Hi all,
I just took the GMAT yesterday, and scored a
770 (Q50, V47, IR8, AWA6.0) (see attached). Over the past two months, I've lurked this forum a considerable amount, and much of the material posted on here contributed to my test prep strategy. This debrief is my way of giving back.
CATsKaplan CAT 1 - 670 (Q42, V44)
MGMAT CAT 1 - 640 (Q34, V43)
MGMAT CAT 2 - 680 (Q44, V38)
MGMAT CAT 3 - 730 (Q45, V45)
GMATPrep 1 - 760 (Q49, V46)
GMATPrep 2 - 740 (Q47, V44) - Epiphany moment. More on this later.
Kaplan CAT 2 (Pearson Vue Real Day Test Experience) - 730 (Q50, V45) - Highly worth it. Dropped a few hundred for JUST the Test Day experience, and never used any other Kaplan material.
GMATPrep 3 (Exam Pack) - 760 (Q49, V44)
GMATPrep 4 (Exam Pack) - 760 (Q49, V46)
Exam Pack CATs were taken on Monday and Wednesday respectively of the week before the test.
Materials UsedAll 5 MGMAT Quant strategy guides, Sentence Correction Guide, and Critical Reasoning Guide- Highly recommend all of them, especially Number Properties and Sentence Correction. Critical Reasoning was a bit iffy, but it did teach me to write down EVERYTHING. While this did slow me down considerably (I used to finish Verbal with about 10-15 minutes to spare previously, and on test day I ended up with only 15 seconds remaining), I feel it is imperative if you want to capture everything in the prompt. My poor brain just can't hold that much info about telomerase, an enzyme produced only by dividing cells.
OG 13, OG Verbal Review (2nd ed), OG Quant Review (2nd ed), GMAT Prep Question Pack 1- This is the meat and potatoes. Work on the referenced problems as you're going through the
MGMAT Strategy Guides. During the final two weeks, practice ONLY using these problems. Drop other test prep material at this point, it will do you no good.
Test Taking Strategy and Tips for the Poets!I've noticed that many of the 760+ scores on this forum are from the Quants (people who are naturally good at math). For me, a Q51 was never in the cards. On my very first
MGMAT CAT, I received a Q34 and finished only 26 problems! The following tactics and strategies are for the Poets - people who are scoring between 650-720 on mocks and are being seriously carried by their Verbal (V39-44+). You can hit a 760+ too, but it will require a fundamentally different approach than the one many advocate here on the forums.
1)
Forget timing, you will not finish every problem in Quant. In fact, YOU SHOULD ACTIVELY LOOK TO BURN THE LAST 7 QUESTIONS.Timing was always an issue for me on Quant. Even after going through all of
MGMAT's Quant strategy guides, I never finished the Quant section in their CATs. I was extremely surprised when I took my first GMATPrep Exam after a month of continuous study, and ended up getting a Q49. This was despite getting 14 questions wrong, and guessing on the last 5 because I only had a minute remaining!
I read on forums about how timing was important, and how you should never spend more than 2 minutes on any Quant question. If you can't solve it within 2 minutes, just drop the question and move on. So on my second GMATPrep, I followed that advice. On the third question, I wound up at a dead end because of a wrong calculation and, sticking to my guns, I just guessed at that point and moved on although I could have solved it had I spent an extra two minutes. I did this for several problems throughout the exam, and managed to finish the whole section just under the wire, with 53 seconds remaining. I only missed 7 problems, but my Q score
DROPPED from 49 to 47!
This was an epiphany for me. I had found a post on this forum talking about GMAT's Scoring Algorithm. That post was a godsend - I saw how you could score a Q49/50 even if you got all 7 questions wrong at the end. I realized that my problem with Quant was not so much lack of conceptual understanding (the
MGMAT strategy guides will give you all the tools you need to solve any problem), but the amount of time allotted to the section. 75 minutes was just not enough for someone like me to carefully read the prompts and perform the necessary calculations. If I rushed, I made careless mistakes (most often in complex Fraction - Decimal - Percent problems, which would necessitate a lengthy do-over of all my calculations).
Therefore, I made a conscious decision.
I would go into the Quant section fully expecting to click "B" on the last 7 questions. No matter what, I would take my time with the first 14 questions, even if they took upwards of 5 minutes (seriously!), with the knowledge that hey, I have an extra 14 minutes since I ACTIVELY plan to only answer 30. Of course, if I could spend more time on the last questions, that would be great, but I was fully prepared to burn the 7 at the end for all my tests from then on.
