Hi Rich
Thank you so much for your honest feedback and responses. Please find my answers below.
1) You say that you've been studying since July, but does that mean that you've been studying for 1 month or 2 months (or some time 'in between')?I first started on 6th March, studying at least 7 hours a week and went through the concepts for Quant and Verbal and POE techniques and practised
OG. Initially my plan with this study was to write the GMAT in end of June but unfortunately, I fell terribly sick during end of May and was on bed rest for a month which was up till early July. I had lost hope of doing GMAT due to this more than a month break. Anyway, I then decided to start again on 22nd July and its been a month so far.
2) On these CATs, did you have to rush to finish the Verbal sections (and guess on a bunch of questions)?Yes, I did have to rush.
RC is getting me nowhere so I am only focussing on the first passage I get and then, I read the 2nd one roughly to answer some of the questions with only 50% certainty that it could be correct and in the last passage, i only skim through and guess most of the answers.
In SC some of it I get and im able to identify errors correctly but not all and in CR I think my weakest areas are the weaken and assumption question types. CR overall is not as bad as RC but some better techniques both in SC and CR will certainly help with time.
The pace I am aiming for is:
Quant - 15 questions in first 40 mins; Next 15 in 33mins and the remaining 7 guessing randomly in the last 2 mins.
Verbal - 18 questions in first 40mins; Next 17 in 33mins and the last 6 guessing randomly in last 2 mins.
At present, in Quant, I am falling behind of this timing in the second batch near about Q26-30 leaving me with less time to finish and about 10 qstns instead of 7 to guess.
In Verbal, its taking me hell lot of time from the start itself leaving me with about 10-11 questions to just mark in the last <2 mins! Guess its because of my lack of good understanding of the techniques and approaches to use in this section. So, to manage this section after hearing good reviews from many people, I started with
eGMAT Verbal online on Aug 23rd and I am aiming to complete all its modules as early as possible.
3) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT each time (including the Essay and IR sections)?Yes, I took these CATs under the same test time constrains as in the real GMAT and with IR and AWA sections. My IR was 2 percentile in the first and 4 in the second.