Hi All,
Good day. hope your preparations are going on well. This is my first post after the horrible day when i took my GMAT for the first time on 29th march 2012. 6 months have passed since the pathetic day ....

Got horrible score of 470 (Q 35 ;V 21; AWA 6) which no student would have ever thought of in their wildest of dreams. I have prepared for an year (year 2011 in full) or so and still could not get any good score. I had all of the best materials (OG, MGMAT 8 GUIDES, other books) but still i could nt make it. I took Princeton review coaching too for 3 months.

On the test day the questions in verbal seemed very tough and i was of the opinion that i am cracking a lot, but when the score appeared i was completely down. Quants is a eternal problem for me and i concentrated all the effort in improving maths, but still that day i managed to get through a very low score but quit high for my standards of maths. i know the rest of the world would laugh at me for these scores...

Right now i am preparing for other small exams which will get over in November 2012 and i want to take TOEFL immediately in December 2012 first week, post which i plan to retake my GMAT exam (2nd attempt) and take the exam in fag end of April 2013 with 5 months of preparation. (Dec 12- Apr 13)

All i need is a score of "630 - 650" and every mark above that is a blessing...

Have lost all my energy and now i am slowly recouping it and it will take some more time. Request expert guidance in terms of CORRECT/PROPER material to prepare and the way to go in 5 months of time.

In a way my maths score was quiet decent as i practiced a lot of questions from GMAT CLUB DIRECTORIES, but many a times sub 500 level questions were also tough to crack... Verbal seemed to be biggest problem. I thought i could manage it but fumbled. i did NOT use E-gmat etc etc.... for verbal preparation. i prepared extensively in GROCKIT.com (it gave me good round of practice questions) in Verbal and Quants...but that day it did nt go well at all.

i understand the fact that ONE SIZE DOES NT FIT for all, but nevertheless need some guidance to see some light at the end of the tunnel
Request your advice to crack this time ...

Awaiting your revert eagerly

regards
eshwar
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regards
eshwar

No amount of material will ensure a great test day score. It is what you do with the material that counts. I believe that test prep material of most companies is good enough to take you to 600 - 650. At higher levels, there are certainly quite a few differences in our approaches and hence in our results.

If you did not get the desired score after a year of hard work, there is certainly something wrong with your approach. You are missing something and from your post, I guess it is this: working on 100 questions a day is worthless if you don't go back and put in 10 mins in reviewing each one of those questions.

In my opinion, your strategy going forward should be something like this: Go through one complete set of material. Do not gloss over things that you do not understand - put in the time and energy to understand it. Move on to the next page only when this page is crystal clear. If you don't get something refer another book/internet/a forum etc or get someone to help you - class/private tutor/friend. Every subsequent page builds on the previous page so if you skip one concept, you are skipping lots of subsequent concepts too. Once you finish one topic, work on an exercise/assignment based solely on that topic (The Veritas topic assignments have 30 - 40 questions each and I feel they help the students a lot). After a month and a half of covering various topics, take a mock test. Your aim should be above 80% accuracy on the topics you have covered so far. In the last 1.5 months, practice a few questions of every topic very thoroughly every day e.g. take a mock test on Monday and review it on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. (Go through every question, jot down the new concepts you have come across etc). For the rest of the week, practice questions based on the new concepts and the weaknesses that the mock helped you identify. Next Monday, take a mock again and so on...
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Karishma
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor
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