Hi everyone,
I learned so much from gmatclub and gained so much from from reading other debriefs, and so below is my debrief. I hope this will inspire someone to do well.
Background
I have been considering going for my MBA for the past 10 years and even bought some GMAT books back in 2007, but it always seems like something always came up: new job, moving to a new city, new girlfriend, etc. What sparked my pursuit of my MBA was the birth of my first child. I knew that if I wanted to get an MBA, it was either now, before my son gets too old, or never. My son, I found out, was great motivation to do well on the test, but he also made it hard to focus on studying since I needed to help take care of him.
I am currently a procurement manager at a fortune 50 company and have ~10 years experience between engineering and procurement. Graduated from a Big Ten school with a GPA of 3.0. Since I have been working for 10 years, I knew that full time MBA is out of the picture, but I wanted a higher GMAT to offset my GPA and potentially gain some scholarship money, especially with an online MBA.
Materials Used
The material I used was really random. Some of the information was useful and some was not as useful. When I first started to study, I did a GMAT search on the Android Play store and found some excellent material and not so useful material. If I would do this again, I would pay for
E-gmat, since the price alone would offset my first test and
E-gmat would have helped quite a bit for my initial verbal deficit. Below are the information materials I used to study with.
Apps-Veritas Question Bank - Lots of questions and great to do while on the run. In my last month of studying, the SC questions would not load. Not sure if Veritas fixed this.
-Ready4GMAT - Some good information, but I found the flashcards for verbal did not help much. I would not use this if I would do this over again.
-Veritas GMAT Prep Course - Great information, but I would use this later in the studying since a lot of the information is advance. Veritas motto seems to be "Think like the test maker".
-GMAT Prep Now Video course - Great place to start learning. I found this app later in my studies and wished I watched these videos first.
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Magoosh GMAT Idiom Flashcards - Did not use these as much. I found that learning idioms are useful, but not as useful as learning modifiers and comparisons.
Books-
Manhattan books (Luckily I got these free from someone who took the GMAT) - Great books and learned quite a bit from these books, especially for brushing up on Math.
-OG11(What I bought in 2007) - Good for practice questions
-OG12- Same as above
-OG13- Same
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OG verbal - Same
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OG Quant - Same
CATS-Veritas Prep Practice test - These were great tests for me, and the test scores were pretty accurate. I got 7 of these free somehow. Not sure how I did that, but I got an email from Veritas saying I have 7 free test.
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Manhattan Prep Practice tests (My friend did not use the codes so I was able to get the tests for free) - Found these test were off and threw a curveball with the scores I got. The Quant was always ~5 points lower. Near the end of my studies before my 2nd test, I would only use the Verbal portion to see where I was.
-GmatPrep - like everyone says, a must. I did not pay for the extra tests and took each of the 2 free test twice. I also downloaded the old versions.
Other-
Manhattan Prep Thursdays with Ron - Use these for high level thinking, especially with my deficit with SC
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E-gmat free courses - Like I said, I wished I paid for these vs paying for a second test. I found
E-gmat right before I took my first test, so I could not justify paying for it.
-GMATclub - used to review questions and read debriefs. I loved the workbook, which I used to keep track of questions I missed in the forums.
Practice Tests and Timeline
Baseline - I think it was ~520 and I took it around early August. I lost the test since I erased it to do another test. Pretty dishearting since the average was 540. Spent the next 2 months studying the
Manhattan books and Ready4GMAT app.
GmatPrep Test 1(Oct 23) - 640 Q48 V30 - This was the first test I took since my baseline. Math has always been easy for me, but when I found that my verbal lacked quite a bit. For SC - I chose what sounded right, CR - I did not know what the conclusion was, and RC - I think one of the passages, my eyes glazed over. This is when I started building stamina for my first GMAT test
Veritas (Oct 28) - 660 Q48 V33 - Tried veritas prep, and similar results.
Manhattan (Nov 2) - 590 Q44 V27 - Like I said before, the Manhattan tests are hard. I spent much time on GMATclub message board trying to understand this and found that Manhattan Quant portion are harder compared to the actual test. The Quant burned me out and caused my verbal to go down quite a bit.
Manhattan (Nov 4) - 630 Q45 V32 - Not sure why I took this test. Around this time, I found
E-gmat through their free Saturday course and found gmatprep now website and went through all the verbal videos. Gmatprep now videos helped quite a bit, especially with RC and CR.
GmatPrep Test 2(Nov 6) - 710 Q49 V38 - First time breaking 700! I was really excited when this happened. Upon reviewing the questions, I found that I got all of the RC and CR correct. SC was less then 50% correct, showing where I needed to improve.
Manhattan (Nov 9) - 640 Q44 V33- I just took this test to prepare for the actual GMAT. Did not review the results too deeply, just used it to keep my stamina up.
