Hi guys, Just back from my test center. Received a score of 740(Q-50,V-39). I've so many mixed feelings about my experiences during my preps, exam & post exam. Before I begin, I would like to warn you, that this is going to be one hell of a post. Background : 23 year old Indian male, did my IT engineering in 2010 (7.8 CGPA) from one of the premier engineering colleges in India. Worked at Cisco for about 10 months, and later started my own manufacturing business. In addition, I have interned at Yahoo, for 6 months. The reason for quitting Cisco was I desperately wanted to get out of the software field and get into finance/consulting. After a few failed attempts at some consulting companies, an opportunity came my way to start a business, so I plunged into without thinking twice. How i ended up giving GMAT : I've always wanted to do an mba, but never had thought of doing it from abroad. After getting into business, few months down the line, I realized that I need to study further. I dont know what the reason was, maybe because the business was not going so great, or could be because of the fact that I felt stagnated & wanted to increase my knowledge further, get a decent work-ex for a few years & then probably get into business. And my only exit option was to get an mba. Last November, I gave my CAT( entrance exam for getting into IIMs) & was quite confident about getting a decent score to get into atleast one of the IIMs. When the results were announced in Jan, I was devastated. I got a meager 96%ile (which by CAT standards is nothing). Due to my overconfidence, I had not applied to any other 2-tier B-schools & by the time the results came, it was too late to apply to other good colleges. I did not want to do an mba from an unreputed college, for I believe that holds little value. I felt humiliated. To add up to my misery, most of my friends had got decent percentiles and had interview calls from the IIM's. I will be lying if I say I was not jealous. I was happy for them, but sad for myself. For almost a month I was almost under depression. Then somehow I braced up myself and decided to give GMAT. It was mid-feb by then, and without giving a 2nd thought, I booked a slot for 22nd May, the latest I could get before the pattern changed. Preperation : When i booked my gmat slot, I was not even aware of the contents of the test. Had absolutely no idea what's a good score and what's not. Before starting my prep, I took a week-long break to attend my friend's bros wedding, did some fun activities with my friends, rafting, etc. and by 29th feb, was back home afresh & ready to start. Gave my gmatprep 1 at the very beginning and scored a 650 (Q50,V30). I was satisfied with my quant( although i missed the last question due to lack of time) but verbal took me off my feet. It was during this time while surfing for study material & stuff, I came across GMATclub. It was simply the best thing that could have happened to my preparation. It gave me inspiration & guidance. I was not even aware of the books to be purchased. Somehow, based on the reviews i heard, I got myself the OG(unfortunately the pdf version---a big no-no, do get the hard copy) & manhattan SC,CR and RC & Kaplan premier. I took printouts of huge bold-lettered A4 pages with my dream score (which btw is 770-q51,v42) written on it, and pasted it on my wall & also made it my desktop background. It motivated me throughout my journey. It didn't took me long to figure out that SC was my weak area. So 80% of my entire study time was devoted entirely to SC. For the whole of March & April, I went through all the theory I could gather for Verbal & daily did around 20-30 problems from the forums. It did help a lot. I gave my 1st MGMAT on 1st April and every week from then, I gave a test just to figure out where i stand. Since, I am self-employed (& coz the business was not going great either), I devoted most of my time to studies. I used to prepare for about 6-8 hours daily. Quant :The only prep I did for maths was practice tests. Fortunately, I have a pretty decent foundation in maths, but I knew that i needed to improve upon my speed. Concept was not much of a problem but speed was. At the same time, I needed practice for DS. There are so many tricks up its sleeves that it can take you down and you wont even realize. I cannott thank bb/bunnel more for the wonderful question sets they complied and prepared from various sources. Somewhere in March, there was a free access to GMAT club tests for a day. I exploited it to the fullest extent and gave about 12-14 exams in a day, non-stop, back to back. My average accuracy was around 85%, but the biggest benefit was that I had improved my speed tremendously, I could finish the test in almost 60-65 mins. From that day onwards every week, I used to solve a few questions of quant just to stay in touch, apart from the weekly tests i wrote. RC : I was petrified of RC. Simply do not know what to be done of RC. My accuracy ranged from 0-100% in RC. Somehow, during the later stages of my prep, I came across Aristotle99, did around 10 passages