KISS(ed)GMAT 700 times. 450 to 700 An exprience. Debrief

Hi Folks,

Yesterday,the 24th Oct, was my Date with GMAT and I kissed GMAT 700 times. Yes I scored 700 ( Q 48 V 36 ). Yipeeeeeeeeeee !

Thanks gmatclub and fellow GMAT lovers.

PN : Ill write a detailed experience once I recover from the Hangover

Cheers
KG

Finally Writing the story. Its a bit long and might be boring. But proves that with determination and good preperation, one can get a decent score.

Warning - Its too long story.

The Experience

Aug 2007 - The story began in 2007, when I somehow ended up giving Free CAT @ Princeton review and scored miserably : 450. I did not prepare nor I knew the format of the exam, just started giving the test and got the score. I laughed out at myself in sympathy but forgot about the exam.

Sep 2007 to Feb 2010 -

- Got busy with a new girlfriend then a breakup. &

- To have a change in life I took Overseas appointment in UK, and stayed there till dec 2010.

- Came back home and realised myself back to square one Then came the thought of GMAT.

Grinding begins March 2010 to 23rd Oct 2010

Realising that I have to crack GMAT to get an MBA for myself I got down with the serious business of studying again and keept my personal life and professional life on a cruise mode. I browsed through some GMAT sites suchas Beatthegmat and pagal guy to know about test format and study material. Also got in touch with a friend who had given GMAT with 680 score.

I decided to first complete basic material for Verbal and Quants and then give Gprep. As one has only two valuable genuine attempts with GPREP.

March to May

VERBAL - Surfed GMATCLUB to get the best books available and got them ( Majorly PDS's . Torrent was my friend here )).

CR - Studied CR bible religiously and then solved OG problem.

SC - Studied Manhattan SC guide. This is a bible of SC. I must say. This book created a foundation for understanding the SC concept and then applying the same. Along with this solved OG 10 as per per the classification in OG 10.



Rc - Started reading random articles on recommended sites such as https://www.newscientist.com/ - very useful for getting familiar with those topics involving earth, mars , some king of medicine survey and blah blah. This site is actually interesting. Spending 15 - 20 min on this site daily helps. I solved RC from OG ( timed )



Quants

Someone recommended me about this site called 4GMAT. I bought a the maths sets from this site. The set has 2 books covering basics with loads of problem ( not objective mind it. These books are supposed to brush up basics ).

Completed the basic material and the day came for my first Gprep.

Scored 620 ( Q 48 V 28 )

I was happy as well as sad. happy because of the improvement from 450 and sad because I could see the steep path ahead.

I enrolled for MGMAT test series and decided to given a test every 2 - 3 weeks . Meanwhile this is What i did :

- Joined GMAT CLUB for CR preparation. Solved 10 - 15 CR's daily. And occasionally post reply. Guys, posting reply helps as it makes you involved with the problem. Moreover when someone replies, you enter a mode of group study. This make you feel that you are not alone and at times gives you the much needed moral boost.

- Revised SCguide. Solved SC & RC problems from GMAT club.

- Solved Quants questions from GMAT club.

Gave my first MGMAT cat and scored 640 ( Q 43 V 34 ) . MGMAT Quants is bit tough but less tricky than Gprep . Verbal is little easy than Gprep. After analysing the tests realised that Timing was a problem in quants so started following the timing stategy

1. Do not make a question an ego . Esply in Quants.

2. Keep a tab to time through out the test. Do not rush in end. GMAT is like a game of tennis . You have to constantly perform . You get some points, The exam gets wins points and you win some. But the winner is the one who gets the last point ( the game point ). In case you perform good in the beginning and do not leave time for last questions, the test gets all the points and win. I followed the famous MGMAT time chart which says

Quats : Solve 7 to 8 questions every 15 mins. The progress record should be like

Time elapsed Current question

75 min 1

60 7 or 8

45 14 or 15

30 21 or 22

15 28 or 29

Verbal : Solve 8 to 9 questions every 15 mins. The progress record should be like

Time elapsed Current question

75 min 1

60 8 or 9

45 16 or 17

30 24 or 25

15 32 or 33

Do not be too fast and do not be too slow. This chart really worked for me. Using this cart and constantly evaluating and working on weak areas my score imporved a bit in MGAMT tests as follows

MGAMT 2 640 Q 43 V 34

MGAMT 3 660 Q 45 V 35

Fixed the timing issue in Quant and started writing AWA and took exactly 8 min breaks. Quant improved but Verbal suffered , may be i got tired by the time verbal started.

MGMAT 4 640 Q 47 V 31

MGAMT 5 700 Q 48 V 37 - I went out for party dat night seeing a light after all that head banging.

