I apologize for the long summary but I feel like I owe this to everyone in the group. I wanted to share my GMAT experience. I took the exam today and got a 710 - Q48 V39. I am little disappointed with score as I was expected to get 50-51 on Q / 41-42 on V when I walked in. But I am not going to worry about it.
Preparation MaterialQuant - 1)
OG 11 2)
OG supplement
Verbal – 1) Manhattan SC 2)
OG 11 3)
OG Supplement 4) Princeton Review (skimmed thro) 5) SC 1K – top 250 Q’s 6) RC 1K top – 100 passages
TestsChallenges (completed 22)
Verbal Challenges (4)
Power Prep1 (750)
Power Prep1 (770)
Gmat Prep 1 (750,770 Q50 V46)
Gmat Prep 1 (780,770 Q51 V47)
Manhattan – 7 tests – averaged 700
*I am not the best taker and tend to do worse on the real one. I am pretty sure I could have got 750 if I took in it my study room, but I will never find out.
GMAT club was an integral part of my preparation. It not only exposed me to new material but also kept me motivated thro’ the process and spent close 30-45 min per day reading questions etc.
Preparation StrategyI studied 3 hours a day (I have a demanding full time job but things are usually slow between thanksgiving and new years and I made the most of it). This was my life for the last 4 months.
Quant I am very good in quant (though my actual score doesn’t reflect it) but I did not do as well in real one. To be honest I was surprised by the toughness of some questions. I had 2-3 probability questions (very straightforward) but I found many DS questions to be pretty tough / time consuming on the actual exam. I felt like there were there 7-10 questions that required some level of thinking,and rest were pretty straightforward. Timing is key - I kept intermediate time goals.
Verbal – SC – I was terrible when I started. I went from 30% hit rate to 80-90% towards the end and not spending more than 1.5min on any question. I kept a log of all my mistakes and went back to it time and again. I completed Manhattan SC (I went over this 4-5 times)
OG,
OG Supplement, 250 of SC1K. I figured I will never get it 100% right but I was definitely surprised by how much I improved from the early days. I looked up answers to SC 1k and Gmatprep questions on the club to see whether my reasoning was correct or understand the correct answer and enter it in my log. The SCs on the actual tests were pretty straightforward (expect for 2-3).
RC- another problem area. I went from taking forever to read and comprehend RCs to getting pretty good at it. Doing a lot of RCs exposed me to different types of questions and topics. I read some debriefs on trying stay under 2 minutes per Q, but when I tried to do this I realized most practice questions have 6-9 q’s and I spent 6-7 minutes on the RC and 4-5 minutes on the questions. I wanted to read RC’s in less than 4 minutes and spend 3-4 minutes on questions. It was very important for me to break it down this way and practiced this on more than 100 RCs from RC 1K. It worked very well on the real GMAT.
CR – My apparent strength during preparation, I was very comfortable with CRs except for bold face. However I am guessing I messed up on 5-7 CR’s on the real test. There were 2-3 questions based on concept of bold face, additional 4-5 asking to identify the best criticism for argument (different from strength / weakness). I used POE, narrowed it down to 2 and then guess. I think CR’s pulled down my V score by 5-6 points.
Execution StrategyTiming was big problem for me on verbal – I’d complete around 30 or so and guess the last 10-11. For both sections I set intermediate time targets and tried to meet them.
I played around a lot with GMAT prep to figure out how the scoring works – took each test 4-5 times to familiarize with different questions. Once I knew most questions in the s/w I would deliberately make mistakes and see how my scoring varies. I developed an execution strategy based on findings. If you have time I would encourage you to do this.
Quant – early questions are weighted more than subsequent ones but missing one or two in the first 20 can still get you 51. With 8-9 mistakes you can 48-50 depending on distribution. Just try to get as many right in the 10 but don’t get stuck on any question.
So my strategy was to try and get as many right early on, skip the tough DS problems. Nothing new here.
VerbalI found verbal to be more forgiving of mistakes but less rewarding of correct answers– what this means is, most questions are weighed equally and as long as you have a equal distribution of mistakes across the test the score will vary linearly based on number of correct answers (btw 1.2 -1.3 per question). Know your weakness– bold face was my weakness, I never figured it out. I did a time study – timing every question and realized that I spent 90 seconds on questions I got right, close to 180 seconds on incorrect ones. The key learning was I did not increase my chance of getting a question right by spending more time. This was extremely valuable – I either know the answer or don’t know the answer and the odds of converting something from incorrect to correct were pretty low (this was a very specific learning). This helped me move on to new question and take a shot at answering more questions. I finished with 1 minute to spare.
I got pretty good at guessing my split and the score once I completed a test and I guessed 720 on the real one.
These are my learning’s and take it for what it is worth. Identify your strengths and weakness, know what your potential is and develop your own preparation and execution strategy (the last part might be something people overlook).
Leverage GMAT Club to the fullest extent possible – there are lot of very smart and very helpful people here.
Though I am not terribly thrilled with my score as I think I could have gotten 750+ I am glad it is over and I don’t want to go through it again. I will have 6 years of financial services experience when I apply in fall 2009 – primarily to schools in Chicago, NYC and I hope the score does not keep me out of the race.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have questions.
Vivek