700-93 percentile (Q:47-82 percentile, V:38-85 percentile)

Congrats!!

Please let us know your practice test scores and preparation strategies.


Thanks

Way to go!! Congratulations.

Congrats !!!! Well done !!! Good luck for with your apps !!!!

Well done sperumba, that is a very good score !!
Congrats !!

Here is my detailed post.
MY Prep
I started preparing for the GMAT in september 2005. I studied for about 3 weeks and then gave up. Took a break and than killed my momentum did not get back to thinking about the GMAT until new year.

This time around my only goal was to prepare the best I could and give my 110 % . So I started preparing for the exam around Jan 7th. Booked a date 12 weeks after that. And chalked out a plan.

https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=17644&highlight=
I told my self come what may you have to stick to this plan. Booking a test date in advance helped me a lot to get up from bed and study.
There were many tough choices I had to make ... Do i watch Desperate Housewives or do I study and the plan helped me make the right choice.

I started with kaplan, and finished it in 2 weeks. While doing these practice problems I always timed my self .

After 2 weeks of doing completing kaplan 2005 and kaplan 800
( CR). I wrote a diagnostic test PP1 to find out where I stand.

I scored a horrible 590 (Q 44, V 26). I was really disapointed with this performance. It was partly because i did not complete the verbal section.

Got back to books and said let me get the fundamentals straight. Did all section in PR . This certainly increased my confidence.
I had my statergies right but i still had to work on them. Worked a lot on verbal timing and this time around i did a little better.

PP2 - 640 (q50, v28).
I bought the MGMAT -SC guide and spent 2 weeks with it. THis is a great book and I highly recomend it to every body. There was not a single SC question on my real GMAT that I did not know what was being tested.


Then I picked up OG and worked every problem in there. Wrote all 4 kaplan tests
Kaplan scores:
540(35,25)
570(50,24)
640(50,30) lot of repeated questions
680(50,34).lot of repeated questions.

I did not pay too much attention to the kaplan scores. But they were good practice.

Then it was time to revise and take the PR tests
PR test scores,
690(46,39)
700(41,46)
690(46,39)
570(41,27)did not concentrate at all.

I figured out to score well in verbal I had to focus on every question and not get overwhelmed by the test as a whole. This increased my verbal accuracy.
So wrote about 6 verbal sections from the retired ETS papers.
I was making about 6-12 mistake in those sections.

Then I took GMATPrep 4 days before the test.
640(48,30)
680(47,36)

I decided to go thro all my notes and get ready for the test.
Did atleast 5 revision of the MGMAT_sc book ,went thro all my notes. Went thro error logs and found out what my typical mistakes were.

Went and took the test.

MA466 the Quant section of the real test was way harder than the OG. There were a lot of DS questions with inequalities and co-ordinate geometry.

Thanks for your wishes guys. I will hang around to help ppl. please PM me if you need any thing else.

Congrats ! I was wondering where you had disappeared...

Congrats!!

Could you tell us the material you used for CR and RC.

Also, how good is Kaplan 800?? I have the Kaplan 2006 book but dont have Kaplan 800.

Thank you

Riuscita,

I did some LSAT material for CR. They are really good and very hard. Once you do them they kinda make the GMAT CRs look easy.

I found that for GMAT CRs reading the argument first and then the question helped. If the question focus on only point of the argument then I would zero in on just that part of the argument and eliminate the other choices that are general. This enabled me to quickly get to the realvent part of the argument.

I found Kaplan800 material useful for my verbal prep. They were really hard and they do not really reflect the real GMAT question types. However they certainly teach you how to eliminate wrong answers and get a perspective on the argument. You do not have to own every book that is published for the GMAT. I did not have Kaplan 800 either. So I wen to Barnes and Noble during lunch time for 2 weeks in a row and completed the verbal section of the book.

Fo RC I just did as many RCs as possible. My only strategy was to use the KAplans method. Just look for the authors voice, tone and Key words that reflect change in naration.

For example
If the authour is examining a view point and quoting a study to support his argument in the first paragraph and then says
HOWEVER other studies show....

Then I make note that there is a change in how the author is presenting his view. Ignored all the actual facts of the study ... unless a specific questions asks about it.

hope this helps.

-sperumba

Thanks sperumba.

I have scored very badly until now

Kaplan 1 - 540
PR -1 - 570
Kaplan Papertest - 590

I got a break in my studying for 10days...thanks to interviewing with a diff grp (which now I am not sure will happen )and "lovely" discussions with my current manager... I am back with my books again. the exam is in 6 weeks. I dont know if I should postpone the exam or just work hard the next 6 weeks.

