GMAT-760

After years of dithering, I finally took the GMAT and scored a 760 (50,41).. It is a really really great feeling though admittedly I had not really expected it..

I graduated out of Duke and had nothing to do for 3 months till my job starts, and I tried to convince my thoroughly tired mind that taking the GMAT is a good option... After weeks of yes and no, I finally decided to take the plunge but did it so late that it left me with 3 weeks to prep...

Having said that, I had an advantage of having taken CAT (India's version of GMAT) which has far tougher Maths... Anyways, the day I started,I gave the Kaplan Diag. and did OK, with 640.. But that was a good ego-deflator and brought me back to ground (Ego was boosted with CAT studies and DUke degree javascript:emoticon('') )..

One thing I feel is that people look at tests as a tool to prove their abilities.. I always took them as a chance to find out mistakes / weaknesses.. In fact for every 2.5 hours that I took the test, I spent over 5 hours analyzing things such as my accuracy across the sections, timing both for those that I got right and those that I got wrong (I feel that if you take a lot of time on a question, it means you are struggling on the qstn and its best to make an educated guess.. But in the real GMAT, I failed to do so and ended up spending a criminal 5 mins on a question), noting down and identifying the root cause of a mistake and finding more qstns similar to one I got wrong..

The next day, I started with Kaplan PS and immediatly hit close to 90% accuracy... The reason was my CAT preps... In a day, I had switched to DS and this is where I faced my first challenge.. I lost count of how many times I made the mistake of letting the first statement affect the second... it boils down to mental discipline and concentration, I guess... But anyways, I noted it down into my common mistakes list (more on that later)... I realised my weakness in DS was also basic numeric properties, so I studied that extensively using Kaplan and the good old web..

Now onto Verbal... RC was mastered fairly easily (except for Detail questions) and I was topping 90% throughout... Reason was the CAT has huge RCs double the size of those (LESSONS OF SC ) in GMAT.. So I could handle the concentration and the paraphrasing needs well... I feel paraphrasing is a must in RCs and has to be done for good accuracy... I used shorthand, with symbols to reduce the time needed to paraphrase, and thats another thing thats essential for RCs...

CR came next... In the Diag I had 100% acc in the CRs, so i was really cocky about it and again came crashing down to earth with Kaplan with a 65% accrcy (Thank god for them)... The next 2-3 days,were spent on CR, where I purchased the LSAT LR bible and studied it thoroughly and also managed to get a old-second hand MGMAT CR... The key is to read the argument and note the premise and conclsn...This approach takes time, no doubt, but pls pls pls do it... The benefits are huge... Memorize the conclsn and premise indicators and make a habit of identifying the 2... I even tested this by just highlighting the Concl and premise for the first 50 OG CR questions... My accuracy was 85%... More practice.. 92%.. Yipee!!! I then solved the previous Kaplan questions and got accuracy of 90%... So pls pls pls do note down Prem and Concl...

SC was the area that gave me the most trouble, SC is very boring (IMHO) and needs a lot of memorization... Right till the end, SC bothered me the most... I made tonnes of flashcards to note down the rules (These flshcards are on paper and I will type out into yet-another SC notes guide)... The only way out for SC is practice, and so I did but no progress.. 16 days to go and 70% SC is not good enough... PANIC!!! Read a post BeattheGMAT forum saying prep from MGMAT SC.. I did and boy that book is great!!! STUPENDOUS effort from MGMAT.. Gives you about 80% of the various rules but far more than that, gives you a great sense of confidence... After every chapter makes you solve OG questions which helps in the process of identifying SC patterns.. It's all about patterns in SC and MGMAT teaches you them one by one, so I HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book...

Done with SC, I did a quick revision of all the sections in 2 days... with 2 weeks, I gave my first Kaplan... I breezed through Quant and then hit a Verbal deluge.. Ended up with 620 (not bad) but had poor Verbal.. Slogged out with verbal the next day and then gave Kaplan 2 with 650.. Yippee!!! Analyzed it thoroughly and worked on my weaknesses (Read SC ) ... Next day Kaplan 3, again 650..

Moved onto Princeton.. 740.. And so it continued with almost one test a day until the second-last day... My scores are below..

Kaplan CD1 620
Kaplan CD2 650
Kaplan CD3 650
Kaplan CD4 660

Princton 1 740

GMAT Prep1 730
GMAT Prep1 Retake 760
GMAT Prep2 760

MGMAT CD1 680
CD2 640..

SO RECAPPING the POST

STUDY MATERIALS
i. OG (THis is bible....)
ii. OG VR (Good questions)
iii. Kaplan Premier 2007 (Book is OK, tests are great)
iv. MGMAT SC (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
v. LSAT LR BIBLE (Good book)
vi. MGMAT CR (Not needed can avoid)

Tests
i. Kaplan (Pls do these tests, they deflate your score down, but the difficulty improves your conc and stamina unlike any other test..)

ii. Princeton (Not too impressed.. seemed too simple specially Maths)
iii. MGMAT (Hated the tests.. Math is too combinatrics-intensive and Verbal is too too difficult..)
iv. GMAT Prep... (I got 760 in 3 of the 4 tests I took (including retakes),which was my score in Real GMAT)

All in all, Study hard, Take the tests as a chance to learn (not as a chance to boost ego), practice hard and smartly.. There will be times when u are desperate and depressed, wait them out, keep on working, there will be the light at the end of the tunnel... Also remeber not to sacrifice games, exercises, socializing (they help in keeping morale and concentration up)... One last point is, create a study pattern that suits you, do not use the pattern which I or anyone else followed, create your one study pattern...

Hope you stayed with me till the end and do let me know if this post benefits you... I will upload my flashcards on here and on BeattheGMATthis forum..