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May 0510:00 AM PDT
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GMAT Inequalities is a high-frequency topic in GMAT Quant, but many students struggle because the concepts behave differently from standard algebra. Understanding the right rules, patterns, and edge cases can significantly improve both speed and accuracy.- May 06
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In Episode 3 of our GMAT Ninja Critical Reasoning series, we tackle Discrepancy, Paradox, and Explain an Oddity questions. You know the feeling: the passage gives you two facts that seem completely contradictory.... - May 08
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Join the special YouTube live-stream for selecting the winners of GMAT Club MBA Scholarships sponsored by Juno live. Watch who gets these coveted MBA scholarships offered by GMAT Club and Juno.
04 May 2015, 11:49
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Some background on myself: I'm a 28 year old Mechanical Engineer. US born/raised. English is my first and only language. I've spent the past 5 years working as a new product development engineer and I'm looking to advance my career into management of a development team. Standardized testing has always been a strong suit for me and I can't say I felt overly intimidated by the GMAT. My ultimate goal is to complete an MBA through an online program. With my learning style I do not do well in the classroom environment and work much better with the freedom and flexibility an online program offers. I'm also not in a position where I can put my life on pause to pursue a degree full time.
I made the decision to purse an MBA program about 8 months back and shortly thereafter purchased the GMAT guides directly from GMAC. Over the next 3-4 weeks I put in just a few nights (I work full time) of reading through the materials and took the 1st GMATPrep practice exam scoring a 710 but I had skipped the AWA. At that point I had less than 20 hours total time invested. Life got more busy as I had signed up to take some introductory business classes at a local college and had various other activities that took up much of my time. I didn't look at anything GMAT related until Saturday April 25th when I signed up to take the exam on May 2nd. Yes, I scheduled the test with exactly one weeks notice.
I put in about 2-5 hours a night each day during that week and often used my 1 hour lunch break at work to read this forum or work on practice problems. I started by reading an excellent guide on this site for scoring a 6 on the AWA. The AWA is what I was most nervous about. I had done no practice of it and writing has never been my strongest attribute. Between studying the guide and reading some sample essays I felt much more at ease. Total time Sunday 2 hours.
gmatclub. com/forum/how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327
Monday I used my lunch break to read over some timing strategies on this site. Monday night is Soccer (football) night for me so I only had 2 hours of time before my game (6-2 victory!) I downloaded AWA practice software from weelyoung. com/app/gmat-awa-sim. Its a great little simulator and I used it to write my first AWA. I finished the essay with seconds left and had ~550 words. Spelling errors were rampant so I made a mental note to try to go a bit shorter on the word count and leave time to read back over my work. Total time Monday 3 hours.
Tuesday I resolved to take the full GMATPrep test including the AWA. I retook the 1st practice test and scored a 730 with an 8 on the IR. I felt that the score was fairly representative as none of the actual questions seemed familiar from my previous attempt, although some of the passages were definitely familiar. My Verbal score was good but my quant was lower than expected. I am an engineer after all. Total time Tuesday 4 hours. Feeling alright.
Wednesday I used my lunch break to study the tricky exponent questions posted here. I realized my biggest problem with quant was simply that I hadn't needed my brain to work in that manner for quite some time. There was a lack of repetitive training on my part, and I'm sure my quant score would have been much higher coming straight out of school 5 years back. I resolved to not focus on individual answers or how long it took me to solve practice questions, but upon determining the best methods to solve those problems. I had another soccer game that night (another win!) but I spent about three hours afterwards going over quant questions in the OG quant book. I also made the decision to give up the tickets to a concert Thursday night that I had been looking forward for quite sometime. Total Wednesday time 4 hours.