of each difficulty level. That atleast prepared me in reading abstract passages. CR : I thought I'm pretty good at logic. But my accuracy never crossed the 70% mark. It was then after a friend suggested, i got PowerScore CR. Wow......what a book!! simply a must-have. I finished the book in 2 days along with all the practice questions, and my accuracy shot up to 90% in just 2 days. SC : Finally, the beast that almost consumed me. MGMAT SC is simply THE BOOK. Period. Dont even think twice. Just go and get it. Infact, worship that book. I went through the book almost 5-6 times. Make it your friend and it will make your journey easy...very easy. It was in May that I came across the gmatprep questions zip file. There are more than 800 official questions of Verbal in that doc. What better practice than official questions. In 2 weeks, I complete the entire set. Whichever question i got wrong, I googled it and found that it was discussed on the MGMAT forums. One kind suggestion: Pls rely on only experts opinions for Verbal explanantions, else you will end up confusing yourself. Ron, Stacey & the MGMAT team.....you guys simply rock!! My Prep Scores: Gprep1: 650 MGMAT1: 720 51/36 (after almost a month of preparation) GPrep 2: 720 50/37 MGMAT2: 730 51/37 ( by this time, I was extremely disappointed by the stagnant verbal) Took a break for a week from tests, strengthened my CR/SC and bounced back MGMAT3: 750 51/40 MGMAT4: 770 51/44 (ahhh.....my dream score.....was so happy that I played DOTA all night ) Gprep2 : 750 51/40 (got a few repeats) MGMAT5: 730 50/37 (brought me back to reality, this was 10 days before my test.....actually had lots of distractions during my test) MGMAT6: 780 51/45 (this was my WTF moment....2 days before the exam) During my last few days, I didn't prepare much except for the reviewing all the problems that I had got wrong from OG/Gprep doc. I used to copy and paste all the problems that i got wrong in a wordfile to review at a later stage. EXAM DAY : I was pretty much confident of doing extremely well. There was nothing I could do more to prepare. I had almost exhausted everything that is available for free . I'm a very lazy person & can sleep for 12-15 hours daily. But the day before my exam, I just couldn't sleep. I tried every possible way to get me some sleep but to no avail. 4 hours later, when nothing worked, I turned on my laptop and started reading about Socrates & KArl MArx. Even that did little to make me sleepy. Finally, after about 7 hours of my desperate attempts, I managed to get some sleep (I dreamt of me being an ruthless assassin. In fact when I woke up at 9 in the morning, i had killed almost 42 people......omg I'm a psychopath!!! ) When i woke up, I almost felt like crying. My body did not get the rest it required. I already knew that I have screwed my exam. Since their was no way of postponing it, I went ahead with the exam. I could feel the effort I had to put in while writing the AWA. Argument was ok, but i'm not even sure of what i wrote for the issue. I hope i get at least 4.5. Quant was decent but, I got around 8 DS questions in a row from 6-13, some of which were by far the toughest questions I have come across. My brain almost stopped processing. Somehow, I managed to get past Quant. By the time i reached the last question, I had 15 mins left on my clock. I simply wished, only if I would have spend a little more time on those DS questions, I would have got a far better score. Verbal was the toughest I've come across. RC's were doable, but SC was super-tough. Most of the SC questions didnt had the traditional flaws (i.e S-V, parallelism, modifier, tenses) It was more meaning related and very close options. I got only 10 CR questions and none of the weaken/strengthen/conclusion/must be true type. All abstract questions, method of reasoning, evaluate argument, complete the passage & just 1 assumption question. If no one were watching me, I surely would have cried. I had to guess the 39th CR question for I was running out of time. By the time, I was done. I knew that I had screwed up. When I got my score, I was simply numb. I just couldn't react. The Pearson guy actually came and ask me to get up from my seat. I had decided before hand that if I get 730 or less, I will retake, anything above 750 is great. But never did I thought of 740. I do feel that considering the conditions in which i gave exam, this is a decent score. I know that with a breakup of 50-39, people have even scored 720, but I'm probably lucky. Am i happy?.....I dont know Am I satisfied? definetly no. I do not know whether I should retake the test or no. I know most of you will advice against retake, but I simple am not satisfied. I guess I need guidance and advice. Its almost been 3 hours since I'm typing this debrief. I do need to add a lot of things, some take-aways, etc. , but I'm simple too tired. Will add it up later. I want to help out other guys who are writing their GMAT, I really do. This is the least I can do. Pls feel free to shoot any questions, I will be glad to answer them. Regards, Bhupesh

