Hi Guys,
Thought of sharing my experience of managing a decent score in my first attempt.
1. BackgroundI am an engineer and have done an MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai. I have work ex with a telecom major and currently am employed with the strategy consulting division of a consulting firm. Sometime during last year I decided that I needed to get another MBA for a plausible career switch. That however is not the reason why I am writing this. It's a story for another day.
2. PreparationI gave myself 3 months to crack this exam. With hard work and a proper plan one can crack this exam with a decent score.
My routine went somewhat like this-
Weekdays: 2-3 hours per day after returning from office
Weekends: 8 hours per day
Materials used-
a.
OG 2016
b. Manhattan SC strategy guide (the first two are ubiquitous i guess)
c.
Powerscore CR bible
d.
Magoosh idiom book
e. GMAT club various question sets (mostly verbals, quants i didn't practice)
f. Arun Sharma CAT book for quants (had this from my cat days, some of the formulas here are killer)
Mocks used and scores-
Kaplan Free Test -680 (q49,v34) --> first ever mock wasn't too disappointed with 680, however quants is difficult than gmat and verbal is weird (no better word than that)
Veritas Free Test -680 (q51,v32)
GMAT prep 1 -720(q49,v40) --> first exam after having covered all the relevant topics. Gave me some solace that i was on the right track
MGMAT 1 -670(q45,v36) --> and crash landing, one of the most difficult mocks. However the low scores were primarily because i wasnt expecting this tough an exam
MGMAT 2 -720(q46,v42)
MGMAT 3 -680(q48,v34)
MGMAT 4 -730(q49,v40)
MGMAT 5 -690(q48,v38)
MGMAT 6 -780(q51,v45) --> first ever mock where i was at my best and did no silly mistakes (which is a rarity)
Economist Free Test -740(q54,v38)
GMAT pill -690(q50,v32)
800Score -(q48,v41) --> didnt get the score as the two sections were separately taken, downloaded this from gmatclub
Crack verbal -645(q50,v27) --> weirdest exam as my verbal is dodgy but not to the extent of getting a v 27, however their disclaimer did say : you are likely to get about 100 points over this score
GMAT prep 2 -740(q50,q40)
Babson College Free Test (Powered by Economist) -740-770 (q50-53, v43-47) -->exam is tougher than the actual economist free test, but i guess their score estimation is right on the money
Overall MGMATs are the closest but their matter is difficult than the actual thing. GMAT prep questions are exactly of the requisite level. They also surprisingly predict your score quite accurately. Veritas' verbal is of the same level, quants is easier. Kaplan is just weird. Economist powers a lot of these free tests so it's worth giving it a shot. Some of their material is very good especially in CR. Don't even try crackverbal or 800score.
Other Resources-
Gmatclub is a goldmine of gmat material. Some questions might have wonky sources, however overall the matter you get here is unmatched. 4 days before the exam I also got a set of past DS, Verbal questions that'd appeared on GMAT prep software. That's an amazing resource. I practiced those before my exam and still couldn't finish them all.
Aside from gmatclub, the Manhattan forum is damn good. The explanations given by Ron, Stacey, Dan to name a few are really good. Plus if you are diligent enough you get access to a lot of good quality questions on these forums.
Notable mentions would include Mike of
Magoosh, Karishma of Veritas, Shraddha of
E-gmat (her articles are really good), Education Aisle (their e-book section on verb-ed modifiers is a killer). Few members who helped me are
sayantanc2k,
popov.
Few users whose posts i read to clear a lot of my doubts:
Bunuel, chetan
Another good forum is beat the gmat. Once you register with them, they send you a question everyday which was fun to solve.
I also downloaded a mobile only app Prep4gmat. This one's good without being amazing. However, it can be a killer app if more developed properly.