MGAMT 6 670 Q 47 V 34



At this point I gave my second GMAT prep and scored 640 ( Q 47 V 31 ) I got 90 % DS questions wrong and 70 % sc wrong I saw some repeat questions in CR . I was thrashed and figured out that i need to practice GPREP questions to get accustomed to Official style of questions. Guys no prep material can give you what GPREP questions can give. So started only studying GPREP question from GMATCLUB and manhattan gmat for Quants and verbal. I read explanations especially for SC. This gave me a refined view of the GMAT preparation. I was now sharpening the knowledge to fit in GMAT boot.

..... More surfing and re tests on MGAMT.

Guys all this while I was eating sleeping drinking GMAT. Started loosing my sleep once I scheduled my test on 24th OCT. 2 weeks before test I took off from office and went to my hometown to study and stay calm. My hometown is in a small hill station. I wanted to keep myself cool all this time . Pump up my confidence and keep myself away from day to day worries

I download the famous AWA guide and read it in a day. Got hold of template to make my life easy with AWA. At this point i had completed loads of GPREP questions so my GPEP score was bound to be inflated. But I decided to give the test to get familiar with the screen .

I Gave GPEP - Was a bit surprised to see the score 760 ( Q 49 V 44 ) . 6 - 7 repeat questions in Quants and 10 - 12 repeat questions in Verbal. No worries this acted as a moral boost.

All this week gave GPREP two more times and score 720 ( Q 49 V 38 ) and 760 ( Q 51 V 42 ). I was now kind of unsure where i actually would score due to false inflated score but was prepared to handle GMAT questions. In last 10 - 12 days you cannot learn much but just revise and get the feel good factor. ( i feel so )



The D DAY

I could not sleep well the day before ( or may be I felt so ). I reached test centre with my passport, test confirmation letter and 3 Snickers at 1 PM. After the usual checks the guy at the centre gave me an option to start early. The option which I declined. Do not know why. It was like a doctor asking you to give an injection earlier than the scheduled time. I said no and went to the waiting area, where random thoughts started coming to mind. Finally I decided go for it , to save me from this agony.

I took an extra erasable notebook to make a time chart poster. Made the poster and kept it next to the LCD. AWA went cool. Finished it easily on time. Guys , the AWA pdf is damn good to feel comfortable with AWA. AWA is all about the format of the passage. As Iam writing this debrief, official score report has come and I have got 5 in AWA. Peaceful. No one will ever ask for it



The first break. Ate half snicker and went to loo. 6 min over. and back to test.

Quants

Questions were almost like those in Gprep. I just concentrated on answering the questions and keeping a tab on time. I did not try to gauge difficulty of a question and kept on telling myself. Go on dude u doing good. And if a tough question popped , i gave my best, sometime guessed and kept on moving. When i was on last question I s had 7 mins felt. Felt happy coz of the time and a bit worried ( thinking i might have screwed somewhere . No worries gave easily 3 min to the question. and finished the section around 4 min early.



Second break . Ate second half of the snicker and went to loo again and drank some water . And back in.



Verbal

First question was an SC . Spent 3 min I guess. In Verbal you are not too sure of an answer so u might sometime go in dream mode. Thats what happened but i realised this and clicked an answer and went ahead. Again the questions were similar to the one from Gprep. I could not get some CR and some Sc 's and some RC questions and kinda guessed them and went ahead. 1 min 55 sec left and i was on question 40. A cr question. The body of the CR was so big as if CR was a cousin brother of RC. I could barely read the CR question and the time was around 1 min left. Guessed "C" and moved to last question An SC . I selected answer choice c and started reading the question. My mind had almost stopped thinking . Somehow when last 5 seconds were left realised choice D suits the bill . Selected D and boom the pop up cameup " time up " !!

I was had mixed emotion at that point because the test was over and I knew that answering last two question in verbal would not hamper my score much. Some more clicks and the screen came which was asking in RED BOLD LETTERS . DO YOU WANT TO REPORT THE SCORE. 2 min time . Dude why on earth I would not report my score. 15 seconds and i clicked YES and covered my eyes with my hand. Don know why I did that but somehow My heart stopped beating for a second. And the popped up the score . In very small non bold letter . 700 Quants 48 Verbal 36. YESSSSSSSSSS is what i said and gave a virtual hug to myself .



Finally the preperation paid of . All that cribbing for missing some trips, parties, and movies paid off. I was happy coz 700 was a decent score for me . I was aiming for around 680 . Happy to get the score. Hope to get through a nice college with 5.5 yr exp and 700. Amen !

And yes I gave the 2 snickers ( I ate only one ) to the test centre guys .

Leasson learned.

1. Prepare in organised manner.
2. Do not panic. I did panicked while my preperation time. In case you get worried. Have a break. relax.

3. Keep your cool on the D DAY.

Thanks to the GMAT gurus in GMATCLUB who helped me with the questions.

Hope the above story helps atleast someone.

Cheers
KG