Lessons from my GMAT test: 700 (Q47/V40)

Just completed my exam. Though I am not elated, I am quite satisfied with the result but feel I could have added 20 or 30 more points if I avoided some silly mistakes. But 700 itself was a big achievement given that I barely managed 680 in the two GMAC practise tests. Here I am to share my lessons:

Lesson 1: My confidence helped me but overconfidence let me down. As everyone requires, so did I require to practice a lot of questions as part of the preparation. And all of those results told me one single fact: I was negligent, hasty or too eager to answer a question. The remedy was talking to myself and self-charading: Whenever I make a mistake, I would scoff at myself with all the best disdain in the world and the strategy worked to some extent. I would explain to myself what I screwed up and increase the learnings. My quant and SC % improved from about 60% to 90. But there was still some 10 more points to go and this is where I became over confident and started giving up the gains. I knew I was weak on (quant) inequalities and now working on that part cost me high. I could have gone at least 20-30 points ahead if I did not neglect this area..

Lesson 2: Talk to thyself more: Basically in three modes: Mother tongue for attacking CR questions, talk to the paper for RC questions and talk to yourselves while attacking SC questions.

I desperately needed to improve my verbal score from 28/41 to something higher (at least 35/41) and this is the strategy that worked for CR questions. Understanding a CR question in your native language helps immensely and this is what the first prong of the attack is about. When you translate the question and the choices into your native language, it starts breaking itselves down. You can clearly see the assumptions and the conclusions and the gaps. This is exactly what the CR questions expected of me.

Make extremely short precise of RC paragraphs. This is the easiest way to jinx these kind of questions. Use whatever you can: symbols, abbreviations, syllogisms and what not but every paragraph must be boiled down to a max 2-line confectionary that unwraps the essence of each paragraph and lays out before you the structure and gist of the passage as well. This is what I mean when I say talk to the paper. On using symbols, it helps if you remembered the notations in set theory and basic mathematics (three dots for since/therefore, ==> for implies/causes, / for such that et al).
Not that these short precise given you the answer on the 1st glance but a second/third glance will not let you down. The strategy worked for me. In practice question sets, this gave me a 100% result on RC questions. One word of caution: Ensure that you are able to decipher what your symbol-laden precise means for it defeats the whole purpose if you start practicing this tack without adequate familiarity with the symbols.

For SC questions, you need to have been the best users of the English language and that too, American and not the standard Briton. This precondition is applicable to both forms: written or spoken. If you meet this precondition, then the strategy of talking to yourselves in English helps. Evaluate each answer choice by actually plugging in the content of the choice into the main language. In other words, talk to yourself in your best English. This is after eliminating all the improper syntaxes and semantics. I think this will help you reach about 10 of the 14 SC questions. I am not sure how you'd conquer the rest. Somewhere, I started feeling that no amount of grammar grounding is sufficient to reach that awesome 14/14 mark.

PoE is indispensable: To save time, eliminating answer choices is a compulsion in Verbal. It helps to narrow down your choices on the basis of relevance and strengthener/weakener traits in CR. On RC, it pays to ignore choices with extremities and irrelevances (to your paper notes). While handling SC questions, the strategy gets even more important as it helps you zero down to at least the best 2 choices from where you can apply the "Talk to yourselves.." tool can become handy). But contrary to popular procedures, I did not make the table of all the 41 x 5 squares. I made it only when I was caught up in a mess and exceeding 15 seconds in reaching what felt was the correct choice. Perhaps, doing it for all questions may have increased my score. But there is no guarantee.

Quant questions are extremely subtle: As your examiner realizes you are smarter (because you are answering more and more questions correctly), he starts playing tricks on you. The challenge gets tougher if these tricks are combined in DS questions and that is where I think I fell slightly short.

Rely on no book but your own capabilities once you have the fundamentals: Most text books I read have had some or the other kind of problem. Either they had their own "English" or they had logical incorrectness in the solutions or did not provide complete answers to the problems they posed. This disgruntlement led me into telling myself that I will rely on these books only for factual data from those books. These books serve to the extent that they can tell you the limits of what GMAT tests you in. But to explore deep down is a part of your persona and no textbook can ever help you there. One may be able to teach you to handle some tricks and these lessons may be useful sometimes. Unfortunately, this 'ability to explore and experiment is what I felt GMAT tries to dig out from you. Moreover, the test is about the fundamentals. That complicates things even further. With fundamental building blocks, you can create any edifice. Your GMAT score perhaps reflects that ability.

Practice tests unless they are adaptive and well-constructed are a myth: No practice test will given you an accurate measure of your current position unless the test is made by the best trainers in the business or unless it is an automated test from GMAC. I scored 640, 620 on the TMH tests and 650 on the Princeton tests DVD. Paucity of time told me I had to move on to the GMAC tests and when I did, I was at 680 in one test and at 690 in the other. The final score of course was 700, the increase coming from the positive affirmations I gave myself as I was driving to the test center. I kept on telling me that I would not make silly mistakes; I will read each question thoroughly though simple or not; I will cross check my answer everytime before I confirmed it. All this convincing was done in Telugu, my mother tongue and it seems to have paid off.

I never practiced for 4 hours at a stretch. I broke it down into two or more sessions:

AWA in one session/two sessions+ Qaunt,Verbal in a two session at the beginning and
one towards the D-day. On the actual exam, use the 8 minute break to the hilt. relieve in the rest room or breathe fresh air or do your favorite chants. Recharge the batteries. That is all there is to it.

Check time: Instead of tracking time at the level of each question, I used the following table:

Time left || Questions you should have covered

||

Verbal||Quant

55 || 10 ||9
35 || 21 ||19
18 || 31 ||28
00 || 41 ||37

PS: Sorry for the bad formatting.

Though following this table is not mandatory, it gives you a rough idea where you are on the time management aspect. If you are within +/-2 of the numbers above, you should be doing well. Note that the table is skewed in terms of the time required for later half of the test. This is a problem because if you are doing extremely well, you tend to get tougher questions as the test is adaptive. In any case, regular checkpoints are valuable indicators of whether you will be able to answer all questions or not.

AWA should not be a concern if you are confident about your writing skills. Be sure to write a few essays nevertheless in the style GMAC wants, for a better score.

Thanks GMATClub for raising me form the raw score of q17/v14 to at least this level. Though I have been pretty elaborate in some aspects, I may have missed a few. If anyone needs more detail, I offer to elucidate.

PS: Follow your gut while taking the actual exam or even during preparation. No part of my write up will help you unless you applied it in a fashion that suited your style of work, comprehension and skill level.

Regards
Rahul