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09 Jan 2007, 06:05
First, about me: I’m non-native, 22 years old male from Uzbekistan. Background in Manufacturing. English is my fourth language. Therefore, I hope you won’t get annoyed too much if you find many grammar errors, unused words, unparallel and awkward constructions in my story:)
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While quant has never been a problem, I’ve always struggled with verbal. My 36 in Verbal doesn’t put me in a position of recommending something to you. I’m sure many of you here can score much higher even without much effort. My method may help someone who has unlimited time to prepare and doesn’t want to learn from mistakes:) All my preparation consisted of practicing, a lot of practicing. I tried to work on my mistakes, even bought several grammar books, but those freaky explanations didn’t help me at all. I really admire ones who can interpret those rules and apply them on a test. So, if you can afford spending 2 years for GMAT, you may find my way useful. If you don’t, then never prepare as I did. It is the most inefficient way of studying. Doing tones of questions without purpose not only brings little effect, but it may actually harm you. Please, keep in mind that it is the result that is important, not the time you spent achieving it.
About my third attempt:
This time, I didn’t study at all. Just let my brain have a long rest (about 2-3 weeks). Tried to not to think about the test. I think, my biggest mistake in my last attempts was that I put too much pressure on me, and thought too much about its possible consequences on my life. That is why, instead of concentrating on one single thing, my mind was processing a lot of useless details which kept me away from achieving maximal effectiveness. The key was to make my brains think that the test was just an ordinary obstacle on my road to b-school. I needed to forget about the test for some time. Following steps helped me achieve it:
1. The day before the test, I physically, NOT mentally, exhausted myself with a hard work. As a consequence, I came home tired and had a very good night sleep, which lasted 13 hours!!!
2. I ate a lot of dark chocolate before and during the test. Believe me, it really helps to get rid off most negative thoughts.
3. Any boxer knows that thinking too much about his future fight BEFORE and DURING the fight consumes too much energy. Moreover, it can destroy one’s self-confidence. Therefore, I filled all my spare moments with pleasant activities, so that I didn’t have time to think about the test.
4. This advice can help only those who don’t have problems with timing: I noticed that too much concentration during the test may actually kill stamina. I needed to distract myself. Thus, I told myself that I may afford to have short rests (10-15 second) on each 6th question. So, after each 6th question I closed my eyes and counted till 10. It did help a lot.
That’s how I achieved my score.
BTW, I have a file with practice sets. Don’t know the source of the sets, but they are pretty good. They truly represent the type of questions I saw on the test..
If you are interested, PM me. I will send it via e-mail.