This is my first debrief or feedback regarding anything in my life till date. I have never given any feedback on whatever i did. But after getting close to my target score (720) -I actually scored 700- i seriously thought that many like me are almost on the verge of losing their hope and leaving this coveted exam - a exam through which they can inter into a new form of life.
I will start my story from the timeline starting with my job. After joining the job in late 2005, I went through 1 year training and then started working in the company,which is a public sector organization(PSU).Life went on. I got married and then,got a son. But my whole life turned upside down because my family including myself got lot of medical problem followed by financial problem. almost three years ( from august 2008 to july 2011) , I spent on solving all the problem.After july 2011, I thought of doing MBA and just checked my ability through CAT2011. Got around 86percentile and some interview calls from new IIM"s (combined interview) & VGSOM, IIT Kharagpur. I Thought may be life giving me back some of good thing and went ahead to attend the interview. But, At the start of the IIM"s interview itself, One prof from IIM Trichy told me that why i am wasting my money and time on all these things. His point of view was its very difficult to go from R&D background to MBA and much more difficult for people having more than 6 years experience from PSU"s to join MBA course and then get a job. Almost in my 20 minute interview that prof was talking for more than 15 minutes telling his bad teaching experience with ISRO and DRDO.Got very disappointed because those professors have even not heard my point of view and told me i am unfit for the MBA.Somehow with very minimal hope attended my interview with VGSOM,IIT kharagpur. Interview went on smoothly. When the interview was about to over,They asked me whether i have any question. I asked their opinion about aspirant from PSU background seeking MBA and subsequent job.They answered politically. Ok no problem.Then result came, I checked my name was not their in the list.
For the next six months i was thinking that I went for the wrong MBA programme and my score was also very low. So, I decided to go for GMAT. I contacted friend who had scored decently on this exam. Got study material from him and started my preparation. But lot of materials were there. Some were good but most of the material were of very little value. To check my ability, i gave Gmat prep1. I scored 620. Then I thought of joining coaching and joined a local coaching (payed around Rs 24000). But the instructor ( whose name people from Bangalore will easily understand) was just giving lot of promise (that each one of us will get 99 percentile) not any good concept.After completion of the course my doubt remained as doubt only.Then i decided to give a shot and prepared for 20 days. I gave my 1st attempt on 25th april 2013 and scored 660 ( Q49,V31,AWA4 and IR 7). After this I realized we should not just trust anybody and follow his advice. For the next 2 1/2 months i was thinking what to do to get to 700. Since my verbal was poor,so i decided to join a course for verbal section. I went through reviews and selected
e-gmat. Before joining the course, I attended its strategy session and in the session itself i interacted with Rajat. But again one course ( Verbal life prep) was with guarantee and one ( Verbal online) was without guarantee. I thought if material will be good then the course without guarantee will also help me to get my target score. So, I joined Verbal online of
e-gmat. I went through the concept files and subsequent practice file. Build some of the concept. But the major concept building happened through their article ,especially related to SC and CR, on Gmat club.But my preparation was very much irregular as i was not giving regular and enough time for study. Again my fortune changed and became busy with family/office problems. Meanwhile six months passed very quickly. Finally i had to take decision to write GMAT. I booked 21 November 2013 and applied for leave of around 15 days. But again I encountered health problem and admitted to hospital for treatment. I Got dis-chared on 12 november and rescheduled my gmat exam to 3rd December 2013 and extended my leave till 3rd december. I decided that this will be my final chance for GMAT as I was loosing hope to get 700+. From 13 november to 23 november, i prepared for the exam and then i attended
e-gmat verbal workshop on 24 November. In verbal workshop i performed very poorly and gave a second thought to postpone again the GMATexam. But I thought again and saw my weakness which i wrote during the analysis of worshop question. I counted the days remaining and allotted myself a day to overcome for each weakness ( there were five in number). After five days i gave
Gmat club test ,Kaplan online test and Manhattan free online test( none of the test i had given previously except Manhattan free-online test, which i had given somewhere in march 2013). I scored in
Gmat club test V38, Q51, in Kaplan online test Quatitative below 98%,verbal below 93% with total of 750 and in manhattan quants 51,verbal 44 with total 760. Then I gave other tests from gmat club and Kaplan and the results were similar. On actual gmat finally i scored 700 (Q49,V35,AWA 5 IR4).Now atleast I am happy that i entered into the 700 club and for this i would like to thank GMAT club , specially Bunuel and
E-gmat.
