report or cancel score screen: Do not cancel you score unless you have very
very good idea that you screwed up. Strangely, the report or cancel score screen
says that your score will be canceled if you do not make a selection in 2 mins. I
think the default should be to report the score. So be careful not to loose your
score after all the hardwork because of pondering over what to do at that time.
AWA: I owe it to chineseburned on GMATclub to know exactly what to do with
AWA. Simply follow the template and write essay in each of your practise test.
Decorate your sentences with modifiers, adjectives, etc. Aim to write no less than
350 words. I think I managed to write about 400 words with 20 words per
sentence on average .
Author: anuragbytes [ 11 Jul 2012, 00:15 ]
Post subject:
V44)
This is amazing, congrats !!
How do you rate the GMAT CRs with the OGs were they comparable or GMAT's
were tougher?
For SC, were you able to identify the pattern , which lot of people claim to do?
Author: Kaps07 [ 11 Jul 2012, 01:52 ]
Post subject:
V44)
anuragbytes wrote:
This is amazing, congrats !!
How do you rate the GMAT CRs with the OGs were they comparable or GMAT's
were tougher?
For SC, were you able to identify the pattern , which lot of people claim to do?
Anurag, I think the OG CR is very good representation of the CR questions that I
got in the real exam. I cannot say the same for SC. I thought the SC questions
that I got in the exam were more about style than meaning or grammar because
at least couple of choices on each question were alright in grammar and meaning
to me. There were patterns and splits but not good enough to narrow down the
right answer only with the known splits. For example, initial contrasting modifier
should be followed with the parallel thing but couple of choices will have that fixed
and then you have to find something else more obscure to find the final answer. In
OG problems there are blantant errors most of the times in the wrong choices, but
I could not find the same in the real exam. Perhaps, a native English speaker
would know better.
For CR what worked well for me was - reading stimulus first, understanding the
conclusion, reading the question stem, prephrasing the answer in the scope of the
stimulus and then reading answer choices one by one to match my prephrasing or
find better answer choice. The OG covers good number of examples of all possible
types of questions. Unlike some mock tests, real exam does not contain a mere
spin off of OG questions, but the techiques and the question types are standard.
For example, if the argument claims that lower level of a harmone causes a
disease, you can expect to see the revesre causality in the answer choices of a
weaken the argument question.
Author: Samwong [ 11 Jul 2012, 09:23 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Congratulation on a great score! Can you talk a little bit about the RC that you
saw on the real test? Are they comparable to the RC that you did during the mock
tests and OG? Thanks.
Author: Kaps07 [ 11 Jul 2012, 09:52 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Samwong wrote:
Congratulation on a great score! Can you talk a little bit about the RC that you
saw on the real test? Are they comparable to the RC that you did during the mock
tests and OG? Thanks.
Yes, RC passages on my real exam were similar to the mock ones or OG ones. I
got 3 short passages (2 paras) and one long ( 4 paras). There were passages
about social science, ecology, business and science. All passages were easy read
but the questions had closely contesting answer choices that needed careful
selection; they were very close to MGMAT CAT ones. During my early days of
prep, I found a difference in OG RC and MGMAT CAT RC that MGMAT RC answer
choices were hard to eliminate ,i.e., very minute and subtle difference among
correct and worng choices, while the OG answer choices were clear cut.
As I said in my original post, RC is a good area to score. You have everything
given to you in the passage to answer correctly. All you need to do is read and
infer. To pick the right answer on RC, you need to exactly match the answer
choice with the passage. If the answer choice says that author has contrasted
one new theory with an old controversial theory with help of two examples, you
must find something in the passage saying or sugeesting that there are two
theroies discussed, one is new and other one is old, they contrast each other, the
older one is controversial and there are exactly two examples given. If any of this
is not true, the answer choice is not correct. For example, the passage says
people in general believe bla bla bla.... the right answer choice will have a keyword
"popular belief".
Author: anuragbytes [ 11 Jul 2012, 10:11 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Thanks Kaps for the reply.What about quant.Were they comparable to MGMAT
cats or more tougher?
Posted from my mobile device
Author: Kaps07 [ 11 Jul 2012, 10:31 ]
Post subject:
V44)
anuragbytes wrote:
Thanks Kaps for the reply.What about quant.Were they comparable to MGMAT
cats or more tougher?