Your test scores vs your final score is very inspiring.

One more question: I consistenlty get the - Weaken the argument/conclusion questions wrong and would like to work on some LSAT material, like you did. Can you give me the name of the book/url you used.

Thank you

Riuscita,

Do not think about postponing the exam. Keep it as a last resort.

where are you lacking in your scores. Give me a section(s) or part(s) where you think you certainly have to improve.

I will be able to help you with some material that I have.

The most Important thing that I figured out pretty late in the game is that
I get overwhelmed by the enormity of the test. I focus more on completing the test rather than getting questions right.

So here is what I did. Timed my self at all times and focused on getting the first 15 questions rt. The GMAT scoring algorithm as well as all other practice test algorithms work that way.

If you go back to your PR test You will see that you probably made misakes in both quant and verbal pretty early ( say with in the first 8 Questions). This will bring your socre down.

Try this out during your next practice test. Concentrate on getting the first 15 questions right. Dont worry about time during the first 15 questions.Pace your self after the first 15 questions to complete the section in time. You can work on timing and doing questions at a faster pace. Practice as many questions as possible. I have a few ETS papers that i can give you. My verbal score improved drastically after I started to concentrate.

Once you know the strategies to these questions try to apply what you have learnt. I found that I wasn't doing this that is why my practice score were low. But I some how got in the groove before the test and realized what I was doing wrong.

Let me know if this helps
Good Luck.
-sperumba.

I noticed that toward the end of you psot you had mentioned CR Weaken the argument/conclusion questions wrong. I will send you the books name.

Also here is the thing that is more important that no book actually mentions.

Consider a strengthen question like this. ( I made this up so excuse the poor wording)

Mayor: Schools do not have enough financial resources to build new science labs for kids. Kid are also more intersted in sports than science anyways. A study about financial aid predicts that for the next 10 years the sources of funding is limited. So schools development in science and technology is going to be limited.

Here the mayor cites only "money" as the primary criteria for his conclusion.

So the strengthen/Weaken portion should only focus on "Money" and no other things, like kids intrest.

Then avoid all answers that have nothing to do with money. You will very shortly have only One or may be two answers glaring at you. Pick the best one and move on.

This I realized very late in the game.
I would get a lot of questions wrong on a test. But when I go back and look at them I would realize that i was stupid to over look the main criteria.... and taking the test in a timed situation stressed me out. So i decided to focus more and get these questions nailed.

Thanks a million for the advice and the CR tips.

Yes...I did get 2 wrong in the first eight in math and 3 wrong in the first eight in verbal ( Got the very first question wrong). I will apply your strategy and keep you posted on my progress.

where am I lacking on my scores ...well...literally ...all of them

CR
RC (worked on 2 LSAT RC from Arco's book today and scored 1/6, 2/7 )
DS ( numbers and inequality questions are the worst )

SC - I am concentrating on the MGMAT SC guide. Hoping to improve.

Thanks again!!!

Hi Riuscita
I also like Princeton's technique for CR. Have you reffered to this book? The strategy worked for me and helped improved my scores, i still commit mistakes on Inference questions, but the others i can nail.

Congratulations!

Well done, excelent score..

congrts sprerumba Thats a great score and a great improvement!

yes princetons CR technique is pretty good. It is also very clear. They have done a good job of explaining what to look for.

The LSAT book that I used is called Nova's Master the LSAT.

He is what i did for DS with inequalities and number properties.

Suppose the question is a YES/NO question like is x >0

The I worte down is x>0 OR x<0. Thus I would not miss an affermative NO. This I read in One of the posts in the Club. It proved to be very usesful.

The second thing that I did was I always imagined a number line. Rather than distinct values to plug in.

If I plugged in distinct values.I made sure I did Positive numbers, negetive numbers , fractions and 0 . when ever applicable.

Finally I also went back to the question stem to see weather my answer was in line with what exactly was given and what exactly was asked.

For SC. You are doing the right thing. There is no better book than MGMATs SC guide. I made very good notes from the book. Pretty much every thing in the book is important .. But I still made notes. I tend to remember things better if i write it down. So before every test my routine for SC would be to go thro my MGMAT SC notes. I did this on the day of the test as well. Got up and revised my notes early in the morning this made up for good warm up as well.

Keep us posted on how it goes.
-sperumba

Congratulations for hitting 700 mark

Good luck with the apps