Hi,
Many of you have already seen this type of topic of posting scores.
Reading such forums kept my belief and helped me cross 710 in first attempt.
GMAT club helped me alot and I would like to give something back to forum by sharing my experience and some resources.
My exam date was in December: Anyone staying in Midwest region, please do not take december or jan dates.
On the way to exam, there was snow storm. After driving for 1.5 hrs at 6 am in morning, one can loose lot of energy.
The center opened 30 mins before exam time, everyone at the center was very helpful.
IR section was similar to GMATPREP and considerably easier than
MGMAT. Esp if you had problems reading bar graph values in
MGMAT quant, dont worry.
The bar graph had values written on the bars, so no need to move to axis and guess values.
Could not solve 1 problem, (Guessed on it), guessed on 2nd last and could not even read last problem.
Overall it was good.
Quant was similar to GMATPREP. But practicing on
MGMAT helped alot.
By practicing problems on
MGMAT CATs, you can think about multiple things within short period of time.
At the same time, working through GMATPREP and
official guide helped to look for the traps in the questions.
Often got simple problems, i guess experimental.
also got unusually tough problem, where I should have guessed, but I dint want to take that risk. So spent more time.
I was banking on getting 1-2 experimental questions in last 10, and luckily I got 2 simple questions in last 10. Therefore could manage all but one question in time.
This is not advisable and i think it was mistake. I just luckily got out of it.
Verbal was similar to GMATPREP or
MGMAT CAT. Paragraphs were shorter compared to
MGMAT CATs, hence got more time.
SC and CR reasoning answers are very close, and confusing. Took quite bit of time on some of the CRs.
Had to guess on last 2 questions. Finally when submitted the button, got 710.
Was very excited to see the score. Not sure if I will attempt again, but definitely there was lot of room for improvement.
Practice score were
GMATPREP 1: 630 (Oct-13)
MGMAT CAT1: 630 (Dec-13) after 2 months preparation
CAT2: 640
CAT3: 670 (I guess got some questions repeated)
CAT4: 630
CAT5: 640
CAT6: 630
MGMATPREP 2: 750 (Without IR and essay)
KAPLAN: 690
economist: 690
Final Score:710, (Q50, V37, AWA5, IR8)
AWA5 might hurt for the admission, but I dint attend any GMAT classes, so could not access the essay.
There is online tool which can rate the essay. As this is my first post, not able to paste the link
Final essay question, quality of my response and rating were similar to tool's rating.
For AWA, I had the template ready. Attached is template.
Also attached doc shows the types of problems for DS. This helped for last min refreshing the concepts.
Resources:
Official guideGMAT PREP
MGMAT CAT, practice questions, flash cards
KAPLAN 800
Official guide verbal review
MGMAT Maths
MGMAT CR, SC
GMATCLUB practice questions
Thank you everyone for the post and links to so many resources.
Chetan