Hi all. I haven't really contributed here but I took away a lot of great tips from here so I think it's time I share my experience. I am a native english speaker with terrible grammar skills. This made the verbal section (CR and SC specifically) tough for me. However, I dedicated a lot of time to the GMAT and if I can score well than anyone can with the right amount of effort.
First off, I started studying in September. I spent 4 months studying pretty constantly and the last month studying very intensively. I used
MGMAT series, all 8 books. I took the GMAT in Jan and scored a 680 (Q48 V35). While it was a decent score, the verbal bothered me. After contemplating for a few days I decided I would retake in a month. I spend about 90% of the month relearning verbal. I used
MGMAT SC initially but ended up buying the
Powerscore SC later. While everyone loves the
MGMAT SC and it is great, I found
Powerscore SC to be much more useful. I used
MGMAT CR for CR and nothing really for RC. Math was all MGMAT as well. I had a solid foundation in math and since I got a 48 the first time, I didn;t study it too much. I just did
GMATCLUB tests for math review.
After about 3.5 weeks of studying, I began taking tests again. I took the first 5 MGMAT's before so I only had MGMAT 6 left. Took it and scored a 710 (Q48 V38). Retook MGMAT Cat 1 and scored a 740 (Q47 V45). The disparity made no sense but I decided to not think too much of it.
Retook GMAT Preps and scored:
GMATPrep 1 retake: 760 (Q49 V44) - 1 week before test
GMATPrep 2 retake: 730 (Q50 V40) - 3 days before test
The day before I went over some notes and did the SC practice questions on GMATPrep. Nothing too crazy. I did get all 15 right which encouraged me.
Test Day:Essays: Had my essay templates planned out in my head. Did all the check in and started with the essays. Topics weren't too bad. I think my first essay was stronger than my second. After the essays I felt ok energy wise and decided to not take the break.
Math: Went straight to the Math and felt iffy about it. During the section I regretted not taking the break but couldn't do anything about it. Got 1 of the questions wrong which I realized when I made it to the next one and that bothered me. But I tried my best to forget about it. Finally took the break after the Math and went to the bathroom and had a snack.
Verbal: Verbal for some reason felt great. Going into the test I knew that my performance on Verbal would dictate how I would do. Every question just felt easy to me. I felt like I knew exactly where the traps were and how to avoid them. The RC wasn't too bad considering I didn't study for it. I felt like that was not really an area of concern to me. SC started off great and continued good. CR wasn't bad either. I saw 2 of the boldface questions so I told myself I was doing good.
Finally finished with a SC and went through the background questions. Score finally came onto the screen and it was a 750 (Q49 V44)!! I felt great, like I lucked out. Usually I'm good at quant and weak at verbal but I felt that verbal went great and quant wasn't as good but I guess I got lucky. Got the printout and went home.
(Also, I'm selling my books, shameful plug but I had to. I'm in NYC
)
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