My Journey to 720 and Lessons Learnt

This forum has really helped a lot to know a lot of stuff. Now it's time for me to contribute what i learnt during my GMAT journey. So, here you go: -

With significant travel in my job and lack of good verbal skills, I had very intimidating thoughts on cracking GMAT. First time I saw the questions, I knew I would have to work very hard to get to 700 + level. I started the preparation in January 2012 and took exam date in early May. I managed to take out at least one hour everyday and got Manhattan SC done in January (including Advanced Section and chapter questions). Due to some personal issues, I was not able to prepare and dedicate much time in February towards GMAT. I was able to finish only Power Score CR and OG 12 till end of March. Dedicated first few weeks of April to quant, but internally didn't feel ready to give the GMAT in early May.
Took GMATprep and got 630! Shocked, I decided to postpone my GMAT and give more time to preparation. Thereafter, I revised all the material again and did rest of below.

Study Material


MGMAT Sentence Correction – Excellent stuff to gain confidence in SC. I recommend reading Advanced Section too.

Aristotle SC Grail – Good for revising Manhattan SC concepts.

Thursdays with Ron – All recommended. If you don’t have time, you can go through attached presentations I created from various videos (Categorized, captions indicate one line learning from each slide).

I have listed few things below that you shall try to know in SC –

• Parallelism between participles (past and present particle – look at Q42 in OG12)

• Sub-group modifiers – some of them only, some of which were, some only

• As v/s Like

• Understanding difference between “Plan to create” and “Plan creating”

• Prefer Verb over Adjective over Noun (Remember “V>A>N”).

• Understanding placeholder “IT” – no noun antecedent. (It refers to either “that__” or “to__”)

• Understanding –ing construction thoroughly. (-ing must make sense with the subject, -ing can either describe how main clause is being done OR describe the direct and immediate consequence of main clause).

• -ing constructions MUST be personalized (only exception if it’s a process).

• Trick - Use Past Prefect if you can find another past tense OR a time reference to the past. Use Present Prefect if you find “Since” OR “Ever Before” OR something indicating continuity.

• Understand Action Nouns, Concrete Nouns, Simple and Complex Gerunds concepts. Very important in parallelism. Briefly, concrete nouns are something you can touch, they MUST be parallel to concrete nouns, not Action nouns. Similarly, Simple Gerund MUST be parallel to Simple Gerund and NEVER to Complex Gerund.

Example 1 – “Gift” parallel to “Bouquet” – both concrete nouns, you can touch both.
Example 2 – “eating apples quickly” NEVER parallel with “ the quick drinking of water” – "eating apples quickly" is a SIMPLE gerund, while "the quick eating of apples" is a COMPLEX gerund.

• Use “Times as as”, never Times with “than” or “as”. Whenever you see MORE, LESS, HIGHER, LOWER in comparison, find “THAN”, otherwise sentence is wrong.

• As can be followed by a clause or a prep phrase – As is the case with X, Y is …., As with Stacy, Tom ___, etc.

• Idiom Error - Prefer “Rather than” over “Instead of”, Prefer “TO DO” over “FOR DOING”, NEVER use SO AS TO, NEVER use “ENOUGH” with “THAT” or “AS”. Refer Manhattan Idiom List – “enough” or “so that” for details.

• When you see “compared to” OR “compared with” in a sentence, you cannot use any other comparison indicators. If you find MORE, LESS etc., eliminate the choice.

• When you see “,and”, make sure it’s either a list or a complete clause is on both sides of “,and”.

MGMAT Reading Comprehension - I didn't find it very helpful – Ron’s strategy in approaching RC really helped.

Power Score CR – Excellent book, it’s really a bible as it explains everything in a great detail. I had to practice a lot of CRs. I recommend for practice “Whiplash” collection of CR from GMATprep. Excellent practice for Hard CR questions.

MGMAT Number Properties, MGMAT Word Translations, MGMAT Geometry – Good for the basics.

Aristotle RC – Did around 25 passages – some of them are really insane. I had ~50% accuracy.

AWA Essay – google for “chineseburned” template. It’s the best!

IR - GMAT IR 50 question pack (free with OG13). More than sufficient. Actual GMAT IR questions are much easier.

GMATClub Flashcards - Great for Idioms practice

MGMAT Flashcards - Good review of MGMAT books concepts

For quant practice, I just did 50 free PS and DS problems available on GMATclub. I found Manhattan Practice tests questions quite useful for Word problems and inequalities.

Performance Tests

23-04-2012 - GMATPrep1 - 630 Q47V23 – I literally sweat on my last RC on “anthropology”!
07-05-2012 - MGMAT1 - 720 Q47V41
07-07-2012 - MGMAT2 - 740 Q51V40 IR 3.80
26-07-2012 - MGMAT3 - 750 Q48V45 IR 3.87
28-07-2012 - MGMAT4 - 700 Q49V36 IR 3.59 – Finished Verbal with 12 mins on the clock. Decided to give each question more time
29-07-2012 - GMATPrep2 - 760 Q50V42 IR 8/8 – I had seen ~4-5 CR questions before.
31-07-2012 - GMAT - 720 Q50V38 - Was left with 5 mins on the clock on my last SC question.

On the exam day

I got very nervous a day before the exam and woke up with a heavy head in the morning. Green tea before the exam and Gatorade in between the breaks helped a lot. I knew I had to get over with GMAT in order to feel better. Only thing I always thought on the back of the mind was to fully concentrate on the problem in front of me. I just wish I could have felt better before the exam.

Just received my final score report - AWA 6.0 and IR 7

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