710 -02/23/07 Updated: My Strategies to conquer this beast

02/23/2007

I selected 'score the report', clicked next....My heart was thumping....dhum---dumm....I could hear the sound. I was praying to my deity, had my eyes closed, thinking this time I guessed only 1 question in verbal....Opened my eyes....The score is not yet reported.
closed my eyes again...

This time........

710.

WOW...............I DID IT. I nailed the beast. Finally I am the winner.

Q47 V40.

Thanks GMATCLUB, thanks to all the members.

I am too excited, I will provide more updates soon.

Check out the strategies that helped me on the later part of this thread.

I am updating this post only...Just for time being. Writing this great news right on TOP, so that people don't need to read the whole story again.

02/25
Thanks guys, thanks for the wishes. I was out for last 2 days, after almost 15 months. I expelled this GMAT beast out of my mind. I am much relieved. I will post my debrief in a day or two. But before that I would again like to thank the GMATCLUB, without this I wouldn’t have achieved this score.
My sincere thanks to all the club members from whom I learnt so many things.
When I go back to those days when I joined this club, I remember when Nakib and Rahulrao used to post more than dozen questions each day. Vivek123,Professor,Christoph, Himalyan, laxieqe,allabout, gsr, giddi77, TeHCM, andy and of course GMATT73 used to answer them. Then came guys like PS_DAHIYa who was very patient and profilic to post 3000+ replies. I can’t forget ryme, necromonger,Haas and Dilshod, kalfurt, Kiddreck, Dishod, u2lover, buzzgaurav, trivikram, ak_idc,kripalkavi and jaynayak. Pelihu, kevincan and ncprasads are some heavyweights, each of their postings provide you some insights.
Salute to Fig for teaching all of us Absolutes and to hobbit for writing some thoughtful comments.

Thank you very much Paul, Praet, and Honghu the master to provide this site to us. This was the biggest fraternity we have ever got. Thanks again.



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12/21/2006

Yes guys, I scored lower than my previous score. Huh..This was the score, for which I put 1 year of efforts, all sacrifices, I can't believe it. But it is a reality and I have to face it. It was my third attempt and I was waiting for 'Third Time Lucky" or 'Third is a charm" thing to happen. But it didn't happen in my case, verbal screwed me big time and I scored an aweful 620. I went into the state of shock. My wife and kid were waiting eagerly for my call and they remained numb when they heard this.Since then, it is all sadness, gloominess in and around us.I am the culprit for this. But I finally decided to share the experience with this forum, which has been my heart and soul for last 1 year. (Don't look at the number of posts I submitted, I used this forum more as a search tool, because most of the questions are discussed here more than 10 times..)
Now,I am with the mixed feelings of what to do next, as sometimes I feel doing MBA in the US is not in my destiny and I should leave this dream ,but at the same time I feel that I should not run away like this.

Just to make a long story short....

I started preparing for this beast around Sept last year. It looked as if I came from a different planet as far as verbal was concerned. I was always good at Maths but those SCs, CRs and RCs made me sick. That time I was not aware of all the GMAT strategies, so didn't focus equally on both verbal and Quant.I prepared continuously for 8 weeks mostly with OG10, PR and Kaplan and Manhattan guides. Finally appeared in exam in NOV

First GMAT 610 -----> Q49/ V25
The message was clear, I needed to improve my verbal. I decided to give it another shot with more preparations. I was too busy that time with other activities that I had to take one and half months break from the studies.