gmatclub. com/forum/new-tough-and-tricky-exponents-and-roots-questions-125956-40
I used the OG quant book to study DS questions at lunch. After work Thursday I could feel the exhaustion catching up to me. On top of work, sports, classwork, and studying, I had been dealing with some very stressful dealings with an insurance company who was giving me a hard time on paying out a claim they owed me for weeks. I sat and took the the free Manhattan Prep test and I knew from the start it was not going well. I finished with a 5 IR and a 680 score. I was devastated, tired, and hyper stressed about the exam now only two days away. Total time 5 hours
I woke up Friday morning took a step back and tried to put things in perspective. My goal of a 700+ score was probably much higher than I actually needed to get into the programs I was looking at. On top of that I had been running myself ragged for almost a week straight and fatigue had to be hurting my abilities. I decided to go through some more OG quant problems at lunch and than review the questions I missed on the two practice exams I'd taken that night. As I reviewed the questions I missed between the two tests it was very apparent that the questions missed from the Tuesday exam resulted from approaching them in the wrong way and poor time management while Thursdays mistakes were almost entirely simple errors caused by fatigue. I knew than nothing would help me more than a good nights sleep before the big day Saturday. I gathered my ID, the test center address, water, my clothes, and anything else I might need the next morning and went to bed early. Total time Friday 3-4 hours.
Total Prep Time: ~20 hours 6-8 months ago. ~20 hours week of exam.
I woke up Saturday calm and rested for the first time since scheduling the exam the week prior. I had everything planned out for my trip to the test center including a detour around some closed roads. My AWA went very well. I don't know that my arguments were quite as strong as some of my practice runs but my timing was perfect and I had 2 minutes left to read back through. I'm hoping for a solid 5-5.5. We'll see in a few weeks. Next up was IR. I struggled with timing here and spent too long on the first few questions. I got a lucky break with an easy last question and only had to make an educated guess on one part to get through with just seconds to spare. I filled most of a scratch book and asked for a new one. I was feeling great after my first break.
The quant proved to be an enigma. I felt very confident on most of the questions, but I wasn't seeing the level of difficulty I was expecting. Few exponent or series problems. My only guess is that I must have missed 2 of the first hard questions limiting my chances at a top score. I finished again with just seconds left after hurrying through the last two problems. I didn't feel awful going into the second break but I had no idea what to expect from my quant score. It was just an entirely different experience than either practice test or my expectations. I had again burned through an entire work book and asked for one more book for the verbal.
Finally it was time to tackle the Verbal. This had been my strong point in practice, but traditionally I consider my verbal skills inferior to my math. Again, I'm an engineer. I started the verbal section and found myself flying through the questions. I had 20 questions done with over 40 minutes left. None of them had seemed difficult at all. I started to worry. Was I missing all the hard questions from moving too fast? This forum had me expecting the verbal to be far harder than the practice exams. I made a deliberate effort to slow down and carefully consider each question. I took only 30 minutes to finish the remaining questions and still had not found the difficulty level overly challenging, although the SC had seemed to really ramp up at the end. I finished my GMAT with more than 10 mins still on the clock. I had not written a single thing on my scratch paper. Not one word. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from my score.
When the page displayed with my score I was very confused. I had thought you had to choose to submit to schools before seeing the results. My first thought was that the score report was just an example! As I came to realize this was my actual score I became ecstatic. 8 IR, 47Q 45V, 740 Total Score! My quant was still lower than I was hoping for but is more than good enough for the programs I want to pursue.
I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to the guides and software linked above and the members of this forum in general. I honestly believe reading the forums here for just that one week provided a significant boost to my confidence and my score. I'd also like to thank anyone who actually reads through this mountain of a debrief. It feels wonderful just to put all of this down in words, whether it helps someone else or not. My final takeaway is that there are some really smart people out there to push the quant percentiles down so low. Kudos to all of you. I do believe though, that the quant section is much more trainable than the verbal. I think had I put in two months of prep I could have achieved a few points higher on the quant. I'm not sure anything would have pushed my verbal into the highest echelon of elite GMAT scores. I don't mean to imply there is no hope for someone who's scoring lower then they'd like on the verbal, just that given a limited time I would focus on trying to increasing quant first.