Now after all the boring story my tips for the exam
My tips for quants:[*]Those who have weak understanding of very basic level math concept, go through
official guide math concept. For Advance learning of ,P&C and probability go to Totalgadha.com and read the two article related to P&C and probability. this given on the quants forum there.For Number systems (any problem related to numbers ) download the free book totalgadha number system e-book ( I will attach it for convenience). For geometry also, totalgadha e-book is there. But read only the theory portion.Other than this you need to have good understanding of en-equility which you will come to know more as you solve the problems.
[*]Solve the 100 hardest PS question posted by Bunuel.
[*]Solve the 100 hardest DS question posted by Bunuel.
[*]Anyone who have access to
gmatclub tests must solve first 10 tests of quant (total 14 tests are there). Keep five test for last round.
[*]If you do not have access to the test then solve all the question posted by Bunuel.
By doing this you will score atleast Q49. You will come to know this when you will give any mock test of any test prep company.
Note1: never spend more than 3 minutes on any question.
Note2: for the first 12 question, be very careful. Try to avoid any silly mistake. If one or two question is taking 3-4 minutes give in the first 12 question but finish these 12 question in about 25-27minutes.My tips for Verbal SC:[*]Understand the verbs and their agreement with subject: action,linking,auxiliary, conditional,subjunctive, modal
[*]Understand what can/cannot be subject
[*]Understand pronoun and its rule ( all rule except number agreement and antecedent must exist are not very strict)
[*]Understand the modifiers: Verb-ed, Verb-ing, Noun, Noun+ Noun, prepositional modifiers with comma/ without comma.
[*]For better understanding of modifiers, understand adjective basic rule ( describes noun in terms of what kind of, how many of and which one of these) and adverb basic rule ( how ,when where and why)
[*]Understand to break the sentence into clauses and the meaning intended by the sentence. Be familiar with standard construction for example-IC, FANBOYS IC, IC;IC, DC,IC ,IC,DC or IC relationship word Dc etc.
[*]Understand the parallelism and marker for the same
[*]Understand the comparison rule and for meaning clarity,when to use helping verb and when to use preposition.
[*]Various function of as and like and difference between the two
[*]Some standard expression.
After this only you start to solve the official question and solve only official question.
Note1: Those who have access to the e-gmat verbal online course must do its UGE and meaning file questions along with other file. Those who have not access to the course must do the 50 official question solved by e-gmat. You can see the solution on e-gmat blog.
Note2: Must read all the articles written by e-gmat for SCand CR. For SC e-gmat is best for concept building and clarity of meaning. Though i have not scored very good in verbal but i can tell with responsibility that had i practiced a little more my scored could have been much higher. These articles are on GMATclub.Note3: Those who are enrolled on the e-gmat course must attend Verbal workshop atleast 2 weeks before the test to realize their biggest blunders and remove the most deterring ones. Believe me on this, I performed very poorly on its verbal workshop dated 24 november 2013. Then I realized my biggest blunders and tried to remove. To some extent i secceded.Note4: those who have no accesses to
e-gmat verbal workshop must give its new diagnostic test to do the same as point4.
Note5: However much you practice the SC there will be one or at max two question where you may falter. So don not worry about those one or two question.
My tip for CR:[*] Understand the premise, counter premise,main conclusion,intermediate conclusion.
