760 - Thanks for the Support

Question

I've been lurking these boards for the past couple months and wanted to drop a note of thanks to everyone here. You're all very supportive!

Also, as a benefit to others, a little about my experience...

I took the Kaplan GMAT classroom prep course ($1300!!) and found it worthwhile but probably not worth the money. I think that people who are reasonably motivated and can stay with a good study schedule can avoid Kaplan.

Here are the results of my practice tests:
Kaplan Diagnostic (linear) - 680 (43/39)  
Kaplan CAT 1 - 630 (39/37)
Kaplan CAT 3 - 640 (41/36)
Kaplan CAT 4 - 650 (50/33)
Kaplan Test A (linear) - 750 (55/41)
Kaplan Test E (linear) - 740 (56/37) 
PowerPrep Test 1 - 770 (50/44)
PowerPrep Test 2 - 740 (51/39)

Actual GMAT - 760 (51/42)

As many other people have found, the Kaplan CATs are much harder than the real thing. The quant questions in those exams really challenged me mathematically, helping me know the difference between when I really knew the answer and when I was pseudo-guessing. The verbal questions, however, didn't help as much...Kaplan's conception of hard verbal questions was just weird. I really didn't agree with many of their explanations.

Good luck to everyone in their GMAT journey!

DLMD · Answer

Congrat, Awesome Score!!!

good luck on your application.

sparky · Answer

Impressive score. Good luck with applications.

gmataquaguy · Answer

Sparky,
 Congratulations on a wonderful score. Could you talk a little bit about the GMAT verbal section. What type of questions you say during the first 10 questions, what type of SCs did you see, what time you spent on the first 10, last 10, etc.

regards,
gmataquaguy

sparky · Answer

man, you are going to jinx it for me

, it's homerfan who got 760. So far I just hope to get 700. My verbal still needs a lot of work.

AJB77 · Answer

Sparky,

Not to put pressure on you but I'm 100% sure that you will score much better than that.

sparky · Answer

Thanks for encouragement, AJ

homerfan33 · Answer

The verbal section was not as hard as I had expected. I actually ended up scoring better on the verbal than I did on the quantitative. The PowerPrep practice test SC were harder than the real thing (and harder than Kaplan's). The SC questions mostly comprised parallelism, verb tenses, and subject-pronoun agreement. Nothing surprising.

I'd say about seven or eight of the first ten questions were SC. I was able to work through them fairly quickly so that I could spend more time on reading comprehension and critical reasoning (my weakest area). I ended up having an extra few minutes on my verbal section, which is exactly how all of my practice tests had gone. Strangely, I almost ran out of time on the quantitative, which almost never happened in my practice exams.

Good luck!

Biren · Answer

Excelent score. Best wishes for the application process.

anandobhattacharya · Answer

Congrats! Pray for us.

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