I made the decision to purse an MBA program about 8 months back and shortly thereafter purchased the GMAT guides directly from GMAC. Over the next 3-4 weeks I put in just a few nights (I work full time) of reading through the materials and took the 1st GMATPrep practice exam scoring a 710 but I had skipped the AWA. At that point I had less than 20 hours total time invested. Life got more busy as I had signed up to take some introductory business classes at a local college and had various other activities that took up much of my time. I didn't look at anything GMAT related until Saturday April 25th when I signed up to take the exam on May 2nd. Yes, I scheduled the test with exactly one weeks notice.
I put in about 2-5 hours a night each day during that week and often used my 1 hour lunch break at work to read this forum or work on practice problems. I started by reading an excellent guide on this site for scoring a 6 on the AWA. The AWA is what I was most nervous about. I had done no practice of it and writing has never been my strongest attribute. Between studying the guide and reading some sample essays I felt much more at ease. Total time Sunday 2 hours.
gmatclub. com/forum/how-to-get-6-0-awa-my-guide-64327
Monday I used my lunch break to read over some timing strategies on this site. Monday night is Soccer (football) night for me so I only had 2 hours of time before my game (6-2 victory!) I downloaded AWA practice software from weelyoung. com/app/gmat-awa-sim. Its a great little simulator and I used it to write my first AWA. I finished the essay with seconds left and had ~550 words. Spelling errors were rampant so I made a mental note to try to go a bit shorter on the word count and leave time to read back over my work. Total time Monday 3 hours.
Tuesday I resolved to take the full GMATPrep test including the AWA. I retook the 1st practice test and scored a 730 with an 8 on the IR. I felt that the score was fairly representative as none of the actual questions seemed familiar from my previous attempt, although some of the passages were definitely familiar. My Verbal score was good but my quant was lower than expected. I am an engineer after all. Total time Tuesday 4 hours. Feeling alright.
Wednesday I used my lunch break to study the tricky exponent questions posted here. I realized my biggest problem with quant was simply that I hadn't needed my brain to work in that manner for quite some time. There was a lack of repetitive training on my part, and I'm sure my quant score would have been much higher coming straight out of school 5 years back. I resolved to not focus on individual answers or how long it took me to solve practice questions, but upon determining the best methods to solve those problems. I had another soccer game that night (another win!) but I spent about three hours afterwards going over quant questions in the OG quant book. I also made the decision to give up the tickets to a concert Thursday night that I had been looking forward for quite sometime. Total Wednesday time 4 hours.
gmatclub. com/forum/new-tough-and-tricky-exponents-and-roots-questions-125956-40
I used the OG quant book to study DS questions at lunch. After work Thursday I could feel the exhaustion catching up to me. On top of work, sports, classwork, and studying, I had been dealing with some very stressful dealings with an insurance company who was giving me a hard time on paying out a claim they owed me for weeks. I sat and took the the free Manhattan Prep test and I knew from the start it was not going well. I finished with a 5 IR and a 680 score. I was devastated, tired, and hyper stressed about the exam now only two days away. Total time 5 hours
I woke up Friday morning took a step back and tried to put things in perspective. My goal of a 700+ score was probably much higher than I actually needed to get into the programs I was looking at. On top of that I had been running myself ragged for almost a week straight and fatigue had to be hurting my abilities. I decided to go through some more OG quant problems at lunch and than review the questions I missed on the two practice exams I'd taken that night. As I reviewed the questions I missed between the two tests it was very apparent that the questions missed from the Tuesday exam resulted from approaching them in the wrong way and poor time management while Thursdays mistakes were almost entirely simple errors caused by fatigue. I knew than nothing would help me more than a good nights sleep before the big day Saturday. I gathered my ID, the test center address, water, my clothes, and anything else I might need the next morning and went to bed early. Total time Friday 3-4 hours.
Total Prep Time: ~20 hours 6-8 months ago. ~20 hours week of exam.
