I took my gmat on 23rd december in new delhi ( testing center was excellent)
and scored 710 (q 47 v 41) AWA 4.5:( this was my first attempt .
verbal :
- I am a very average guy(rather below average i should say ) but i worked hard in a structured way during the course of my prepration i chopped and changed my strategies especially with RC's .At the end of my prepration i was able to get around 90% of the rc's right and averaged ard 6-7 mins to solve 5 questions on an RC . This helped me a lot to get better at SC because i take a lot of time to solve SC questions ( ard 2 mins per question ) .
- I can proudly say that i am really good at solving CR's tht's by far my favourate part i can't remember a CR questions that i solved incorrectly ever.In fact i write CR questions for a test prep company in india
- SC i really hate them
what i did was i just memorised the patterns from the OG , GMAT -prep software . I practiced Sc's from OG so many times that i can literally remember everything .
I really liked the manhanttan SC book for learning rules and stuff .Practice questions at the back of
manhattan sc are really good.
-Though
i never liked manhattan tests especially the CR questions ,trust me GMAT will never ask you the kind of CR questions that are asked on the manhattan tests doing CR's from manhattan can actually harm your performace because for CR's you need to be attenued to pick up the subtleties that are asked on a particular test ( for ex doing well on
LSAT cr is not a gurantee that you will do well on GMAT cr's as well -though the question type is same both have very different kind of logics tested) in fact i would advice you to follow
knewton for cr's since they have modelled there whole course on OG-12!!
- There are other flaws with manhattan verbal questions also but i am not going to go into the details coz tht will project me as anti-manhattan . In fact i am a hugh
manhattan gmat fan , i really respect their books it's only there test series that i have a problem with
here are my
manhattan gmat scores-
CAT-1=560( Q 48 , V-DON'T REMEMBER BUT WAS IN 20'S)
THIS WAS MY FIRST TEST I GOT ALL THE SC'S WRONG!!
CAT-2= 620 ( q 48 , v - poor again in 20's)
gave up manhattan !
move on!
i just took GMAT prep sectional tests tht was it .
QUANTS
Poor scores on manhattan verbal killed my confidence i was forced to give up quants all together and work on verbal
here are my quants scores:
i took a gmatprep test ( only quants)
-scored 49
so since i scored 48,48,49 i guessed i was ohke at quants and i needed to focus more on verbal gave up quants!!!:)
and at this time i just had ard 15 days left to prepare , btw i prepared for 45 days on and off..(had to take CFA-level 1 on 5th dec and TOEFL on 19th decemeber and plus i had an accident in the last week of my prep so lost a bit of rhythm )
Final 15 days
-I am a non native speaker at this point in time i realised tht i could score 49 on quants on the d-day and i tried different combinations with Q-49 for my verbal and tried to gueestimate a verbal score i would need to get to 700's..
so i came up with 35!
- I gave my first gmat prep test ( wrote only verbal this time )
scored 37 , all CR's correct almost 90% of rc's correct , sc i still sucked !!( god damm sc'ss..!!!!)
- focused all my energies towards improving SC's..
wht i did was i did OG-12 twice without thinking -
first 3 days - did sc from og once..( had an accuracy of ard 60%)
day 4-6- did tht document from gmatprep tht has all the sc's..( 60% accuracy)
day 7-8 - revised all the concepts again
day 9-10 - did og-12 again( ard 85 % accurancy did only the last 60% of the og -sc)
day 11,12,13- had an accident on day 11th did not study at all ....!!
day 14th - had to catch a train to delhi , i live in gwalior which is 350 kms away from delhi so again did not study
day 15th - revised all the mistakes i made in sc's..( took gmaptprep test 2 only VERBAL -scored 40 )
day -16 th -wrote the exam scored 41
I should say tht 15 days might appear to be a very short span of time , but i used to study for 10-12 hrs a day or may be even more
doing og in 3 days for me meant -learning OG !
i used to do 30-40 questions-, note the logic used ,compare it to the previous questions , make a similar sort of question myself and save it for later.
so i infact created an OG-12 sc of my own ( so when i say i did og-12 twice in last 15 days tht means i did OG at least 4-5 times )
WHAT I REALIZED ABOUT GMAT SC'S?
