Hello, Its actually been a long journey(almost one and half years) and at last I am done with GMAT. Since I am applying for a masters program, this score is right up there.
I decided to take the GMAT in 2009 and joined classes. Guess I was not very serious then, I was just doing my undergrad and I took things too lightly. I booked on oct 19th 2009 and started to prepare just before 45 days. It was not at all enough and I ended up getting 490(Q 40 V 18). I was disappointed here ,I joined classes again and started to prepare seriously. The classes were really good and I felt that I was on the right track. With solid prep for 6 months, I thought I was all ready and took the GMAT on dec 2nd 2010. I screwed it , got 530(Q 46 V 18). HOW THE HELL CAN I GET THE SAME SCORE AGAIN IN VERBAL? I was shocked. Couldn't face anyone. I was really ashamed of myself, I just felt like a loser in life. Then my sister motivated me and asked me to give it one more go . Since my prep scores were always above 650, I thought it must have been a bad day.
I started to study again, but this time I took things lightly. I did not push myself at all. I just started to work on my weak areas in verbal and made sure that I was in touch with the subject.Yesterday evening I booked and today afternoon I went and gave the test. 640(Q45 V 32) appeared when I clicked report score. I was very very happy. I really got emotional, I have been fighting with this for one and half years and finally its over.
I am not an expert but few key points.1. Do not push your self, Its true that you need to put in a lot of hard work but it should be done smartly. Working 5 hours a day will not assure you a good score.
2. Failure during my second attempt was basically because I coudn't stay focused throughout the exam. Since I was preparing for a long time(about 6 months), I got exhausted. So, make sure that this does not happen.
3. If your weak in SC then please try out
e-gmat (
https://e-gmat.com/register.php). It really helped me during my prep for the 3rd attempt. This course has a lot of advantages, Let me list out a few:-
->
Importance of Understanding the Meaning = After going through the
e-GMAT course, I realized that it is very important to understand the meaning of the sentence before reviewing the answer choices. Once I started using this method while solving SC questions, my accuracy improved considerably. Earlier I used to get 5-6 questions incorrect in mock tests. With this approach, I would only get 1-3 questions incorrect.
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Mini Error Log = This course has a dashboard of concepts called Concept Map. This concept map automatically updates as you attempt problems. It provides you feedback on the concepts that you need to revise. This feature really helped me because it provided me feedback on the areas where I needed to spend time.
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Doubts =
e-GMAT has a very responsive team. I would typically send a query and would have a detailed response the next morning. This helped the continuity of the overall learning process.
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Quality of Questions = I found the questions to be of same standard as the questions in GMATPrep and
OG. I have also done 1000SC, but I did not find these questions very useful. On the other hand, the
e-GMAT questions tested the same concepts that are tested in GMAT.
Finally a BIG THANK YOU to this wonderful forum. This forum has played a huge role in my GMAT prep and I will try my best to contribute back in the best possible way.
If I can help anyone in anyway then please do let me know.
Cheers
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Updated on: 25 Jan 2011, 08:44
