Hello everyone,
Finally I gave my GMAT Test today and I can happily say that my target has been achieved. My aim since I started the preparation was to get a 700+ so score of 710 is quiet satisfactory specially when the only time I could find to study was weekends. I would sincerely like to thank all of you here for your help specially jallen, durgesh, spriya, suresh for all your help and discussions.
I also got 6.0 in AWA.
Quant Preparation:-Due to my engineering background, Quant was never a problem for me. All I ever wanted to do was to brush up my maths fundamentals again and learn the nuances of solving GMAT problems. OG11 gave clarity about contents of maths and also clarified some fundamentals which I had forgotten. GMAT club quant. tests were the ones who really gave the final polish to my quant skills for GMAT. I was able to control the time spent on each question and more importantly apply my mind in the direction of GMAT. The small things like reading questions carefully, ensuring that you apply fractions, -ve numbers, zero and positive numbers to inequality data sufficiency problems , combination/permutation problems, work problems etc. were all cleared up by giving these tests. The other thing which I always tried to do was to try finishing Quant test in 65 mins. This really helped me gain speed.
Here were my GMAT club scores which improved with time
m25 31 37 83.8% 1m 32s 9266 78.3%
m01 26 37 70.3% 1m 30s 9064 59.3%
m02 29 37 78.4% 1m 19s 7989 72.5%
m03 27 37 73.0% 2m 00s 12036 73.1%
m04 30 37 81.1% 1m 46s 10664 85.5%
m05 27 37 73.0% 2m 00s 12095 75.4%
m06 27 36 75.0% 2m 04s 12500 89.7%
m07 32 37 86.5% 2m 01s 12162 95.2%
m08 18 36 50.0% 2m 04s 12491 45.5%
m09 29 37 78.4% 1m 33s 9361 92.6%
m10 34 37 91.9% 0m 14s 1465 97.3%
m11 28 37 75.7% 1m 36s 9694 76.7%
m12 31 37 83.8% 1m 57s 11765 93.3%
m13 35 37 94.6% 1m 55s 11544 100.0%
m14 30 37 81.1% 2m 01s 12148 90.9%
m15 31 37 83.8% 2m 00s 12092 75.0%
m16 30 37 81.1% 1m 57s 11705 100.0%
m17 33 37 89.2% 1m 47s 10792 87.5%
Verbal Preparation:-Verbal was always going to be tough for me since I am non-native English speaker. When I started with verbal preparation I was weak in SC . The discussions on gmat club really helped me improve my SC steadily. RC and CR were fine to me and I never really paid attention to improving them except solving the questions in OG11 and couple of hundred questions of CR1000.
Manhattan GMAT SC guide really helped me in improving my SC. I think it is must for everyone to go through the book and try reading it as many times as you can. I also solved half of SC1000 questions to gain more practice.
My GMAT prep scores were following
GMATPrep1 : 680
GMATPrep2 : 690
Kaplan : 630 ------> Pretty useless as questions are too hard.
MGMAT Test1: 680
MGMAT Test2: 680
MGMAT Test 3: 690
MGMAT Test 4: 710
MGMAT Test 5: 720
MGMAT Test 6: 710
GMAT Prep1(retake) : 750
GMAT Prep2(retake) : 710
Exam Day:-I got up at 6:30 am today morning since I had Test appointment at 9:00am. Slept pretty well and all the nervousness which was there yesterday had disappeared. This helped me in staying calm and just to focus on Test ahead.
Argument essay was about software and I did it with help of AWA template provided by chineseburned (
1-t64327). Analysis essay was on business practices and I was again able to do it within time very easily , again with help of templates. Just going through these templates a day before exam really helped me in my speed. Quant was very easy to start with and I had finished first 10 Qs in no time at all. Then the difficulty level got raised and I encountered couple of tough work problems and data sufficiency problems. I skipped one or two questions since they were taking too much time and moved on. At end I was easily able to finish the quant with ~5 mins left. Then I took my regular break to relax myself. I knew I had done well so really didnt want to screq up in verbal. Verbal started off with couple of easy SCs, an easy CR question and then a long RC. I didnt have problem with them to start with and I was keeping ahead of time. Then started the tough part with some SCs which I think I screwed up but RCs I encountered were quiet easy. With 10 mins left I had last 5 Qs of verbal left and somehow my brain started to freeze. I encountered 1 tough SC and 3 tough CRs and this is where I think the verbal score went downwards. The last question was another SC which took me 3 mins and I dont think I got it right either. After filling up the usual stuff I finally got my score of 710. I was reasonably happy to see 700+ score.
Once again thanks to everyone and good luck to future aspirants of GMAT. Do let me know if you have any questions
Cheers
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Updated on: 12 Dec 2008, 10:41
. So where r u planing 2 apply now? 