SC'S are undoubtedly the most important section for your verbal i had an accuracy of ( 100% ) CR''s 90% RC's) and less than 50 % for sc's , and i knew that unless i take my accuracy in sc to more than 80% i cannot score more than 40 on verbal
I made a concious effort to stick to my strengths - which are a decent memory , good observation ! etc
i realised that SC's on gmat has a very specific pattern in fact
it dedicates a certain amount of questions to certain logics for example - " ING " form if you know how this is used on the GMAT you can get 3-4 questions on GMAT solely based on this
" THAT vs which " using that constitutes 2 questions on gmat
"x, modifier,modifier " -constitutes 2-3 questions
and so on .....!!!!
so i memorised all this stuff and went for my exam !!
THE D-DAY !
Started with AWA - ohh crap!! AWA!! IS IT (analytical writing assignment????)
you get my point !!
i've heard great things abt some chinese guy on gmat club he has written some great AWA's , but i never bothered abt AWA's i find them petty ,annoying, and worthless ..
[ tht's exactly wht my teachers used to find me ]
quants:It was pretty easy i should say, was gliding through the section must have guessed a couple of questions towards the end but it was very smooth .
no surprises there!
by the end of it i was expecting to score a 50 on quants ! was shocked to see a 47 !!
i guess i was a bit rusty coz i did not practice quants for last 20-25 days
did not even see a question!!, may be i solved 2-3 on the forums that was it , i was too engrossed studying SC's( bloody sc's!!!!!!)
No i was not overconfident it was just tht i was really pressed on time coz of my accident and stuff so could not take any practice tests towards the end of my prep !
Well i do regret but hell i am not gonna study for this test again !( got better things to do in life- no offence gmat club's budding gmat stars!!)
BREAK !I SPILLED banana milk shake on my jeans !..
i am really clumsy !
could not go to the washroom since there were 3 mins remaining!
when i went in for the check in process i was praying tht the proctor does not say something like" dude you got sticky hands tht's against the testing policy go wash ur hands or smthing like tht ..
"
VERBAL
IT was smooth again , i was well prepared super-cool
- Whenver i used to see a SC question i used to say -" dude make sure you get this one right u need to get 15/20 sc's right else you will have to study sc's all over again "-this made me focus even more
i realised tht difficulty level for the whole verbal section was very in line with the OG , it had no overlap with manhattan tests !( rcs on the real thing were slightly tougher and shorter , questions asked on them were contorted , CR- i am good at them so i found them to be really easy , SC- they were in line with OG and GMAT-prep )
test was pretty smooth , i was sure of scoring ard 39-40 in the verbal section when i finished the test .
I was expecting my score to be 720 !
THEN all that idiotic- bull- shit
FIll this- fill tht .....(GMAC you a*s....i am dying here and your are fu****g asking my demography , filled the hellish thing .. in all that choas i filled my undergrad major as ECONOMICS where as it is ENGINEERING i hope this does not make me a fraud ,i would really like experts to comment on this .
question -" do you want to report /cancel your score?"
wht do i look like a doosh ??? i have been writing this exam for last 4 hrs show me my result ..
- 710 .....
quants my trusted friend you screwed me .., cr's ( i love you i can't live without you , marry me
)
rc's( you have been a long trusted friend but you are boring
) , sc's( get lost!)]
am i happy ?
well if wishes were horses .. i would be hugh hefner:)
yes i would have definitely wanted a higher gmat score may be ard 730 , i am definitely not a 750 material but i think i can live with a 710
since i just turned 23 so may be i will have to write GMAT again some time again in the future
but as of now i am at peace with my score !
I am really sorry if my post offended anyone , i can be a bit of a smug sometime..
anyways if you have any questions feel free to contact me on FB( search for - Akshat shrivastava , i am the guy wearing a black shirt clicking his own pic with a cell phone ) since i will be less active on gmatclub
thanks a lot gmat club i have gleaned a lot of wisdom from this website thanks a lot
_________________
" What [i] do is not beyond anybody else's competence"- warren buffett
My Gmat experience -http://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-710-q-47-v-41-tips-for-non-natives-107086.html
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