I woke up Saturday calm and rested for the first time since scheduling the exam the week prior. I had everything planned out for my trip to the test center including a detour around some closed roads. My AWA went very well. I don't know that my arguments were quite as strong as some of my practice runs but my timing was perfect and I had 2 minutes left to read back through. I'm hoping for a solid 5-5.5. We'll see in a few weeks. Next up was IR. I struggled with timing here and spent too long on the first few questions. I got a lucky break with an easy last question and only had to make an educated guess on one part to get through with just seconds to spare. I filled most of a scratch book and asked for a new one. I was feeling great after my first break.
The quant proved to be an enigma. I felt very confident on most of the questions, but I wasn't seeing the level of difficulty I was expecting. Few exponent or series problems. My only guess is that I must have missed 2 of the first hard questions limiting my chances at a top score. I finished again with just seconds left after hurrying through the last two problems. I didn't feel awful going into the second break but I had no idea what to expect from my quant score. It was just an entirely different experience than either practice test or my expectations. I had again burned through an entire work book and asked for one more book for the verbal.
Finally it was time to tackle the Verbal. This had been my strong point in practice, but traditionally I consider my verbal skills inferior to my math. Again, I'm an engineer. I started the verbal section and found myself flying through the questions. I had 20 questions done with over 40 minutes left. None of them had seemed difficult at all. I started to worry. Was I missing all the hard questions from moving too fast? This forum had me expecting the verbal to be far harder than the practice exams. I made a deliberate effort to slow down and carefully consider each question. I took only 30 minutes to finish the remaining questions and still had not found the difficulty level overly challenging, although the SC had seemed to really ramp up at the end. I finished my GMAT with more than 10 mins still on the clock. I had not written a single thing on my scratch paper. Not one word. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from my score.
When the page displayed with my score I was very confused. I had thought you had to choose to submit to schools before seeing the results. My first thought was that the score report was just an example! As I came to realize this was my actual score I became ecstatic. 8 IR, 47Q 45V, 740 Total Score! My quant was still lower than I was hoping for but is more than good enough for the programs I want to pursue.
I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to the guides and software linked above and the members of this forum in general. I honestly believe reading the forums here for just that one week provided a significant boost to my confidence and my score. I'd also like to thank anyone who actually reads through this mountain of a debrief. It feels wonderful just to put all of this down in words, whether it helps someone else or not. My final takeaway is that there are some really smart people out there to push the quant percentiles down so low. Kudos to all of you. I do believe though, that the quant section is much more trainable than the verbal. I think had I put in two months of prep I could have achieved a few points higher on the quant. I'm not sure anything would have pushed my verbal into the highest echelon of elite GMAT scores. I don't mean to imply there is no hope for someone who's scoring lower then they'd like on the verbal, just that given a limited time I would focus on trying to increasing quant first.
05 May 2015, 09:57
Kudos
Bookmarks
What a debrief. One week of preparation and you score 740.
Though my score was almost similar to yours, I sweated it out for more than a year (of course not "continuously"), while you took just a week! I am sure this debrief will make many people envious (including me).
Also, it was hilarious to read how, of all the sections, you say that AWA was what you were most nervous about;).
By the way, you've mentioned that you consider your verbal skills inferior to your math skills. But looks like the exam showed otherwise!
Not only did you score a mammoth 45 in verbal, you seem to have gotten this score with zero preparation in verbal, since I could not find any trace of "verbal" preparation in the one week regimen that you have jotted down!
Way to go! Congrats again.
Though my score was almost similar to yours, I sweated it out for more than a year (of course not "continuously"), while you took just a week! I am sure this debrief will make many people envious (including me).
Also, it was hilarious to read how, of all the sections, you say that AWA was what you were most nervous about;).
By the way, you've mentioned that you consider your verbal skills inferior to your math skills. But looks like the exam showed otherwise!
Not only did you score a mammoth 45 in verbal, you seem to have gotten this score with zero preparation in verbal, since I could not find any trace of "verbal" preparation in the one week regimen that you have jotted down!
Way to go! Congrats again.
