570 to 600 to 700 : "The Story of a Fight Within"

Hi All !

I was waiting for a very long time (now almost a year+)to write this post and am happy to have the opportunity today to write one (PS: This one will be from the heart !)

From 570 in OCTOBER 2013 to 600 in AUGUST 2014 to 700 on 21 NOVEMBER 2014 (Also happens to be my Birthday and I did party hard after the exam !) , this is a story of detailed planning , strategy , dejection , uplifting and finally a fight within !

BACKGROUND

Am a project manager with a leading FMCG firm in India and did my graduation in Engineering from a decent enough college . I have given computer adaptive tests in the past and faired quite well in them - PMP , GRE & TOEFL , so naturally I was confident of getting a good score in GMAT as well and this great thought started in 2013 (Atleast for me ! )

PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS

OCTOBER 2013 - GMAT - 570(Q 46 , V 23)
Just studied from OG 13 and KAPLAN premier ... was rather just reading them like a novel to get a feel of the exam and was not focussing !
SO .... went for the exam thinking about acing it , rather was aced back by this great Adaptive Beast !
Was dejected for a while and thought of giving it again , took a long time but then fixed up another appointment for AUGUST 2014

AUGUST 2014 - GMAT - 600 (Q 49 , V 21)
OK so ... The strategy changed and I did prepare for it - MANHATTAN BOOKS , manhattan exams , OG 13 , GMAT PREP SOFTWARE , KAPLAN , VERITAS EXAM Series , POWERSCORE BIBLE . The preparation was up in verbal because that's where I tanked . the wordings , sentence correction - strategies , CR strategies from POWERSCORE (did not practive enough RC though).
Went confident , came back again with a broken Heart ! This time was really disappointed as preparation was lot of hard work and time devotion but I believe not enough strategy .
Practice exams had scores like 680 - VERITAS , 650 - MANHATTAN AND 690 - GMAT PREP .


FINAL ATTEMPT - GMAT - 700(Q 49 , V 35)
Alright .. so after bombing twice before I had thought that this will be the final attempt .. I even started naming my folders in my LAPTOP with "GMAT FINALE " .Now the game had to change as I was not playing by GMAT rules . Decided to completely reverse my strategy and "think from test Maker's point of view" - YUP guys .. u must have heard this a gazillion time but trust me this strategy rocks as it gives you a fair battle plan to approach each and every question . After all one of the most feared exams on EARTH - The GMAT , is a cleverly designed , adaptive , and a time consuming exam which is not so tough to beat provided U can anticipate it's moves and play by it's game in it's battleground (OK brought that one from the movie Predators !)


PREPARATION MATERIAL USED

OG-13
POWER SCORE CR BIBLE
VERITAS ALL BOOKS - COOLEST STUFF for all
MANHATTAN ALL BOOKS
ARISTOTLE GRAIL'S ALL BOOKS - VERBAL PREP only - SC is cool
KAPLAN PREMIER
GMAT CLUB GRAMMAR BOOK
GMAT CLUB MATHS BOOKS(by BUNUEL bhaiya)
ARUN SHARMA - This one is an Indian author and the book has detailed quant - normally used for CAT preparation - way above in the STRATOSPHERE compared to GMAT quant !


TEST SERIES

GMAT PREP SOFTWARE
GMAT PREP EXAM PACK 1
VERITAS TESTS
MANHATTAN TESTS
KAPLAN TEST
and trust me lots of free stuff out there on the internet !

HOW I DID IT


Trust me guys motivating oneself after two bombings is not easy .. But A never say die attitude is required for GMAT !
BASICALLY In my last two attempts I prepared like a normal student ... learning stuff , practising stuff and just getting the routine passes - accuracy - 60-70% in most of the preparation and the tests .As I mentioned above this time I had to change the strategy completely ! Many thanks to Brian Galvin from VERITAS and his cool YOUTUBE videos that helped me get a feel of the test maker's logic in making a question . Also combined with all the material I collected (like tonnes of it) I could get a seasoned pattern for all the questions and the strategy to ace them .. REMEMBER THIS IS A TEST THAT TESTS YOUR SKILLS IN ANALYSING A PROBLEMO AND GETTING THROUGH IT .. FAST !

VERBAL
For example take any CR question for MUST BE TRUE and the options will be more or less circling around: SHELL GAME OPTION , OUTTA SCOPE , REVERSE ANSWER , CONTENDER ANSWER (which looks cool but still does not apply 'CRITICALLY') AND THE RIGHT ANSWER (which is almost eveytime so cleverly hidden )

For another example , the Most common redundancy errors in SC (some of which we even use in daily life )
Revert + back , recommended + should , past + experience , basic + necessities , originally + native , foreign + import , sum + total , join + together , close + proximity and like 30 more to add .

Not just this but GMAT will give you atleast 3-4 decision points in long SC statements , so tracking at least one will help you eliminate some options ASAP and then you can proceed (The low hanging fruits - Pronouns , SV agreement , and basically IMPACT list as per VERITAS , the great insights as per MANHATTAN SC and yes .. the excellent examples as per ARISTOTLE GRAIL SC )

For another example in RC the trap answers will be the ones you can read in the passage that are directly above or below from where the question stem is picked up ...the statements you find should be double checked before you put it as the right answer ...

In short : GMAT is full of trap answers ( )that can be easily eliminated by vigorous practice This will help u Focus specifically on that question (I had a log sheet for around 500-700 SC , 300-400 CR and around 100 RC passages) and volla ... u wil notice a complete change in the mindset and yeah u can think of getting closer to the mind of A TEST MAKER !)

And so..after doing a detailed study for verbal my accuracy went up to 90-95% in Normal conditions

QUANT
To be honest guys - Did not practice hard on Quant , had got a score of 46 and 49 in previous attempts so had a list of all the Math techniques ready with me and just went through them one week before the exam and did some handy 80-100 questions for QUANT . VERITAS again has the coolest material ever for a STRATEGY BASED PROCESS .. !

EXAM DAY - third attempt

I have given all three attempts in different test centres to let me get out of a DEJA - VU feeling i! Was nervous yes .. AWA was good , IR was excellent , QUANT WAS SMOOTH and then came the BIG ONE VERBAL - started well , middle part was spending too much time , ending was smooth (did bite my nails quite a few times but had confidence in the approach ).


CRUCIAL TIPS


PRACTICE HARD GUYS (knowing a game and Practising a game changes you altogether)
MAKE TIMED ATTEMPTS and know your comfortable speed
MAINTAIN A LOG BOOK (so that u r not doing the same mistake twice )
& ABOVE ALL .... "U MUST BELIEVE! " - Master OOGWAY


All the BEST and Cheerz guys !