Posted from my mobile device
Quant was comparable to MGMAT CAT 5 and 6 with mix of easy and tough
questions. MGMAT CAT 1 - 4 quant is skewed on the tougher side. Though
experimental question (as I guessed them to be) on the real exam can be real
tough. There were couple of really twisted questions. I got lured into spending
about 4 -5 mins on one to solve but on the next one I just guessed in few
seconds because it was a geometry question which required 3D imagination of an
object unravelling in 2D; I strongly believe that it was an experimental one, even if
it wasn't I was never going to solve it in time limit.
Author: kblade [ 11 Jul 2012, 11:25 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Thanks for sharing, I'm also planning to study about 2 months although I will be
working full time and not quitting my job. That took some guts !
Author: pawanchopra [ 11 Jul 2012, 11:40 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Hi Guys,
I have just started preparing for GMAT, hopefully planning to give in 3 months
time. I have enrolled myself into Magoosh course. Any advice as to how to
improve on CR section as I am really struggling with it even after having completed
2 rounds of online lessons.
Thanks and good luck to everyone.
Author: Zynga [ 11 Jul 2012, 15:26 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Congrats on that fantastic score!!
Author: Kaps07 [ 11 Jul 2012, 21:49 ]
Post subject:
V44)
kblade wrote:
Thanks for sharing, I'm also planning to study about 2 months although I will be
working full time and not quitting my job. That took some guts !
Good luck. If you plan to study while having a full time job, you may want to
increase the prep time from 2 to 3 months. Your choice but I found 2 months
adequate even with 4 - 8 hrs daily study. Perhaps, I took too many CATs but they
did help a lot.
pawanchopra wrote:
Hi Guys,
I have just started preparing for GMAT, hopefully planning to give in 3 months
time. I have enrolled myself into Magoosh course. Any advice as to how to
improve on CR section as I am really struggling with it even after having completed
2 rounds of online lessons.
Thanks and good luck to everyone.
I found Powerscore CR bible to be of great help. Read slowly and carefully and
deconstruct the argument into different pieces among which the most important is
the conclusion. Take a moment to fit all pieces into logical sequence and
relationship. While studying do not think about time limit until you are clear with
the concept. Speed will come later but the accuracy is more important initially.
Zynga wrote:
Congrats on that fantastic score!!
Thanks Zynga, I saw your blog and it is great. You have put together some very
good information such as idiom table in your blog. Bravo !
Author: mneeti [ 12 Jul 2012, 11:26 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Hey, thanks alot for sharing your experience and building our courage !!
Author: jerembo [ 12 Jul 2012, 12:22 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Great post, Kaps! Thanks for sharing your experiences and congrats on the great
score! Where are you applying?
Author: Kaps07 [ 13 Jul 2012, 00:08 ]
Post subject:
V44)
jerembo wrote:
Great post, Kaps! Thanks for sharing your experiences and congrats on the great
score! Where are you applying?
Thanks. I am still doing ground work on the complete list of schools to apply. On
the day of GMAT, I selected 1 year executive MBAs from Indian Institue of
Managements (IIM) and Indian Scool of Business (ISB) to send scores to. I am
now finding more about my prospects at Top US schools. My more than normal
average work ex and age, and program costs are some of the concerns that I
need to sort out.
Author: ghaint [ 13 Jul 2012, 00:36 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Great debrief!!! Congrats and best of luck for the application process...
Author: AbhiJ [ 13 Jul 2012, 02:53 ]
Post subject:
V44)
Can you suggest how you analysed the tests and what you studied in between.
Author: Kaps07 [ 13 Jul 2012, 04:35 ]
Post subject:
V44)
AbhiJ wrote:
Can you suggest how you analysed the tests and what you studied in between.
After the 1st diagnostic test, I took 5 weeks to complete the study guides and
many of the OG problems. Later after each CAT, I looked into details of the
explanations of all the questions regardless of whether I was right or wrong on
that question. I wrote down few notes from new learnings such as grow up to is
not right, grow to is right, by 1945 (or any time reference) + past perfect is
alright, etc. MGMAT provides a great option of exporting your CAT details into an
excel sheet. It helped me analyse in detail by applying excel filters on question
type, difficulty, time taken etc. I paid attention to how I paced myself in a CAT by
looking at Cumm Time and Target Cumm Time columns and resolved to improve
any glaring overruns. I completed reaming OG problems, or other sources in
between CATs. If I found errors concentration in a particular area, I tried to
improve that before attempting next CAT.
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