The result? On both my last two GMATPrep exams, I scored a Q49. I only got 7 questions wrong both times, 5 of them coming in the last batch of 7 that I decided to burn. With the extra time, I felt much more comfortable writing everything down, taking an extra minute or two to truly understand the problems, and checking my answers after I was finished, especially for Data Sufficiency. This did wonders for my confidence. I realized I could solve any problem the GMAT threw at me, provided that I TOOK MY TIME and really understood the problem.
On test day, I actually wandered down several dead ends, and spent 4-5 minutes on some early questions because I couldn't quite grasp what the prompt was asking initially (some truly hideous and complicated Algebra and FDP word problems). But I never lost focus, and constantly told myself even as the timer ticked away, "hey, it's okay, I got 14 extra minutes, I can burn some daylight figuring these problems out." I headed into the last 7 questions with only 6 minutes and some change remaining, but I was never nervous. I KNEW right when I finished that I had done well, and I can only thank whoever made that GMAT Scoring Algorithm post for showing me the light.
Bottom line:
EXPECT NOT TO FINISH. FOCUS ON THE FIRST 14 QUESTIONS, EVEN IF THEY TAKE EXTRA TIME.2) Recognition is key.I am a psychology major. I know that attention is a scarce resource, i.e., IT RUNS OUT. You only have so much cognitive capacity, and if you are forced to use up your attention on unfamiliar problems, you WILL start making careless errors even if you have the capability to solve them. You are only human. That is why I recommend, in the last month of your prep, use NOTHING but official problems and CATs!
More than just becoming familiar with concepts, you need to become familiar with how the test makers THINK when they write questions. This is not something you can consciously learn; it only comes from hours of practice with their material. While I love this forum, I did not find the
GMATClub Tests to be very useful (sorry!). While they nominally test the same kinds of concepts, they do not help me hack into the test writers' brains and figure out what the hell they are going on about when they say Sally has 7 different colored beads. Every standardized test has its nuances of style that betray what the test maker wants you to solve for. If you have to spend attention on trying to figure out what the question is asking because the writing style is unfamiliar, you WILL have just increased your chances of getting the question wrong, even if you are 100% confident in your approach to solving it.
For this reason, I highly recommend only using official materials as you get closer to the end, ESPECIALLY for Verbal. In all my test prep, I never found a Verbal section that truly matches the quality of the GMAT material. The GMAT writers do an excellent job of making sure there is ONLY one right answer for every Verbal question. Once you know what you're looking for, it's almost as if the right answer has a spotlight on it. I never got that feeling with the Verbal sections of other CATs.
Math is a similar story. It's funny, but, as you do
OG and GMATprep problems over and over, you begin to see patterns in the setup of prompts and how information is presented. Different tests have different styles, but B-schools don't take your score on the
MGMAT, so beyond a certain point, once you have truly grasped the foundations and principles behind the math, the only way to improve is to familiarize yourself with "genres" of problems (Algebra Word Problem, Number Properties Data Sufficiency, Geometry in a Coordinate Plane, Testing Remainders, Finding Multiples in a Sequence, etc.) and how the test makers will present them to you. I read on a
MGMAT column somewhere that the difference between a 710 test taker and a 760 test taker is that the 710 test taker only recognizes 40% of the problems, while the 760 test taker recognizes 80% of the problems. This is absolutely, 100% true. Both the 710 and 760 have the same foundational knowledge, the 760 just intuitively understands what the problem is asking for, and does not have to pay precious, precious attention in trying to discern the author's intent.
Accept no substitutes, practice with real questions!3) Respect Integrated Reasoning.I know this section doesn't count, but it can be surprisingly difficult depending on the questions you draw. Some of the questions are literally 800 level Quant and Verbal questions in disguise. I actually dedicated a week to IR because I respected it - some really tough optimization problems crop up from time to time and you HAVE to pay attention to small details when looking at those tables and graphs. While it shouldn't take up the bulk of your time, you shouldn't completely ignore it as you may be hit by a doozy on test day and get knocked off balance. I was lucky because most of my IR Questions were basically Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension (dialogues and passages), with one table thrown in. The Multi-Source Reasoning, if you draw a Quant variant, can be brutal on time, so plan accordingly.
That's all I have for now. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to help (as long as they're not questions about math!). Thanks for everything guys, this forum was really helpful when I was drawing up my test prep strategy
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