550 to 750 - How YOU can be just as successful

great score. congrats!!. and very well written.

Great score. Thanks for the nice debrief !

A time will come, when they will sing the songs of my glory. I promise this, not to you but to myself. And then I would consider myself a worthy son of soil. Till then, I banish myself from all pleasures.

Wow! Very helpful tips.. Kudos duly given

Hmmm thats a good score actually..I doubt if i can get 500 atleast

Hadn't read this debrief before, excellent source of inspiration

Thanks so much! This is very helpful!

I think we can all agree that your post is very informative and useful. I especially appreciate the detail and scope of your debriefing. It must have felt great to see that score pop up on the screen, and have the burden of preparing for this challenging test finally lifted. It inspires me to achieve beyond my former expectations.

I didn't. That's the beauty of it really. I really only reviewed from OG 11, OG 12, the Official GMAT Quantitative Review, and the Official GMAT Verbal Review. Of course the other source of official questions were the GMATPrep tests, but those should only be taken sparingly when you need to get an accurate gauge on your progress. I pretty much hammered the same questions and the same basic concepts again and again, and hey, it was enough to improve my score from the 500s to the mid 700s.

I find that the average person is probably not going to memorize the details regarding all the questions anyway. By the time I go over the question again, I would usually have forgotten what the exact "tricks" in the problems were, or the correct answers (i.e. I don't have them memorized, I would have to solve the problem again).. perhaps a smarter person would have everything memorized after the first time, I don't know.

Much of my time was spent reading the books, reviewing and re-reviewing the concepts from the MGMAT books, as well as practicing problems, then going back to the MGMAT concept books, then practicing questions over again, etc, etc. Each round that I do this, is several weeks in between, so that I would not have everything memorized.

If you need additional questions, MGMAT has a source of questions, but like I said, these are not always going to be completely indicative of actual GMAT questions. But if you really really need them, they're there, and extra practice probably won't hurt. At least they will get you thinking.

So to sum up, make sure you really exhaust the OG first. Review the basic concepts until you have them down cold. If you find that you have done all of this, and the OG questions have become obsolete because you have absolutely memorized all of the answers, THEN you might want to consider moving onto other sources that contain questions that are reputable to be indicative of actual GMAT questions. For me, the last step was not really necessary.

HI Man ,

Congrats Inspiring One have given +1

God Bless

Awesome, phenomenal post, I am getting a simple message here: do not digress from the OGs and MGMATs! there will be other material, always but its of no use if you don't have digested OG well enough!

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If I am not mistaken, at the end of each lesson in the MGMAT books, there are problem sets from the OG guides that test you on those concepts. I would recommend going through those after each lesson just to solidify and ensure that you have a good grasp of the concepts before moving on. Also, please note that just because you have done a problem in the OG or MGMAT book, doesn't mean you shouldn't go back to it again later. If you want, you could do the problems both after each lesson, and then again after you have gone through all of the books. Hope this helps.

risys82,

Let me start out by saying congrats on your achievement. Then let me thank you for the very inspiring post. I'm in the process of restarting my GMAT studies and I found this post to be a great motivational tool. I've got the MGMAT books, Kaplan GMAT Premier 2011, and the Powerscore Critical Reasoning. I'm starting with the Kaplan book as a base, then I'll move onto the MGAT quant guides. Thanks again for the post! Did you already apply/get accepted into a program?

huge inspiration for me! hope to make the same kind of leaps

Great, congrats. Your candid views are very encouraging. +1

You are a hell of a hard worker. 5 hours every day for 6 months. No wonder you hammered a 750. Could you tell us how did you managed to motivate yourself ? What was your daily study plan ?

I really agree with the point that solving OG and MGMAT time and again is better than splitting efforts.

Simple and nice inspirational success story. Thank you.