Jan2006 -- I came back again, started preparing verbal, right from the scratch. My SCs started to improve. I was able to see through the CRs, able to humble some RCs, but RCs always remained my weakest point.In some RCs I would perform well, but on some others I would fail completely. I went through OG10 verbal once again, got OG11 went through verbal. My main focus was Verbal as I was confident that I can pull through the Quant. This time I spent a significant time on the GMATCLUB. My main contribution was in the form of posting good questions. I used to take some practice tests also. This was the time when GMATPREP came around. We were not aware that it gives different questions each time we take it. Still I took it 3 times. Scored 720, 700 and 740.So I thought that my real score should range somewhere between 680 and 720.

second GMAT 660 ---49 Q and 31 V ----> didn't mention this score on the club....As I was very disappointed to have missed my target score of 700. But I knew that I could do this. WIth some more practice in the verbal I would break the 7++ barrier. In the verbal section of the real test I had to rush thru the last 12-15 questions. I had just 15 minutes to complete last 11 questions. Some of them went as educated guess. A couple of mishits. I realised the correct answer after clicking next. So it was a problem with time management. This score already spoilt my last year's chances.So second chance gone, but I felt it was somewhat respected score.

I started the studies again back in June. Now I was very familiar with all the question types, patterns etc.Started with working on the basics. Got a strong hold on SCs, mastered over the CRs and started doing decently on the RCs. I spent almost 6 months wholeheartedly on doing studies. Whenever I got a free time, I spent that on GMAT. Everyday 5-6 hrs at least I spared for the preparations and over the weekend-12-13 hrs.I took several practice tests and GMATPREP mulitple times. Now my concepts became very clear and my speed also improved. I conqured the entire LSAT CR document.I did almost all 30 LSAT CR tests.
I took PR online tests with 700 and 640 scores.
2 kaplan tests 640 &590
Mgmat tests non cat 670, 640
MGMAT CAT 720,720
took gmatprep around 7-8 times --> always scored 700+ as there were many repeats

Fast forward to the test experience.
AWA went fine as usual.
Quant started with a 5 liner word problem, but after reading it a couple of times I realised that it was an easy problem. Q2 was a twister on geometry, I think I spent too much time on this and started lagging behind my speed. First 10 were real twisters,but somehow pulled them thru. I was always 5 minutes late of my target time so in the
end i had to rush thru the questions. Questions in the end became surpsingly easy, So i had a doubt that I screwed the test, but consoled myself that it was not the time to think about all these ,rather I should just focus on taking the test.....
Break time -----> I was feeling very confident contrary to my last 2 attempts. I was eagerly waiting to start the verbal section, just wanted to kill it. But the god has something else in the mind. Ist question was a SC, total braintwister..3 answer choices seemed equally good. spent 3 minutes on that and picked one.2nd one was worse than the previous one, another 3 minutes. 3rd one was CR assumption---> all the answer choices were wildest of my dreams. 4th one SC---> gosh.....my target to finish SCs in less than 1 minute was screwed. Finished 4 questions in 12 minutes without getting convincing answers of any of them.
Then came RC, not too bad but again answer choices were very narrow.I fell apart- first 10 questions 26 minutes, and the trend continued, all the SCs were convoluted. They could qualify to any brutal list, I am sure. Second RC took all the juice out of me and I was left with 23 minutes and 21 question remaining kind of situation.I started rushing, skipped the 3rd RC, guessing all the questions, thinking that it would be experimental.Kept on getting SCs and CRs, but even the single liner SCs were too narrow in their answer choices. None of the verbal rules was getting applied or they were getting applied to at least 3 of the answer choices. 4th RC was easier but I didn't have sufficient time, somehow completed all the questions of the verbal section.

Completed the survery and hit report the score. ---------------WOW---------620

What???????? 620
Q49 V27

Great I lowered my score with so much of hard work, great.....Kept on staring at the screen, the proctor came and told me Sir, your exam is over. I just didn't cry that time. My 4 yr kid was waiting to watch CARS with me, my wife had taken off from the work to celebrate the completion of my test, but I couldn't fulfill their dreams. I wanted somebody to drop
me to home......I was lost....Thats is ...I got the biggest gift of my life.My Christmas was already over...

4 days after this I am still alive, still thinking what to do.....My wife wants me to take one more shot, but I am still fighting with myself- I am always a NEVER SAY DIE kind of a person, but somehow feel defeated this time. I will see which direction do I go. I will keep you posted guys.
Thanks for reading this story and I wish you all best of luck.