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740...mixed feelings

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Gaurav2013fall

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25 May 2012, 23:50

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Thanks Bhupesh and good luck with your essays and applications!

saumya2u

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26 May 2012, 00:18

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bbharuka

Thanks. Attached are the files

Good luck studying. All the very best

Many Thanks wish you good luck for the application and final selection!

AbhiJ

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26 May 2012, 10:22

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How do you suggest using GMAT Prep Verbal Question collection so that GMAT Prep Questions are not affected.

zpotm

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27 May 2012, 00:00

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AbhiJ

How do you suggest using GMAT Prep Verbal Question collection so that GMAT Prep Questions are not affected.

Let me put it this way........

What will you gain by saving your GMATprep right till the very end?
Either you will get a score somewhere around your expectations that will boost your confidence
OR you will get a score that will dampen your morale right before the exam.......which will do more harm than good.

I personally believe that just to get an estimation of your score before the real exam....people miss out on the opportunity to study these wonderful official questions. I would rather suggest that you give your gmatprep around 20 days before your exam....when you are done with your theory and concepts.

After which, you should focus on these official questions. These questions are the best prep material you can get. They cover almost 99% of the concepts tested on the GMAT. You do them thoroughly and I can guarantee that you will come out with flying colors.

This is just my point of view. Others may not agree. In the end, do whatever you feel is best for you.

zpotm

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27 May 2012, 21:55

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Just received my AWA.......

got 4.5......I'm happy considering that I almost screwed it up.

icaniwill

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28 May 2012, 05:32

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Congratulations buddy!

That is a great score. I took the gmat on the same day as you did. I got 720. Initially my thoughts were similar to yours where I felt like I left some points on the table. After couple of days to think about the big picture, I finally settled with the feeling of content. I reviewed at all the remaining steps in an MBA application process and saw that Gmat is about 10-20%. I need to work on so many other things that I felt like I need all the time in the world between now and deadlines.
In addition, this test can turn into obsession -- at all score levels, the test taker will always have a feeling "I could have done better. I could get couple more questions correct." Even if we muster everything we have to score higher, there is no guarantee that something else that is beyond our control will fall in place.

Personally, I think your score is very good. I understand your feelings, looking at your practice test scores. But I feel our time and resources will be best used in focusing on school research and applications. It's time to refocus and not to slow down.

zpotm

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28 May 2012, 10:33

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I totally agree with you man. We are never satisfied. There are so many things that could have gone wrong & inspite of that I managed to get a respectable score, which makes me eligible at the top schools. Now even imagining of going through the process of giving a re-exam is a nightmare.

And also I felt bad that my cynicism can be such a demotivating factor to so many aspirants.

Thanks for your advice & a big congrats to you.
Let us stay in touch and enlighten each other in the path of gaining an B-school admission & beyond.

Cheers,
Bhupesh

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740...mixed feelings

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