Hello everyone,
I just got back from the testing center in San Francisco. I am drained but really happy
with how I did.
The quantitative was very easy, nowhere close to the kind of questions being discussed on this board. The level of the questions was about the same as the
OG (11th edition). The questions seemed suspiciously easy to me and I was worried if I had made some stupid mistakes in the beginning. I am bad at double checking my solutions. I finished the quant with 5 minutes left, which I used to take rest. There was just one very simple combination question, no truly complicated statistics, geometry, or number theory questions. Of course, there were the usual traps, but none that would cause brain damage.
The verbal was challenging and again the same level as the
OG. Sentence correction is my weakest point and that is where I probably made the most mistakes. I got five SCs at the beginning of the test. The CR and RC were typical of what one sees in
OG. On CR and RC, I typically do 95% plus. I was bit slow in verbal and panicked when I saw the last RC, I turned off the clock to reduce the stress. I did not do too well on the last paragraph because of the stress. I find that I need to have a good control of time, otherwise I can easily panic.
I started preparing two months ago. After four weeks of preparation, I got burnt out and took three weeks off of GMAT practicing. Here is the list of material I used:
OG 11th Edition
OG Verbal Guide
OG Quantitative Guide
Old
OG from 1984 (this had some really challenging quant questons)
I went through all the questions in these three books.
I also did the 9 ETS tests, but I cherry picked the questions at the end of each sections.
I did not touch any of the Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc. I think these four books amount to more that 2000 questions, and that is more than plenty to practice for GMAT. ETS's questions are quite precise and I just don't trust other prep companies to match the ETS's questions.
I also took GMATPrep once (720), and Powerprep(730). I don't remember the breakdowns.
Thanks everyone for sharing their own experiences. I have been a lurker on this website, but I have benefited tremendously from all the posts in the forum.
blueberry