06 May 2015, 10:36
Kudos
Bookmarks
Received the official score report today. 6.0 on the AWA. Again, wow, way higher than expected. I would say this is absolutely a result of reading Chineseburned's guide. I laid out my essay in the same style as his. If you understand the prompt well enough to pick out 2-3 flaws and follow burned's format I'm not sure you could possibly go wrong.
Ayushman, I was most nervous about the AWA because I had never attempted one or even seen the format with one week until the test. I'm usually also a relatively slow writer. My writing skills are solid but not quick. With the 6.0 guide laying out the path to follow, the hardest part for me, was already done. I had no trouble coming up with flaws and counter examples, and plugging those into the template. My AWA advice is to study common logical fallacies. I had an excellent teacher in high school who taught us the 10 most common logical fallacies and that knowledge definitely helps in the critical reasoning that is often required on standardized tests. If you can pick out the flaws and follow the format I'm not sure anyone would need to write more than a dozen practice essays.
As to verbal preparation, no, I did not do any during my one week run at the GMAT. In my original 20 hours of studying 6 months back I had gone through the OG Guide and completed most of the verbal problems there. So I had a good idea of what to expect and of course I took two practice exams which gave me more exposure. I said it in my first post and I'll say it again a bit clearer. I believe if English is your native language your time is much better spent studying quant until you are positive you've maximized your quant score. I know another month or two would have raised my quant score. My verbal was not going anywhere in that time. I also used to help tutor friends in the SAT and always found it was much easier to raise peoples' math scores than it was their verbal scores.
I know my results are not typical and I'm not advocating a one week prep process or trying to brag about my results. I simply wanted to put my particular story out there and share the resources that I found most helpful in achieving that score.
Finally I'd like to add that I believe rest is key. After reading through a bunch of posts I see many people following study regimes that are/were as grueling as my week for months at a time. This will absolutely burn any person out eventually. When you see that regression start to happen you have to stop. Take a break for a bit and relax. Pick up the books again in a day, a week, a month, whatever it takes to settle back down. A study session won't help if you can't concentrate and absorb the entire time. Worse yet, an extra week of studying is worthless to someone too tired to focus throughout the entire exam.
Ayushman, I was most nervous about the AWA because I had never attempted one or even seen the format with one week until the test. I'm usually also a relatively slow writer. My writing skills are solid but not quick. With the 6.0 guide laying out the path to follow, the hardest part for me, was already done. I had no trouble coming up with flaws and counter examples, and plugging those into the template. My AWA advice is to study common logical fallacies. I had an excellent teacher in high school who taught us the 10 most common logical fallacies and that knowledge definitely helps in the critical reasoning that is often required on standardized tests. If you can pick out the flaws and follow the format I'm not sure anyone would need to write more than a dozen practice essays.
As to verbal preparation, no, I did not do any during my one week run at the GMAT. In my original 20 hours of studying 6 months back I had gone through the OG Guide and completed most of the verbal problems there. So I had a good idea of what to expect and of course I took two practice exams which gave me more exposure. I said it in my first post and I'll say it again a bit clearer. I believe if English is your native language your time is much better spent studying quant until you are positive you've maximized your quant score. I know another month or two would have raised my quant score. My verbal was not going anywhere in that time. I also used to help tutor friends in the SAT and always found it was much easier to raise peoples' math scores than it was their verbal scores.
I know my results are not typical and I'm not advocating a one week prep process or trying to brag about my results. I simply wanted to put my particular story out there and share the resources that I found most helpful in achieving that score.
Finally I'd like to add that I believe rest is key. After reading through a bunch of posts I see many people following study regimes that are/were as grueling as my week for months at a time. This will absolutely burn any person out eventually. When you see that regression start to happen you have to stop. Take a break for a bit and relax. Pick up the books again in a day, a week, a month, whatever it takes to settle back down. A study session won't help if you can't concentrate and absorb the entire time. Worse yet, an extra week of studying is worthless to someone too tired to focus throughout the entire exam.
