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divbell2003
Joined: 24 Jul 2014
Last visit: 11 Jul 2016
Posts: 14
Given Kudos: 2
Schools: Haas EWMBA'19 (A)
GMAT 1: 700 Q49 V36
12 Dec 2015, 22:11
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I have been a silent lurker in the forum and have received a lot of help from all the discussions. I took my first GMAT on early November 2015 and got a 680 (Q49, V33). This was well within the 80% range of the programs that I have in mind, but the nerdy test taker in me was not satisfied since 700 was my magic number from the start. Retook the test on 12/10/15 when I was still on top of my game ( in terms of quant ) and finally got what I had in mind when I started it all.
Non native English speaker from India with no formal grammar training. Undergrad and graduate study in Computer Engineering.
Exam experience
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. Started pretty well for me with reasonably hard SC and CR questions till Q8. Then came a long esoteric RC about pre-medieval history ( 4 paragraphs ) followed by a boldface CR. This cheered me up a bit since the usual understanding is the boldface CR is a good sign in GMAT verbal. After a few harder SC and CR than before, came another long but not so esoteric passage about biotechnology. By this time again I was behind on time ( the usual fare all through my prep ). I started guessing random harder looking CR questions to save time but I got 2 more RC passages ( one small-ish , the other of medium size an difficulty ) that really pushed me behind on time. I was left with 7 questions with 7 mins to spare and I think I may have gotten a string of wrong answers in the end since the initial difficulty level of the questions would have indicated that I was at a much higher level than V36.
But then again, my mission accomplished ! I think I may get ~720 if I take it one more time and manage my time well in verbal, but now is the time to start polishing my essays and make them look beautiful
Good luck to all the aspirants - keep chugging along !
Background
: the usual Non native English speaker from India with no formal grammar training. Undergrad and graduate study in Computer Engineering.Prep material
: e-gmat. Their verbal content is tailor made for non native speakers, like they advertise. I took a few Live prep sessions and decided to buy only the Verbal prep since I can't regularly sit through the early morning sessions due to family commitments. Their regular verbal prep is a very good value for the money. Being a non-native speaker with no formal grammar training I used to struggle with 700 level SC questions where there are two very close options and one had to be discarded for some grammatical nuance. With their help, I was able to achieve > 90% accuracy with the OG13 and Verbal Prep questions and I could answer most sub-700 level questions within a minute. I figured my time burner is going to be CR since I was taking > 2mins to solve many CR questions during my prep. I had a Manhattan SC book as well, but that did not help me much.Exam experience
-------------------
Essay
- Took 5 mins to figure out the assumptions in the argument and what more evidence will be required to back it up. Wrote 5 paragraphs, was done with 20 secs to spare.IR
- Took a lot of time in the first 3 questions (~10-11 mins), but I think I got them right. Got another scorcher around Q9 and had to guess 11 and 12. I felt bad since Q11 was a pretty simple quant question.Quantitative
- Like what other test takers are reporting, the quantitative section has gotten tougher. The first few questions, which were supposed to be at the medium to semi-hard level, were pretty tough ( and I'm an Engineer and no mug at quantitative concepts ). I stopped myself from starting to guess till Q15 and as a result I was behind on time ( I think he timer was at 38-39 mins range ). I started guessing a few DS questions where the solution was not quite apparent on first read. The strange thing that I noticed a couple of times is that even after I guessed one question, the levels of the subsequent questions did not go down significantly. One reason might be that I guessed them right, but I must have got some guesses wrong otherwise I would have gotten Q51. The overall high level of the quant questions actually surprised me a little , but I was a little happy hoping I must have done reasonably well. I think if I took the test about 18 months ago, I could have reached Q50, but like what GMAC has reported recently, the quant percentiles got pulled down a bit with so many test takers doing well in that section.Verbal
- my Achilles heel . Started pretty well for me with reasonably hard SC and CR questions till Q8. Then came a long esoteric RC about pre-medieval history ( 4 paragraphs ) followed by a boldface CR. This cheered me up a bit since the usual understanding is the boldface CR is a good sign in GMAT verbal. After a few harder SC and CR than before, came another long but not so esoteric passage about biotechnology. By this time again I was behind on time ( the usual fare all through my prep ). I started guessing random harder looking CR questions to save time but I got 2 more RC passages ( one small-ish , the other of medium size an difficulty ) that really pushed me behind on time. I was left with 7 questions with 7 mins to spare and I think I may have gotten a string of wrong answers in the end since the initial difficulty level of the questions would have indicated that I was at a much higher level than V36.But then again, my mission accomplished ! I think I may get ~720 if I take it one more time and manage my time well in verbal, but now is the time to start polishing my essays and make them look beautiful
Good luck to all the aspirants - keep chugging along !
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