3. Few TipsHere are a few tips that were handy for me.
1. Make a note of all the important maths formulas at one place. Do the same with Verbal rules
2. Keep noting down wherever you are making an error to explicitly address those areas before the exam (is this same as what gmatclub calls the
error log? didn't use the errorlog format per se)
3. Practice mocks with an emphasis on time. I think the biggest reason I didn't panic any time during the test was because at all times I had more time than what was needed. This was purely because I practiced being faster than the clock during the mocks
4. Practice as many questions as you can. Even though I practiced everything from Brutal SC to 1000 series, I would ask ppl to stay away from those banned sources. There are enough materials on gmat in various forums not least gmatclub. Practicing helps you acclimatize with as many alien situations as possible. That's a huge advantage while attempting the real thing . Even if you get questions correct keep matching your thinking with what experts think on gmatclub, manhattan forums just to be sure you got the right answer because of the right reasons.
5. Have faith in the Pearson Vue software if any glitches occur. My software went kaput twice. Once the system froze but it restored itself, the other time a manual reboot was needed. It however didn't affect my scores (that's what I felt). Perhaps because on both the occasions the glitches happened toward the beginning of the sections.
6. Keep calm at all times. Midway through the exam I sincerely thought my quants performance wasnt as good as it could have been (as is evident from the score). However, keeping myself calm allowed me to not over think and attempt the verbal section with the right mindset. It's all in the mind really.
4. The ExamAWA: The passage (it was literally a passage) was quite lengthy. It had around 7 lines, which is a rarity as far as my experience goes. However, the argument was simple and as stated by many before me the assumptions were evident and I thought I could make a good fist of it (got the scores - 5.5).
IR: This section was fairly simple. In fact simpler than a few mocks that I had given. The questions were pretty straightforward and out of the 12 questions only 3 needed complicated inferences to solve them. I had always had a trouble with time in this section, hence on the d day i decided to skip one question (calculated guessing) to give myself the boost of finishing it within time. However, this strategy wasn't needed as the questions were simpler than I thought they would be.
Quants: This was a strange section because of the following reasons:
a. I was getting an alternate of a tricky and an easy question. That got me thinking that maybe i was getting a few of them wrong. However, looking at my scores and my reading of my GMAT prep results i wouldn't have gotten more than 7-8 questions incorrect.
b. At least two questions were doable by using formulas. I dont think I got even a single question in my two GMAT prep attempts which were solvable using formulas.
c. I thought the quants of GMAT prep exams were difficult than the actual thing. Maybe i got questions which i liked solving.
Overall this section was fairly simple and didn't need much brain storming. I felt i rushed it a little more than I needed to as i finished the section with 4 mins left on the clock. Maybe by judiciously using those mins I could've gotten a few more questions correct. One weird thing however was that my break timer was conspicuously running down faster than a normal watch. No bias here am so serious.
Verbal: It's the weaker section for me and hence I concentrated harder than I usually do. Verbal was also slightly strange for a few reasons:
a. I dont think i have ever seen more than 12-13 RC questions in any of the GMAT prep tests (or
MGMAT). I got 16 on this one. It worked to my favor as I was pretty consistent with my RC
b. CR was twisted and tougher than the GMAT prep tests. My CR had only 1 assumption and 2 strengthen questions. This combination is again a rarity as far as my experience with mocks go. Most of my CR questions were Evaluation of argument and Weakeners
c. SC was fairly straightforward with almost no question directly testing the idiomatic usages, which i'd mugged up frantically. Most of them tested modifier usage and parallelism. SC was stranger because I have been told by many verbal books that for giving examples we need to use "such as" instead of like, my verbal set had 3 occasions were they used "like" to introduce examples though none was a part of the underlined segment
Overall verbal was a simple section. Here too I finished with 7 mins left on the timer. I again had an eerie feeling that maybe i could have gotten a bit higher by using those mins judiciously. From my experience of GMAT prep scoring I think I got 7-8 questions incorrect here.
To conclude, I would say with the right strategy this exam is doable within a finite time period. Honestly if I can you too can.
Regards,
Banerjee06