Hey all.

Some background - I am a foreigner so I am sorry about any mistakes in this passage. However, this forum gave me so much that I had to put something back.

Edited - *** I am sorry that this review is not organized - I am terribly tired because I slept around 3 hours at night. I will fix it later on.

How did I study?

Few things that I think helped me a lot -
1st - solved any official book. Did not waste time and energy on other books. If I wanted a verity of questions - I could find almost everything I want in this forum.
2nd - Unlike many of you - I have not touched math for the past 12 years. So it was very hard to start. I concentrated only on the basics for the first stage. I think Karishma has many many good tips that make exercises so much easier - i recommend you guys to read her posts and learn. There are many more people here that are amazing and always willing to help - USE IT. Fluke and the team will answer for any question you have and, at least for me, at least 150 points of my score is due to these people. I learned a lot from people here. No doubt.
3rd - When I noticed that I am weak in something - for example CR - I just solved CR over and over for few hours a day. Only CR. This method helped me to reduce my mistakes.

VERBAL-

HELL ON EARTH.

• CR - The best tip I can give is - read it slow and carefully so you can understand everything in the first time you read. After you have done enough - CR becomes very easy. One thing I can say was a bit different during the exam is that I felt like the CR passages are a bit longer than what I was used to - but not crazy long. Just longer.
  
• RC - my weakest point. Cannot give many tips here bc I still make a lot of mistakes here. even though I , most of the time, understand what I read in a good way, many times I get stuck with two answers and carefully try to pick the right one. Sometimes it works, sometimes not... sad but true. During the exam - I found the RC to be really much harder than expected. Very tough. Long, many hard words and very long, time consuming answers. I think I lost most of my points in the RC.
  
• SC - I think I do this a bit different from everyone else, but it works really good for me. I have about 95% right answers for SC questions - and my grammar - is not amazing (actually my grammar kinda sucks!)
  but what I did is mainly - read the whole sentence fully. Find what mistakes are there and (unlike everyone else) I read all the other sentences as well - trying to find mistakes in each of them as well. Most of the time - I could find a mistake quickly and feel good about my choice. Harder questions - Just need to put more effort to understand the meaning of the sentence - Harder but works if you read slowly and carefully.
  ***** I read everything about the new questions style for SC as was published in this forum. I must admit that I did not noticed a big difference from the exercises I did at home. Questions were not easy but were not very hard as well.

Tests

1. I used the official practice test since day 1. I did it over and over and over until I knew how to solve any problem in this program with my eyes closed. I left practice test 2 for the last two weeks. I did this exam also - Until i knew every possible question in it.
2. I bought one of the MGMAT books and used the practice exams. Great material even though I do believe they do not have enough 700-800 level questions in them. It supported my math level in a very good way. Their material is explained well and there are some very good tricks and technique that one can study using MGMAT exams.

The exam itself -

Decided to take it while was on vacation abroad. Was very weird experience. But not very important.
tried to sleep for 8 hours, but in this country people do not have AC at homes and there is a heat wave. HOT + ANXIETY = LACK OF SLEEP. I slept very little at night - bothered my a lot during the exam.

Morning of the exam

- Woke up early. Showered. Ate breakfast. Drank Big mug of coffee. Went to the bathroom for long and short sitting several times...
Packed - 2 bananas. Red bull. 2 bottles of water.
First break - Ate a banana. Drank Water.
2nd break - bathroom, washed face. Water.

General -

Math - mostly was like expected, but there were few very hard questions that I got stuck. Waste 2 min on each one and skipped - happened twice during the exam. ANNOYING. one of them dealt with squares - usually I am very good with squares - however - couldn't spot the trick in the question. 2nd was very simple looking question but very long and hard math behind it. Tried to simplify in any way I could think of and failed.

I must get some sleep, but I hope this short review will help at least one of you. I will try to stay active as much as I can and help the community back as you guys helped me.

Thanks all, have a good night.
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Buddy, Congratulations on your wonderful score.
Your logic sounds simple and effective on focussing on the official questions.

Could you please post all your practice test scores (MGMAT and GMAT Prep).
I have my exam on Oct 11th, looking for a little inspiration to cross 750.

Thanks,
Raghu
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ARISE AWAKE AND REST NOT UNTIL THE GOAL IS ACHIEVED

Congrats..
Good luck with your applications
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Regards,
Nagesh
My GMAT Study Plan: my-gmat-study-plan-112833.html
Idioms List : gmat-idioms-104283.html?hilit=idioms#p813231
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Consider Kudos if you like my posts

Thanks for the warm words everyone.

these are my scores:

Kaplan(1) - 780 - cant remember the breakdown
MGMAT 1 - 50-45 (770)
MGMAT 2 - 51-44 (770)
MGMAT 3 - 49-45 (760)
MGMAT 4 - 51-44 (770)
MGMAT 5 - 51-44 (770)

My first try of GMAT PREP (exam 2) - 780 with 51-45 break.
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congratssss

Well, I had an Idiom question this morning so I would not remove it completely. Just reduce the efforts you put into it I guess.
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Congrats

great score... best of luck for appli..keep us posted
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[caption=]Remember: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.[/caption]

Congratulations on your great score.

These are my weaknesses -
1) In maths, I'm stuck at 49, and I am not able to raise my score to 50+
2) Like you, I am extremely weak in RC. I get about 7/10 correct in SC, 6/10 correct in CR, but I get only 4/10 correct in RC.
3) Another problem is time management. When I reach 32nd problem in mjath, remaining time is nearly 1-2 mins. Similarly when I reach 34th question in verbal, remaining time is nearly 1-2 mins.

750 is like a dream for me, but I get myself motivated from success stories like your's.
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Thanks and Regards,
GM.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions.
For Maths, I am doing Manhattan Advanced GMAT Quant book currently.
I will work on error log tool.

I do not comprehend the RC passages and CR question stems quickly. I have to improve on my focus and concentration.

Yes, I do take a lot of time to answer few questions. I have to learn how to guess and skip questions effectively.
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Thanks and Regards,
GM.