[*]Understand the terms such as generalization, belief, rule,contradiction,alternate explanation and synonymes for the same.
[*]Understand the structure of the argument.
[*]Solve the bold face question and then method of reasoning question. This will build your overall understanding of the argument and prepares a launch pad for you. [*]Moreover, these two types are assumed as hard question types,so you will be able to solve these two at the very first understanding of the argument.
Understand the inference means what you can definitely prove with only the information given in the passage
Understand the assumption. For understanding the assumption you need to prethink in the line of reasoning what is needed to be true for the conclusion to hold true. In other words, always look at the conclusion and the evidence ,which supports the conclusion, given in the argument. Think what can weaken this link or what information will break this link. The negation of that information is your assumption (Why I am telling to think in negative because most of the Indians are very good in questioning the validity of anything). Thats it CR is virtually over.
[*]Now i will explain the last line in the previous point. All the question types such as strengthen,weaken, evaluate and flaw hinges around assumption. Look in this way. All assumption are strengtheners. So, all negation of the Assumption will be weakeners. For Flaw question, the answer is atleast one assumption is flawed (with little practice you will come to know this). For evaluate question, you need to have two extreme doing validation or invalidation of conclusion.Only the assumption can do this if you take the assumption to one or other extreme. The last type is paradox question, in which you have to resolve the same. In this question type you just need to think of a situation where both scenario can co-exist.
Note:1 Must read the articles posted by
e-gmat to understand the minute details of assumption and interference, alternative cause a weakener or not,QPA and solution to sampling question.
Note2:Solve all the official question and only the official question.By doing this you can assure of 90% accuracy. This will be evident when you give any mock test of any test prep company.
My tip to RC:[*]Do not worry about vocab because whatever will come in actual test will be easier than what test prep companies are giving the passages. You can easily understand what the sentences are saying.
[*]For the first paragraph read very carefully and find the topic and scope (hint will come from first paragraph)of the passage. Mentally note down
[*]Then for subsequent paragraph understand the heading and how it is related with the previous para and main topic.
[*]For inference question, the question are mostly coming in such a way that you cannot focus on one small portion of the passage and answer. So, the best idea is this: The first passage will come when you will complete around 3to 5 question. For this passage spend the time and find the answer. This is because the first 10-11 question will set your score towards higher side and the passage will also be easier compared to other passage. In the next three passage two passages you will be able to understand fairly good. For these two atleast one passage you can spend extra time to find answer for these question . If time permits then try other passage also.anyhow for the big picture question, you will be able to answer correctly.
[*]Do not linger too much with one question having confusing answer choices. These questions ( mostly one or two) may eat 2 to 3 minutes extra and you will still choose the wrong one.
Note: For RC, i have followed my own but similar method what
e-gmat or ron or Kaplan is saying. However
e-gmat method is more elaborative and initially will consume more time. But with practice you can decrease the time and manage it within the prescribed time limit. But once you can manage within the time limit then the inference question ,which i talked in point 4, can be answered very quickly. Since i have not practiced with these method i can not tell what exactly will happen.
My tip for AWA:Simply follow what chineeseburned has said in his post.Best i just saw it one day before the exam, mugged up some sentences and finally scored 5.0.
My tip for IR:Last time I studied for IR but time time i totally ignored it and paid penalty for this. Scored dropped from 7 to 4. So better to atleast practice 2 questions from each topic of IR. Most confusing will be conditional and then multiple source reasoning. Rest, you can manage. Try to solve 8-9 question correctly to get 7. Always use basic concept before
going for calculation because the concept itself will fetch you the answer. But do not get overconfident and totally ign or this section.
Attachments
File comment: adding new pdf file for geometry (everything related to geometry is there in this file ). Read only the theory part.
TG Geometry.pdf [3.73 MiB]
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Totalgadha+number+system+book (1).pdf [3.14 MiB]
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