750 (Q48, V45 , IR8) on first attempt - my thanks and tips

loris

Congrats for score!!

Best of luck for applications.

Great job! Wow - you only used the Official Guides? That’s it?

Did you take a diagnostic test? What was your score if you did?

Thanks so much for the debrief!

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Congratulations loris, it's a great achievement. I hope to be like you soon. If there is any other tips or what you noticed during your preparations, please share. It will help a lot of us. Cheers

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Thank you and thanks to everybody for the congratulations.

Yes, that was the only study material I used, in combination with the practice questions and exams I got when I registered to the exam.
Maybe I was too naive in my approach, but, given the limited amount of time I could dedicate to the preparation (around 6-7 hours per week), I don't think having more study material would have made a big difference.

The only diagnostic tests I did were the two official mock exams, with scores of 730 and 770, as explained in my previous post.
A negative side effect of this right now is that, since until three weeks ago I had no idea what could be my potential score, it was hard for me to undestand which tier of business schools I should look at, make my research on and so on...
I was a little bit conservative in my potential choices and preferences, while now I could aim to higher tier business schools and I need to start the research process again before starting with application processes.

Thanks!

Since some of you asked me also on PM some tips on Verbal part, I am sharing my experience here in this post, so it will be visibile to more people.

As you could read, my approach to the exam was pretty straightforward. I did practice questions and I tried to learn more and improve myself through the explanations of the answers in the books, for both the correct and the wrong ones.
An important element for me was that right from the start I tried to simulate exam conditions in terms of number of questions and time (usually 30 questions in 1 hour) in my study sessions to reach as fast as possible the solving speed and pace necessary in the real exam.

Going more specifically into the three parts of the Verbal section, unfortunately, to be honest with you, I cannot give you many advice for the RC and CR parts; they came pretty natural to me and I haven't done anything extra besides practising questions.
On the other hand, being a non-native speaker, the SC part was the hardest of the three. There, something that helped me a lot, especially to save time, was to recognize similar "patterns" in questions and thus save a lot of time. I explain myself better with the following example.
There are always sentences, such as the one in this example ("With no natural predators and expanses of green suburban neighborhoods that allow no hunting, wildlife officials estimate the New Jersey deer population to have grown to exceed 175,000"), made of a subordinate clause adding extra information on the subject of the main clause and a principal clause.
In 95% of cases the determining factor is the accordance of the two subjects. In this kind of questions I just go quickly through the subjects of the five options to find the right accordance, not interested, at least at the beginning, in the other elements/differences.
Recognizing this kind of patterns allowed me to save a lot of time, I have finished the Verbal part in the two practice tests and in the real exam with around 5 minutes of spare time left.

V45 for a non native speaker who did not even use prep books, that’s an amazing score. Unfortunately for most of us, a lot more tools and help is needed... I started with a 540 diag test and then 3 months of work with books working on strategies and timing.

PS. I rarely hear of people having time left in Verbal. You have a really strong base!

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Congratulations loris

750 is an amazing score!

All the best for your applications.

YOU must have an genius level IQ. Remarkable score, you could inspire a lot of people here.

That is a V45? Dayum man you must be excellent at verbal.

I am definitely not a genius.
I am probably naturally gifted in verbal aspects and I have found during my study sessions the right strategy to fully exploit my skills.
I think that there are general strategies to perform well in the exam, but in my opinion it is more important to find the right approach according to your strengths.

Tell us some. May be we could get some benefit

Wow, 750 with just the OG is pretty impressive. As I’m sure you’ve seen, most folks can’t achieve a score even close to 750 by just using the OG. Good luck with things moving forward.