690 to 720

Question

Took the GMAT for my second time today. Had a solid month of preparation to bring up my score. My original breakdown was 48/36. This time around, I got a 48/40. It's tough to improve both sides at the same time, I think the key to improving my score was only practicing with GMAC questions. This meant going through OG12/13, and getting the new GMAT 400 question pack. It was great how you could organize all the questions by difficulty. Other than that, I would say get all the documents with all the GMAT prep questions.. make sure you go through all of the questions on there. I went through half of them, and when I got to the CR/SC/Reading Comp in the real thing, I was amazed at how easy it felt. Anyway, cheers to this forum. GMATCLUB has helped me a lot. And for everyone that wonders if they can do it.. well I'll tell you that I got a 1180 on my SAT's in high school.. so I'm definitely not a gifted test taker. It all comes down to preparation, and HOW BAD YOU WANT IT.

dzodzo85 · Answer

Congratulations on that improved score. I am also hoping to do very well on the test which I will take most likely at the end of the month. Good luck to you during the applications

shadabkhaniet · Answer

Congrats... :-D

sandeeepsharma · Answer

hey congrates for your good score
Good luck for app's part.
Could you please share your verbal strategy and also what was your accuracy level (sc cr and rc)?

Sylverlee · Answer

The magic sauce to doing well in verbal is to only practice with OG questions. ESPECIALLY SC.. When I was practicing with SC1000 I was driving myself nuts! Half of the questions would be contested without a very good explanation. Doing the 400 question bank will help you very much. For RC.. I read one of the guides on here, and it really helped me out. One advice that really stuck out to me was that you need really need to focus on EVERY SINGLE WORD they use in the questions/answers. So if the author is presenting an idea, but the answer looks half right but says the author is discussing an idea.. it's wrongggg.. even if the idea they identify is the correct one. that shiz will kill you. Same thing goes with CR.. I think if you do enough CR you will start to see a pattern to the types of questions they try to trick you with. That's equally as important as knowing how to locate the right answer. Stick with ALL OG questions.. When I got to the real thing, I felt like I was just doing the types of questions I always practiced for.

The first time I took the test, I was using various sources.. and when I got to the real verbal, I felt the questions were different and I was illprepared. I actually used the gmatpill for SC also.. I think it helped me because it teaches you how to "cut the fluff". You need to know how to read sentence correction a specific way.. always cut out all the information that is useless and used to trick you with information overload. ALWAYS look for parallel, modifications, and subject verb agreement. I didn't study idioms other than the main ones that I learned just because they kept showing up. I was hitting around 85-90% in SC and CR by the end.

I would like to also add that I got a 1180 in my SAT's which is a really sad score. The lesson is that you can get any score you want, you just need to put in the time and carefully come up with a strategy on how to study and achieve your goal.

sandeeepsharma · Answer

thanks for the reply

could you please share link of 400 question bank and the guide for RC?

thanks

Sylverlee · Answer

download/file.php?id=9403 GIN's RC was the one I used. The 400 question bank has to be purchased directly from GMAC's website.

anuragbytes · Answer

Congrats for a great score.
Can you give the breakup of type of questions like 50 SC, 40 CR etc in those set of 400 ques ?

Posted from my mobile device

Sylverlee · Answer

shi* man, I have no idea. It should say in the description before you buy it. There's a good amount, and you can filter by difficulty. It's $25 and is SUPER worth it.

anuragbytes · Answer

The description at mba store only gives a high level break i.e. 200 Quantitative, 180 Verbal, and 24 Integrated Reasoning.

Thanks for replying.
What colleges ur aiming for?

Posted from my mobile device

Sylverlee · Answer

I'm in at USC, and I'm waitlisted at Cornell.

mrinal2100 · Answer

Hi Sylverlee,
one question i have regarding these 400 questions.Do they match with the GMAT prep software.they have 2 versions of GMAT prep software.So if i solve the old one,the one without the IR part,will the questions be repeated in those 400 questions.

Sylverlee · Answer

The 400 questions are supposed to be all brand new. I noticed some overlap maybe 5-10% of the questions from older versions of OG. It's good to save your GMATPREP to gauge what your score will be.. but it's even more important to complete all the available questions in GMATPREP. There's word docs on this forum that have them all laid out.. There's an INSANE amount of questions. If you do those, your score will greatly improve.

anuragbytes · Answer

Hi Sylverlee,

Is there any overlap between the Default Question pack + Question Pack 1 with the 2 CATs.
I mean even if i practice Default and Question pack1 in study mode, will I see any repeats of the of those questions in GMATprep CATS?

Sylverlee · Answer

I think I saw a handful of repeats, don't quote me on that though. It would be less than 10 that were repeats though. For the most part, they're brand new.

anuragbytes · Answer

Yeah i checked up with the mba store customer care and found that there is no overlap between the question packs and the practice exams.

Sylverlee · Answer

Yeah be warned though, I distinctly remember looking up some questions and finding them to be from OG 10 or OG 11.

mrinal2100 · Answer

Hi Sylverlee,
One more question.I have given 1 mock test from the old GMAT prep software and i am about to give another one. I wanted know whether the new GMAT prep 2 software contains different questions from the old one .

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