GMAT Test 1(Nov 10) - 690 Q48 V36 IR7 AWA4.5 - Test went well and I was happy with a 690, but when the week went on, the more I thought about how I wanted to get into the 700s, especially for a chance of a scholarship with the online MBA programs. I knew my SC was bad and I knew I was just scratching the surface from what I learned form GMATprep now and
E-gmat. After taking a week off, I decided to start studying again. This did not make my wife happy, since she was taking care of the little one the majority of the time, but she understood that another few weeks of studying could pay dividends.
This is when I went through all the free information
E-gmat provided on the message boards about modifiers and comparisons. This took me 2 weeks to go through and then I started doing SC an hour every day when my son went to sleep at night.
GmatPrep Test 1 retake(Nov 22) - 640 Q49 V27 - First practice test after my studies. Drained because I did not have the stamina anymore.
Veritas (Dec 9) - 710 Q49 V38 - This is when all the SC started to click in. I still was about 50% but I was getting all of the 500 questions correct and my errors were in the 650-700
Manhattan (Dec 14) - Verbal only V38 - This is when I started taking the verbal portion only just to get extra practice
Manhattan (Dec 16) - 680 Q45 V37 - Tried a full cat from Manhattan again since I saw on the message board some people said the manhattan tests were accurate, but I found this was not the case for me.
Manhattan (Dec 19) - Verbal only V35 - Once again, only verbal to get extra practice.
Veritas (Dec 20) - 700 Q48 V38 - Practice test to build stamina
Veritas (Dec 23) - 710 Q50 V34 - Not sure why verbal went down, but reviewed the questions.
GmatPrep Test 2 retake(Dec 26) - 740 Q48 V44 - To my surprise, I got a 740! I did some repeat questions on the verbal, so I attributed it to that. This was a great confidence builder, but I did have the thought in the back of my mind that this score was inflated because of repeat questions.
GMAT Test 2(Dec 28) - 740 Q50 V40 IR7 AWA-TBD Essay went well, but I have never been good at writing.
During the IR, I felt rushed. I thought I got many questions wrong and the last 3 questions, I made educated guess. This was in the back of my mind during the rest of the test, causing some anxiety. I was able to push this out of my mind by focusing on the present.
During Quant, I was getting many easy questions, so I spent more time reviewing the questions again to make sure there were no tricks. Made me nervous since I was getting many easy questions (~500-600 level questions). I finished with 5 minutes left.
Verbal, RC and CR I thought were easy. Maybe it was from all the practice tests I did. SC is where I spent a little more time on and had many answers I second guessed.
When I finished my test and going through the prompts, I was expecting another 690 with a low IR, but to my surprise, it was a 740 with a 7 on IR. I did a double take, accepted the score, and rushed out to the front desk to see if the paper copy matched what I saw on the computer screen. Seeing the score on the printed paper made me have a huge grin. I have never been a great test taker, so for me to get my score was a great surprise. The front desk guy even commented saying the score was the second highest he have seen.
Take away for each section
Overall - Use the GMATprep now timer. Well worth it to know if you are behind. For Quant, every 5 questions is 10 minutes. For Verbal, every 5 questions is 9 minutes. Helped me ease my mind of timing.
PS - I have nothing for you, since this was my strong point. I guess just reviewing the formulas and try to find an easier way to answer a question since all the questions should be able to be answered in 2 minutes.
DS - I used a mixture of strategies. Here is my breakdown
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Manhattan - AD/BCE. If A can be used by itself, see if B can to get D. If A cannot be used by itself, look at B. If not B, see if A&B can be used together. If not C, then E.
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Gmat Prep now - Restructure the question. For example if the questions is asking "is 4x<3x?", I would rephrase it "x<0"?
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Veritas Prep - Look at clues from 1 and 2 to see if they can help eliminate answer choices. For example, if the question asks "is x=3" and promp 1 says "2<x<4" and prompt 2 says "x is an integer", you know that prompt 2 is not enough to answer the question, but you should ask "why is it there?". I know this is an easy version, but it happens more then you think.
RC - Just read and take notes. I did not go back to my notes much, but writing notes helped me understand the passage better
CR - Unlike many people, I did not take notes, but I took extra time understanding the conclusion.
SC - This is where I spent much of my time. I feel like that since my first language is English (although my parents are 1st generation Korean), I had some advantages and some disadvantages. The Gmat SC would play many tricks on me since it used English the way I would use in normal conversation.
My strategy was I went through all the free
E-gmat and Gmat Prep now SC, learning about modifiers such as verb-ing, which, that, and verb-ed, parallelism, and comparisons. I did not spend much time on Idioms. Once I had an understanding of the basics, I spent at least an hour each day on SC questions and going through why I got answer wrong. The gmatclub workbook is great for this!
AWA - like many people, I used chineseburned method. I did not focus too much on this, so that is why my AWA score is lower.
IR - Practice this only on tests. I did watch one video about this. The video talked about guessing on questions you are not strong at.
In short, after all what I did find a more effective way to study, but made many mistakes through my trials. Hope this will help someone in their studies.