740!!!

I do not deserve it! I don't, I don't, I don't.
I am sure they will send me a note saying that there there was a bug in the software that made my score 200 points up from what it had to be. That's when I will seriously consider suicide


The long story:

I'm an Eastern European male, 29, software engineering background. I have never been really smart at anything related to math. Have been a lot better in verbal though.
I have been studying for 3 month + ~10 days. Almost every day, 2-3 hours. On week-ends around 3-8 hours. I did some of it during my business trips - which was twice as hard. Sometimes - after a few beers.. Can you imagine how obsessed I was?

I used:

• OG10 and OG12. These are the essential. I did them, then did the error log a couple of times. Redoing a log helped me a lot (and really was the most boring thing).
• GMAT Prep - did that a couple of times each of the two tests.
• Kaplan 800. Don't remember, was too long ago. I'd skip it.
• Kaplan 2009. Good but verbal is too easy.
• Princeton. 2005 edition or something like that. Too easy!
• OG Quant Review. These were too easy and also had a lot of the Qs from OG10! Do them only if you're a beginner.

Overall exam experience:
I hoped to get the same or very very similar Qs to OG. The reason is that my memory works much better than my "smart" part of the brain:)
As a result, there was only ONE similar to GMAT Prep. All the others - I had to come up with a solution (as opposed to kind of looking for a matching solution that I keep in my memory).
I'm sure I did A LOT of them wrong. Did one absolute guess in Quant. Did 4-5 guesses in Verbal, since I ended up with 1 minute and 3 Qs unsolved
The Qs - both Verbal and Quant were unexpectedly hard. I did not expect that and was absolutely sure I'm below 700, if not below 600. I was "clicking through" by the end of the exam never even hoping to get above 700.
I really really considered cancelling my score.

Still I tried really hard to solve most of the questions. I was not sure in 70% of them. Got depressed by the end of the exam.
And then ..... SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY! OMG I'M SO HAPPY I'M OVER IT!!!

This is what I scored on the mock tests:

• May-XX: GMATPrep1 (first time) 700
• May-29: GMATPrep1 (second time) 710 Q50 V35
• May-30: GMATPrep2 (first time) 690 Q49 V34
• Jun-2: GMATPrep2 (second time) 730 with a couple of questions answered incorrectly on purpose

How good I was before the test:

• Quant: Generally I did around 80% accuracy on OG12. And around 95% accuracy on simpler stuff such as Verbal review.
• Verbal: Around 70-75% accuracy on OG12.
• It was not always stable though, every now and then I found some questions on the net and did them with like 55% accuracy.

P.S.
Some of the people here advise to get yourself to LOVE GMAT, I will never understand that

P.P.S.
I guess the best strategy is to train a lot, and then have a good attitude on the test.
Think of each question as you most important one but keeping in mind 2 mins and never get stuck.

Good Luck! And thanks for you support on this forum, it helped me a great deal.

Hey,

Congrats,

You give me hope.. I have my gmat on the 10th of June. My GmatPrep scores have been more or less similar to your scores.

Regards,

Manish

Hi,

Congrats on scoring 740 ! Your study plan looks simple enough for me to follow. In fact, I find it very motivating that repeated re-dos of the OGs can get you this far. A couple of questions which I hope you can de-mystify:-

(a) On the average, what is your sensing on the number of questions that you got correct in the verbal and the quant section respectively?

I've tried GMAT questions on paper and I get about 30 - 35 correct out of 41 questions for verbal and 28-30 questions correct out of 37 for quant. Any idea what does that equates to like percentile and final GMAT score? So far, I have not tried the GMAT prep test yet. I think it is still too early and rather not waste it now.

(b) I have also to do GMAT questions on paper using a pacer. The average time I kept on a question is about 1:45 min. But it it not work very well because there are some questions which came up much earlier and were very time consuming. Do you often find that you do not have time for the last 5 questions? Am I too slow?


Thks !

Congratulations on the great score!

Good luck with your Applications!
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Congrats on great score!

Nicely done, sir! And I definitely agree with you on math preparation: do as much as possible.
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Thanks for the reply, i agree that Manhattan SC is great even though i am a non native en speaker, the guide helped me understand a lot of facts(sub+and+sub-plural so on) There are a lot of these facts though

Did you create any notes to remember all these verbal facts from Mgmay SC. Because as i move onto next chapters i tend to forget some facts from modifiers, verb,tense,mood. If i tend to forget a few as i move on, then i am afraid when i start working on Powerscore CR, then i might have to revise SC again.

Any advice?

Kudos.
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impressive! and mostly for a non-native :=) !