Q49-V42, 750.

Cocoa,

Congrats again.. that is amazing... I gave it the first time in may 4th.. I got 660(Q:50,V:29).

I am giving it again.. I have been consistantly getting 36-38 this time on Gmat prep, Manhattan gmat and Princeton Review tests, Veritas and 800score..
What were your score ranges before the second time.. i,.e the practice scores!!

thanks a lot!!

Hi Willget800,

You scored 50 for quantitative, that is superb. Actually your case is pretty similar with mine, you are strong in calculation, but you were just an average reader during your first.

I think the key to nail the verbal section is READING SKILL. So I stress one more time, please read Honghu forum, she gave a wonderful tips there.

These are the books that I bought for GMAT :
Kaplan
Princeton Review
GMAT Official Guide 11th edition
GMAT test papers from MBA.com

After my first test, I mainly used CR1000, SC1000, and RC1000 that I downloaded from this website.

It is important to know your weaknesses. This was the sequence of my study after the fist test :

1. For my case, my SC was horrible, I was guessing most of the time during my first test. So this is the first thing that I fixed. I went through SC1000 3 times, until I could get 100% right. Then I went through the explaination in the OG (THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT, I did not do it before my first test, so I came out with a lot of assumption, and ASSUMPTION is the enemy of GMAT).

2. After that, I dealed with my RC. I will advise you LSAT material for this. LSAT RC is much harder than GMAT RC. It is a good training. If I knew about it earlier, I would have bought the LSAT OG by ETS. I went through all LSAT RC in RC1000 one time.

3. 2 weeks before the 2nd exam, I went through all LSAT questions in CR1000. Man, these questions are tough. I don't think I am suited to become a lawyer. It took me 2 weeks to completed all the questions. Oh ya, it took me 2 weeks to complete my RC too.

I don't think the practise tests will give an accurate predictions after you do it once. Somehow, I am pretty good at memorizing answers.

COMPREHENSION is the key in verbal. The books recommend you to practise in time condition. I don't think it works for me. I did every question carefully, and for all 5 answers, I tried to give reason for each of them (why it is right / or wrong ). I always tried to get the right answer, although it took me more than 15 minutes for one question.

In improving my reading skills. I tried to read and focus on every word on the sentence slowly. If you play music, you can understand what I am trying to say. When you practise scale on piano or guitar, you have to do it slowly for hours. After sometime, you can play fast with a clean notes. I tried to read on the way to work or home, on the bus and on the train. Basically, I tried to read as much as possible, focusing on each word.

Well, now you see, I worked hard for it, I am not a genius, I am just a normal guy with average math skills. So I believe you can do it too. If you can get 95 % for your verbal, I think you will be at 99 %. Don't worry about your math, the questions are very similar ( no repeat though, I can't recall any repeat ), your math is good enough.

Aaah, if I could get 50 for my math I will be at 99 percentile too......

Cocoa,

Thanks a lot for your immediate reply and a detailed one..

I wish I had read this earlier.......... I did not think it would be possible to do the SC1000 completely and RC1000 and CR10000 two times!!!

Amazing work.. Really really good hardwork.. WAAV. Thats all I can say i fyou can sit down and do the entire doc!!!

My exam is in next week... So I dont have time to go through the entire CR, SC and RC 1000..

I went through 300 of the SC.. and I went through around 5-10 tests in CR.

I am now consistantly scoring 36-38 on Verbal.. I am hoping for that atleast for this test.. If I get 50 and 38. I reach 720 I believe. Trust me I will be happy with it!!!!

Did you do Manhattan GMAT?
I did Manhattan and Veritas, instead of these docs.. Hopefully those should be ok to help me!!!

Let me know any tipes for the last 3 days!!

Thanks a lot!!

Congratulations on your great score! I have to say that there are a lot of valuable information in this forum that come from everybody, but your score is mostly because of your own effort. Congratulations and enjoy your victory!

Hey willget800,

What have you been doing for math since your first exam? Any good materials? And how was the math comparing to GMAT Prep's math?

My test is on the weekend after yours. Good luck with your test!

*Oh, one more thing, I heard that SC1000 has some wrong answers... is this true? Thanks.

sng,

i did veritas and gmatclub challenges after first exam.. seems ok as of now.. i feel i have not lost touch in math!!

Thanks Honghu, you are right. Reading this forum help alot in preparing GMAT. But I still like your forum the best.

Willget800,
I don't have any Manhattan GMAT questions. All the materials that I used were listed in my earlier thread.
For RC and CR, I still think that it is better if you go through a few sets of the LSAT questions in CR1000 and RC1000. These questions are similar with the "toughest" GMAT questions (in my opinion). So if you can get the feel on how the test maker constructed the questions, the few questions that come earlier in the exam will be a piece of cake.

I think sng is right, there are a few questions in SC1000 that have he wrong answer. I just ignored them if I could not find the reason of certain answers. For SC, stick with the two GMAT OG books. The explaination is really clear.

By the way, before I forgot the feeling, I would like to say that PHYSICALLY prepared for the exam day is VERY IMPORTANT. I will try to illustrate my physical condition between my 1st and 2nd test.

