My tryst with the GMAT - 740

Finally, get to open a thread on gmatclub

I took my test this morning and scored a 740 - Q50, V40. Still in a daze about the score. Total 4 weeks of prep. I am not a candidate for full-time and so was not sure if I should take the exam for part time. Too young for an executive MBA, too old for a full-time, I am in a limbo right now. So, scouted some part-time programs and most wanted a GMAT. Scheduled the test around second week of January after fooling around for a while.

Prep:

took my first MGMAT test on Jan 1st right after the new year celebrations. scored a measly 650. I wasn't sure what my level was and started reading stuff from MGMAT. Early last year when I was all gung-ho for a full time MBA, I had purchased all of MGMAT and the OGs. never opened them since my plans fizzled out. But the MGMAT test opened my eyes about how tough GMAT could be. Started with SC from MGMAT since everyone on GC suggested that. ultimately, that was the ONLY book I used from MGMAT. If I had known that I would have access to all online CATs of MGMAT with just the purchase of one book, I would ahve gone only for the SC. I dont think one really needs the other material.

what next? practice, practice, practice. that's really the only mantra. I am a techie by profession so decently comfortable with math. I had forgotten a number of formulae so just getting into GC and following the discussions was good enough. And Bunnuel is a Godsend. :D all the stuff he posts and his solutions to problems; one can learn a lot just from those. As regards Verbal, one needs to understand the rules of SC(MGMAT was decent with good examples) and practice as many as you can get. I never had a clue on how to improve on CR - that was my weakest link in the practice exams. Nevertheless, I just prodded on. RC was always a touch and go for me so CR could be the deal breaker. ultimately I ended up going to the exam without really developing a strategy for CR. I did a lot of those verbal questions from the OG as well as the supplementary verbal guide from GMAC. only SC and CR for the most part; tried math but found them too simple, so I thought those were probably not real GMAT questions. I tried the CR guide that whiplash had posted and tried using his suggestions on some OG questions but could not really make any breakthroughs. lack of time was another possible reason for this. I barely got an hour every day and about 3-4 hours on the weekends. But most of this time was spent on practice tests since I wanted to improve my speed. the exams I took, in the order:
MGMAT 1 - 650, 2-670, 3 - 690, GMAC1 - 710, MGMAT 4 - 700, MGMAT 5 - 670, GMAC 2 - 740, MGMAT 6 - 730

MGMAT 6 was a cheat since I had to take a 1 hour break between quant and verbal and that could have refreshed my energy. I found MGMAT quant much tougher than the actual test and verbal more or less the same. In reviewing their verbal solutoins, I found a lot of times not agreeing with their final solution; am not sure if others have the same experience. Also, I was very particular about having the exact same time as on GMAT on each of these exams. It is very interesting though that my score on GMAC 2 - 740 Q 50 V 40 was the exact same score I got on the real one :D. During these practice exams, I wrote the AWA essays a couple of times. only the argument, never the issue. so I was kind of warmed up for the essays.

The D-day:

took the day off from work yesterday to stay focused. my last exam was given on monday, a full 3 days before today. I found that I was pretty drained out after every exam and that I spent a lot of time reviewing the wrong questions. So, i decided not to give any exam the day before the real deal. I actually wanted to take one on tuesday but MGMAT only had 6 CATS where I assumed 7(1 free + 6 purchased); so ended up doing no exams on tuesday or wednesday. My GMAT was set at 8.00 AM and I got into the habit of sleeping at 10 PM and getting up at 6 PM for the entire last week. I am usually a late sleeper but developed this discipline just for the exam but as fate would have it, I could not sleep last night. I had some beer around 8 PM hoping that would put me to sleep but some kind of unknown restlessness screwed me up and I finally went to bed around 1.00 AM. I was pretty sure I was going to f*** up the exam and got there around 7.30. all the customary stuff done and the essays start. the real deal is truly time consuming I always thought that the argument would be easy but I took full 29 minutes to finish it. Then as I was reviewing it, time was up and the system said you are short of time, get going. I was now nervous if my essay would be graded or not, since I hd not clicked on 'Next'( the lady at the center said, it would be graded not to worry). Anyways, proceeded to the Issue question which had a pretty generic philosophical underpinning. I wasnt sure how to tackle it and got going through some theory. threw in a couple of examples to ensure it wasnt dry and wrapped it up comfortably. let's see what I get.

took a break for 8 minutes and went back in for quant. right on Q5, I get zapped withj a super tough DS question on congruency of triangles. as if to mock me, the question explained in detail what congruency means. :D I knew I had to guess on this one and move along but since I did the first 4 ones in under 4 minutes, i decided to give it a shot. after 5 minutes, ended up guessing the darn thing. and thence moved along. surprisingly, I had multiple questions on compound interest rate and set theory. I am not sure if I screwed something up front but I jsut got bombarded with these. but for the most part, quant was uneventful. thought it was not too troubling. only one question on probability, not to compute p but a more tricky one. nothing on work/rate crap. I hate those. end of quant. took a break and went back in for verbal. the lady delayed setting me up and I lost 1 minute for verbal. So, please be very careful and get back to the invigilator around the 6th minute. you never know if they screw it up.

verbal went through fine, got foxed with some questions. One thing GMAT is super duper good about is NOT letting you know how well you are doing. In quant, you can guess to some extent but in verbal, tough luck. there were many questions where I could have easily chosen the other options but by now, I was just too f** tired. and the lack of sleep was showing with me yawning. So, i just breezed through the rest and just wanted to get it over with. Had 4 minutes for the last question which wsa an SC and I went into hyper intellectual masturb***** on this one imagining all kinds of reaosns why every one of the choices could be correct. I guess, i was an inch away from hallucinations. So I just clicked something that felt right and got DONE. wait for the score and voila 740.

20/20 vision:

develop some strategy for CR if you can. SC can be pretty mean on the actual exam. in short, unless you are really really good at english grammar and stuff, you can not be completely confident about verbal. so just take it esay and have fun. relax. and yes, I am a non-native speaker of english but always thought I wsa pretty good at it, until I hit this thing called GMAT SC. actually though, I am glad I worked on this. I think I have improved on my written english a bit.

shoot away if anyone has any questions.