From 630 -> 730 - Mission Accomplished....Detailed Debrief

A great post!!!Thnx for such a detailed info!

I took my GMAT couple of days back.Got a 690(Quant49,Verbal 35).Though, I was expecting a 700+ , but just missed that .I am planning on a retake but in my current GMAT attempt I have almost done all the prep material, ie. OG 11 verbal,OG 12,Manhatten GMAT SC,Manhatten GMAT CR, and Kaplan Advanced.Besides all this, I did the two GMAT prep tests and a free MGMAT test.I took around 2 months of preparation time.Now, I am really stuck on the issue that in the retake what more and how should I be studying.From your and some other posts I feel that RC 99 and SC Grail are great books.So,plan to buy them.However, I feel that my major weakness is the verbal section,especially the RCs and CRs.In CRs, I generally tend to take around 2 mins per question and that really sucks a major portion of my time on the verbal section.Moeover, while during practise I could finish a verbal section on time(I used to make a set of 41-42 verbal questions including 3-4 RCs,12-13 CRs , and around 15 SCs and used to time them), on the actual exam I just could not read the last RC and had to guess away with all the questions.So, if you could help me figure out how I could work on the verbal section then it would be a great help!!!

Morever, my profile is a typical Indian IT female.So, do I have chances to get into a good b school with my current score and what would bean ideal score for me to make it to a top 50b school.

Thanx in advance..

That's awesome!! Great score (what a breakdown, Q51, V40!!).

@Shovit:

Thnx a lot for the reply! Will try to build up my reading speed by reading the magazines suggested by you!Had thought of reading "The Economist" earlier also but I guess I was a bit lazy.....Shall post updates once I decide my GMAT retake date or when I have some queries!!

Sure. Good luck. One more suggestion I have is that get active on gmatclub. That will really keep you in the GMAT world and help you maintain momentum.

Congratulations..

Thanks! All the best for your prep!

@shovitdhar
Any idea how good are the 800score tests ?

I am struggling with the RC -99 and normally the strike rate is like 50%. Could you please let me know what was the strategy you followed for while doing the RC. For example I read the 1 para in detail and makes notes and than make note of the first line of all the rest of the para and than read the last para in detail and make notes. Is this is the right strategy

Another thing is that is there any perticular strategy that you followed for the complex scientific passages because it is impossible to retain the dense information. I would be thankful if you could reply back as I have my GMAT exam pretty close.

This strategy seems fine but does it work for you ? Everyone has a different approach to RC and you have to figure out what works for you. Did you try your hit rate in the passages in OG? Did you take the GMATPREP CATs and how much accuracy did you register in those CATs ?

@shovitdhar
Did you take the GMAT PowerPrep tests ? I got a 740 on the first test I took ? I think the test was easy ? Any inputs on this ?

Yeah, I had taken Powerprep tests. I think they are not exactly computer adaptive. Most of the questions were not difficult and a lot of them were from OG10. Since I had been through OG10 , I knew quite a few questions in verbal. You may wanna take the Powerprep tests to get into the flow of test taking but do not take the score very seriously.

You're right that powerprep has questions from OG10.I read it somewhere here on the forum. I took a second Powerprep test today evening and got a 690. It was a little shocking to me because I thought that the test was fairly easy and I was doing well on the test. But the score stumped me.

Do not bother too much about the scores right now. 20-30 points up or down don't matter much. What is more important is the analysis of the test. Make sure that you spend a good amount of time doing that.

Hey what did you do when you got questions wrong in RC99 passages? did you just move on? how did you clear the concepts?

I would revisit the questions irrespective of whether I got them wrong or right. Instead of reading the explanation first, I'd try to figure out the correct answer in case i answered the question wrongly. Moving on to the next passages without thorough analysis of your mistakes is of little worth because you'll keep on making the same mistakes. As far as concepts are concerned, I don't think that there are any big concepts in RC to be learnt. For strategies, you can go through Gin's RC guide in the RC forum of gmatclub. I found the strategies there helpful.

@shovit
in your profile panel, I see that you have put entrepreneurship as one of your concentrations . Don't you plan to apply to Babson college ? That's supposed to be no.1 for entrepreneurship

good analysis