first attempt GMAT score 760

Hi everyone

I gave my Gmat on the 29th of March and scored 760 (Q50(93%)V42 (95%)) and AWA 5.0.
Is 5.0 in AWA a bad score?? It says 56%.
Will certainly write my debrief in a few days.
The debrief

Background - I passed out from UDCT{Institute of Chemical Technolgy} (Mumbai) in May 2010, and despite having a job I came back to join my father in the family Business.

It all started during the time I was preparing for CAT and went to an MBA fair in Mumbai.After visiting the fair I decided to go for an MBA only after gaining some work experience.

In September 2010, I bought Barron's while going through a local bookstore. I spent more than a month on the book only to realize that I am just wasting my time.

Two months passed and I finally decided to seriously study for the exam but could not give it my best shot due to some unavoidable circumstances.

It was January 2011,when I began studying for the GMAT and many a times I would get stuck solving the 12th edition OG, the only book I had.
On 27th January i came across GMAT CLUB and I can definitely say it made the difference as now I had access to the toughest of questions and answers to my queries (already answered).

I used a lot of books.

First, 10th edition, 11th edition and 12th edition of the official guides
Quant review second edition and Verbal review 2nd edition.


Quant
1) Nova's Gmat math prep
2) Nova's Gmat data sufficiency (for practice only)
3) Kaplan 800
4) Bunuel's collection of questions - I would search and solve all of them maintain error logs, the 700+ questions were a great help. Thank you so much.
5) Gmat club tests
Verbal
1) Manhattan CR ( I did not like the method)
2) Manhattan SC
3) Manhattan RC
4) PowerScore CR Bible
5) Aristotle SC grail
6) Aristotle RC 99
7) The Official LSAT Superprep
8) 1000 SC, solved 700 of them
after going through all of the above, I was still unhappy with my verbal performance so I took the E-Gmat sentence correction course.
9) Gmat club tests
AWA
I was scared of the AWA section so I got the Arco's Answers to real gmat questions.
Chineseburned notes also helped.
My scores on the Practice tests were as follows:-
GMAT Prep 1 - 680
7/2/11MGMAT 1 -730 (Q51V38)
10/2/11MGMAT 2 - 680 (Q47V36)
16/2/11MGMAT 3 - 690 (Q49V35)
22/2/11MGMAT 4 - 670 (Q45V36)
At this point I actually thought of quitting as there was no improveemnt even after studying so much. Thank God I did not. No tests for a while and focussed only on my weak areas. This was the time when i took the E - GMAT course.
11/3/11MGAMT 5 - 700 (Q51V35) - THIS MADE ME FEEL GOOD

14/3/11PRINCETON FREE TEST - 720 (Q50V40)
17/3/11VERITAS FREE TEST - 730 (Q51V44)
21/3/11KNEWTON FREE TEST - 690 (Q49V33)
22/3/11KAPLAN FREE TEST - There was some problem with the score got a reply from people at Kaplan as well. The test did not register all of my Quant responses but Verbal score was 42
23/3/11MGMAT 6 - 770 (Q51V44)
24/3/11GMAT PREP TEST 2 - 710 (Q50V35) - - was taken aback by my verbal score so now focussed only on my verbal.
25/3/11GMAT PREP TEST 1 RETEST - 770 (Q50V44)

26th. 27th and 28th I went through all my mistakes.
In all the above tests i tried my best to simulate the test experience. I wrote essays and took exactly 8mins breaks.

During the tests, I utilized the breaks as much as I could. During each break, I drank Gatorade, ate a chocolate and washed my face.

If anyone is interested in buying the books,I have posted in buy/sell forum.

Well done dude!

5 is good enough man

Any AWA score above 4 is good enough. So don't worry about the AWA score.

thank you Entwistle, looking at the percentile I was a bit concerned...

A very huge chunk of the GMAT participants, esp most of the native eng speakers land up with a 6 in AWA. So not getting a 6, sort of skews down the percentile in AWA.

But I have read a no of times on this site that anything above 4 in AWA is a safe bet. I got a 6 and still landed up with 91% in AWA. So its not a pretty right reflection of what we scored in AWA. So chill out.

Coming to your score, you gota great split bro. Waiting for your de-brief. Particularly intrested on your Verbal preparation and material used for Verbal.

Regards,

Heartiest congratulation Chaitanya for your score and all the best for apps.... Looking forward for detailed debrief...

congrats man, goodluck on your application
and waiting for your debrief

Hi, Guys
After reading your posts i am a little bit concerned. I took my GMAT and scored m-49, v-38 total 710. Unfortunatelly my AWA is 4.0 No need to explain but i put little effort to prepare for AWA. So what could be the consequences from AWA 4? Do i have to retake the test?
Thanks in advance.

AWA 4.0 will probably not affect your apps much, perhaps you should concentrate on your essays to show that you CAN write, and that test day was not your best foot forward?

Thank you for your opinion. I was getting freaky that i will have to resit the test.
Regards

Very many congratulations on your score. That's terrific. Don't sweat too much over your AWA score. It's still quite good.

Chaitanyadawer,

congrats for such a great score.
Can you please give your review abt the e-gmat SC course? how good or bad it is?

Thanks in advance,

Hi rohu27,

I am presently using the e-gmat SC course. Matter of fact,presently in my lunch break and going through the egmat course. I found it very usefull. It helps your thought process while working on SC's ,esp for non native speakers, like me.

Definitely worth the 35 bucks, but you will need to suppliment it with say SC Grail or Manhattan SC.

Regards

hi rohu27

The thing about E - gmat is that it is user friendly as both audio and visual aid the process of learning. You should enroll if are having trouble in SC. First, try the free version and then decide. Approximately, one - third of the course is free.

good luck!!

nice job man! Keep on and soon we will see you on top!

Amazing results!
The fact that you scored in only 2 of your prep tests more than on the actual one is quite reassuring and inspiring (and emphasizing the importance of being honest with your mistakes)!
Bunuel's collection of questions, The Official LSAT Superprep and Chineseburned notes are prep materials that I hadn’t considered until now, but will definitely make them a part of my preparation.
Do you feel that the Nova, Arco & Aristotle materials helped? What’s your estimate abut the value these actually added?
Thanks for an inspiring debrief and good luck with the application process!

Hi thetiming

Arco's real essay book was very helpful. The fact that i had access to answers written in a way they should gave assurance that I had access to great Essays for my gmat. So, I would attempt one from each section daily and then read the answer. This helped me to analyse my essays.Also, the part that essays will be one out of the list provided and having answers to all of them, made me worry less about AWA preparation.

Nova - was a great help when I needed to just practice my PS and DS questions. After solving the book I knew that i had covered all topics required and have the necessary skills to solve the questions and If i cannot solve a question its more because of nerves than concepts.

Aristotle SC grail - is good as it offers very simplistic approach to SC, after going through Manhattan SC I felt that I still need to more so I decided to go for this book.

Hopefully, I have answered your questions.

Wow! Great score! Lots of practice was the key, right, other than the brains which you obviously have coming from UDCT!

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Whoa! Congratulations on such a huge score on the very first attempt itself. Does Nova Math book has strategies also or just has practice problems ? And what is the difficulty level of the questions in the book ?

The book has strategies as well, but by this time each one has developed his/ her unique way to approach a question (especially if one has attempted GMAT before). The practice questions are split as per the difficulty level of the questions. For example easy, medium, hard and very hard.

wow! great score mate...very encouraging