Folks, I am done with my GMAT. Score split: 730 with Q50 V38. Yet to receive the official score ( Received official score today, AWA 5.5 IR 7). I never thought of posting my gmat experience on this forum. My preparation was quite unorthodox, hence may not be of much use to anybody. Even then, i got a few points to be shared about the exam.
I started my preparation sometime in Jan. Took first GMAT prep test and scored 690 ( Q49, V35). Prior, to the exam I completed OG13 in about 3 weeks. I have always been strong in Quant. Looking at the split, my target was to improve verbal score. I bought all 12 strategy guides from
MGMAT. Except for their sentence correction guide, I never really opened any of their other books. People give great reviews about
MGMAT number properties guide, but it was not of much use to me. I just completed 25 online questions. These questions were good for practice. And I could answer most of the questions correct. Other than that, other strategy guides were not of much use to me. Let me know in case if anyone needs these books.
Even, after going through
MGMAT sentence correction guide, I somehow felt my verbal preparation was not going in right direction. To be frank I did not touch quant for next one month at least. I just went back to OG13 and did all the verbal problems again. Also tried to solve some problems gmatclub verbal forum. Those are good for some practice. Again, I was not really sure if my preparation was going in right direction. I used to spend an hour or two everyday, mostly going through
OG 13 verbal problems and on/off quant ( as I said in the beginning, I never planned my preparation). I just read what I liked.
Some time in Feb, I came across a post from
EGMAT on these forums.
EGMAT offers some of their online content for free. What struck me the most was their bold face questions lesson. I liked it so much that, the very next day or so I registered for their online course. This is an excellent course if you want to improve your verbal score. Good thing about
EGMAT course is that the course content is properly organized. All the concepts are properly explained. After registering for
EGMAT course, I stopped looking at any other material for verbal. Let me be frank to admit, I did not even open
MGMAT sentence correction guide, after registering with
EGMAT course.
MGMAT SC guide is a great book no doubt, but for some reason I could never digest that book. It is not that I was lacking in baics, but it looked to me more like a classroom textbook. Whereas,
EGMAT course was audiovisual and I could connect instantly to their method of teaching. In addition, their approach to SC/CR questions is amazing. I might sound like beating the drum for
EGMAT, but personally I liked their course very much. I recommend it to anybody, be it native/non-native speaker. It is a one stop shop for all your verbal preparation.
At the same time I did not like their IR course much. Most of the questions were very easy and do not necessarily represent official questions. Even then I learned a thing or two from their IR course as well. First time I got to know that, there will be a calculator available for IR section.
Material used (books): OG13, verbal strategy guide,
MGMAT strategy guides ( just solved online question bank for a few and did not many of their strategy guides)
Quant:
GMAT prep question pack1 is an excellent practice. It comes with about 400 or so questions and is an excellent practice in the last two weeks of preparation.
GMAT focus three test bundle. Each test consists of 24 quant (recently retired) questions. These questions represent the actual gmat questions most closely than anything else.
GMAT club tests: Excellent for practice. But very hard questions. Unless you are good with basics, don't work these tests. Even if you score less on the
GMAT club tests, do not get panic. These tests are way more difficult than anything you will get to see on the actual gmat test. Individual questions represent some of the toughest gmat questions, but we will never come across those many 700-800 level questions in a single gmat test. But very good for practice. My scores ranged from 49 to 51 in most of the gmat club quant tests.
Someone named Sandeep Gupta, compiled all 700-800 level quant questions. I got this material material somewhere on these forums. This is the only material I used for my entire quant preparation. I am personally very grateful to him. He even came up with solutions for most of the problems. If you are looking for quant practice, then just get these questions. You don't need anything else. Thanks Sandeep.
DS question sets from Bunuel were very useful to me. His DS posts are a great source for practice. Thanks to GMATCLUB.
Verbal: Single source...
EGMAT. It goes to show how much I liked their course.
Mock test scores:
GMAT Prep1 ( in Jan): 690 ( Q49 V35)
MGMAT CAT1: 690 ( Q49, V36)
MGMAT CAT2:670 (Q49 V35)
MGMAT CAT2: 670 (Q49, V35)
GMAT Prep1 (retake after about 5 months gap): 750
GMAT Prep2: 740
Test Day:
First things first.The night before the test day, I could hardly sleep for 2 hrs. Very bad. Don't ever do this. If you don't feel like sleeping because of nervousness or anything like that, go for a long walk till you are tired,then force yourself to sleep. A good night sleep is a must to face this bloody (sorry, but could not find a better word) exam. GMAT is very intense test. You need to be intensely focused for full 4 hours. Lack of sleep reduced my score by at least 30 points. I cannot stress this enough, rest is your choice.
I reached the test center at 11.30 AM. Formalities were completed in about 15 minutes. Better don't carry any study material with you. You may carry some snack bars. Some people do suggest drinking red bull or other energy drinks. But I tried it during one of my practice tests, and felt very uncomfortable. I did not eat/drink anything for the full 4 hrs. Again, It was my personal choice. Check what suits you the best.
Exam:
Essay section went very well. I was very relaxed after this section. IR was also very easy except for one MSR question set. This was hard and messy. I blindly guessed two of the 3 questions in this MSR set.
QA: Started off well, and I was comfortable throughout this section. To my utter shock, I did not get a single probability question.Towards end of the section, questions were very tough and messy. Each question was of 4 to 5 lines length. I did two mistakes in quant. For two of the questions, I solved the questions correctly, but confirmed a different answer. The same mistake was repeated for quant last question. I felt very bad about this.If not for these couple of mistakes, I could have easily scored 51 in quant.
Verbal: Started off really well. Got two bold face questions in first 20 questions. To my utter shock, 80% of my CR questions were evaluate/inference/assumption questions. I got one strengthen question, two bold face questions and not a single weaken question. This was not something I was prepared for. Otherwise it was smooth till 30th question. Hardly 2 or 3 questions might have gone wrong. Then started the drama. Questions were getting very very tough. Added to that, I became very relaxed after 30th question. Again, don't ever do this, stay focused for full 4 hrs. I got a messy RC passage around 36th question. I read this passage 3 times. This was a blunder. This passage had 3 questions. Had I not spent so much time reading this junk passage, I could have improved my verbal score by atleast 30 points easily. Because of this mistake, I got all 3 RC questions wrong, and was hardly left with any time for the next 2 CR and SC questions. I am 100% confident that all of my last 6 questions were wrong. Getting so many consecutive questions wrong is the worst thing to do on GMAT.
That is all about it. 4 months and 730 not a bad thing I feel. Folks are welcome to comment on my score or anything.
Folks at
EGMAT, thank you very much. I disappointed you all with my low verbal score. But it was my own mistake. I don't really think there is anything more to be learned on verbal side. It is just a matter of keeping your head cool through the exam.
People to be thanked: Shradha, Payal, and Rajat from
EGMAT. I liked your course very much. Sandeep Gupta (my special thanks to you) . And Ron from
MGMAT. And many others whose success stories inspired me.
And more than anyone, I need to thank my wife for all her patience during this period.
Iam targeting one year executive mba courses from India. Any suggestions will be highly valued.
close
Updated on: 27 Jun 2013, 22:22
) 