Ist TEST
Stop practising the night before. Try to relax by playing computer games. Could not sleep until 3 am in the morning. Woke up about 10 am, still very stressed. Drank a lot of water, no breakfast. Until luch time, still no mood to eat, I had one little cheese burger and a cup of milk tea. Started by exam at 1.30 pm. I think by the time I finished my Quantitative section, I ran out of gas. Could not concentrated well on Verbal, I remembered half way through my tummy was screaming for food, and I felt so tired.

2nd TEST
Reading and preparing AWA until about 11 pm. Watched Japanese drama until 1 am, then slept. Woke up about 9 am, drank a glass of milk, a piece of bread, and a half boiled egg. Cleaned up my flat, and mobbed the floor until 10.30 am. Took a shower, then continue watching my Japanese drama. At 11.30, ate my lunch, a plate of Malay rice with vegetable curry and fried chicken, then had a big cup of thick green tea (it is the best to drink tea after you eat curry). After that, took a train to the test centre, and arrived there about 12.45 am. Before I went in, I took a bottle of Brand's essence of chicken (man, this stuff is more powerful than Red Bull, trust me). I was ready for the exam, and my fuel lasted the entire 3.5 hours, and I focused well. I did not feel hungry until 7 pm that day, I think I should not do this every day, it is not very healthy.

Congrats for your all-powerful score! Way to go pal!

Thanks, zooroopa.

It is just hard work actually. Everybody can do it. All the best for the people who are taking the exam this month !!!

CONGRATULATIONS Cocoa!!!



Great score!

BTW, what do you mean by this expression?



Do you mean to read HongHu's expalnations in the 'Verbal questions' thread?

Back from vacation, time to hand out the awards...

Thanks M8,

Sorry for my unclearity. I think her thread is one of the sticky in this forum, she got 780 for her exam. Just look for the thread with "780" on the title, and it was posted by Honghu.

Great trophy, thanks Rhyme. I have not got my AWA though, I hope it will not be too bad. I think I did not do well in AWA.

Could you please tell us how to download: CR1000, SC1000, and RC1000 too. Thanks.

Vel,

It is one of the sticky in Gmatclub forum, go to forum index, click on "GMAT" forum, it was posted by rahulrao.

This post is a reply to Shevy who sent me a private message.

"Shevy, I prefer to answer your question through the forum so that everybody can benefit from this website. I hope you agree with me."

Below are the questions asked :
1.How long did it take you to go over the sc1000 one time?
2.I have an error log, but I dont know how to use it. How many times should I review... I am exactly like you...I memorize the answers and I feel like I am cheating when I look over the error log because I know the answers already.
3.Also, how many errors were you typically seeing in 100 questions in SC 1000 and in one LSAT CR test in CR 1000?

My reply :

Shevy, it took me at least 5 days to finished SC1000 one time. I am working full time so I can only do it at night, if you can study full time, may be it won't take that long.

Yes, memorizing answer is a problem. To improve this condition, I also memorized / identified the error of the other "4 wrong answer". For example, I get a SC question that have "D" as the answer. I need to find reasons why "A,B,C,E" are not the answers. I compared each wrong answer with "D", and try to understand why D is better than each of the wrong answer. So instead of just memorizing the answer, try to memorize the reasons. By doing this, you are not only memorizing, but indirectly you are training your reasoning skill.

I also write down the questions that I answered wrong. I concentrated more on these questions when I went through SC1000 the next time.

For rules in SC, stick with the explanation in both OG books. Too bad, SC1000 does not have explanation. But, after reading both books, you can easily "explain" the answer in SC1000. I think SC is all about rules, so to get the right answer you just have to apply the "correct rules" in selecting your answer.

Ah, this is my no. 1 rule in SC. THE CORRECT ANSWER CANNOT CHANGE THE MEANING OF THE ORIGINAL SENTENCE. So first, you have to understand the meaning or the message conveyed in the original sentence, then you start applying "grammar rules". In my opinion, Princeton Review also have quite a good GMAT "grammar rules", so I did combined it with the OG (but I did not read much of the answer expalanation in Princeton Review ).

Although SC1000 have some wrong answers, overall it is pretty accurate. The wrong answers are not more than 10 out of 1000. The answer in the LSAT CR1000 questions are pretty accurate, I could not recall any wrong answer. May be I can't explain the answers of some LSAT questions, but it does not mean the answer is wrong.

Additional info for everybody :

I did not mentioned much about Quantitative sections in my thread because I think other people who score "50" or "51" can give better advise than me. However, may be I can write a few words about my experience with the math sections, and things that I wish I could have done. I hope it will help you to prepare better.

I did not finished the last 3 questions in Quantitative section. I ran out of time. So I just put "E" for all of them (I assume all the answers are wrong). I was too careful at the beginning part. So my advises during the quantitative test are :
1. don't recheck answer, you don't have time for that, keep the pace up since the beginning.
2. please be confidence with your answer.
3. the more you hesitate the more problems you will face.
4. if you find a question that you can't answer, move on, there are more questions coming, don't waste time.

This is something that I missed during my math preparation. I did not familiarize enough with the type of questions asked. They are all listed in the free Pearson gmat software and the OG. So please read through them, and remember the rules, the shortest way of answering.

I did not go to any prep courses. So I did not know whether these courses teach any shortcut ways in answering quantitative questions. I answer the questions based on my own comprehension. So sometimes I feel my way of answering take too much time, especially on "properties of number". Finding a good math teacher can solve this problem.

Shevy, I hope my reply answer your questions.