how/when it all began :
it all began way back in 2003. I started thinking about mba and stuff, and realised that gmat was the first step. joined gmatclub somewhere around mid of last year ( yeah - i still operate under a different pnemonic here )...
I frankly didnt do much for most of last year and beginning of this year other than just think that someday I will give gmat. I always thought that i will schedule my gmat once i am ready. that day never came.
Lesson 1 for future GMATers - Schedule your gmat !
What happened in July
Panic struck, and I realised that if I dont appear for the GMAT in good time, I am doomed. So got the best date I could think of. And started studying. Never knew that work will pile up like hell before the test, and I somehow managed to save myself from drowning. Sometime in the last week of July, my boss left on vacation, leaving his share of work. Double fun in the same amount of money
How I studied
Something not at all prescribed for any other test taker. I studied kind of regularly (as much as I could). I would give a Kap section test, get depressed with the scores, somehow pull myself up to analyse the results, look for the odd auxillary verb or the dangling modifier, and then go back to dream about how I would actually surpass all these shortcomings and do well in the exam. I gave a few practice tests - but couldnt give all that i had. I did curse myself for that - but guess it didnt matter a whole lot.
My practice test scores :
Kap Diagnostic - 710.
PP1 - 640 (before OG)
Princeton 1 - 690
PP1 again - 680 ( after a little bit of OG)
Kap CAT 1 - 590
Princeton 4 - 730
Kap CAT 2 - 610
GMATprep 1 - 710 (70 % OG complete)
GMATprep 2 - 700 (80 % OG complete)
PP2 - just two days ago - 690
Now that might seem a whole lot many tests, but do consider the fact that I didnt give all this in the last 2 months. If I remember correctly, the Kap diagnostic was a test that i gave back in Nov 2004...
I guess I gave 5 fulll length tests in the past month and a half, and 3 of them where I wrote the essays. Believe me friends, for people who are not high on stamina and tend to loose focus - it is best to give the tests with the AWA section. Whatever little energy you use, it will sap out the energy, and for people who are not good typists, it will need a lot more staring at the computer than was the case for me. So that tires your eyes, and makes the verbal section even tougher to deal with.
Lesson 2 for future GMATers - Give practice tests with AWA
Now, I knew that OG is the bible. It is something that had got hammered into my brain. And though I had a huge amount of material , I realised that OG is the key. Also, since OG has explanations for all the stuff, it is THE BEST. So this is what I did.
Attempted the first 50 questions in RC,CR and SC in a untimed mode. Got a feel of what things are about. Then started timing myself. Initially, I would give section tests( a set of 20 SC questions, or a set of 3 RCs - something like that). But I discontinued that pretty soon. I then adopted a method to make a complete verbal section out of the 3 topics. I would choose around 18 questions from SC, around 12 from CR(because the total number of CR questions is less), and atleast 3 RCs. Sometimes this resulted in the total being more than 41(the number of questions in the verbal section) - but I thought that its ok. Better to stress myself now rather than repent later. So I did 6 SC questions first, then an RC, then 6 CRs, then 6 SCs again, then an RC, and then again 6 CRs, and finally a set of 6 SCs and an RC. This way I more or less simulated the fluctuation that happens in the real test. I generally did pretty ok, I never fell below the 75% mark - but one thing was strange. Sometimes I got all questions in RC correct, and sometimes I got all the SC questions correct( something that didnt happen for the CR section ever). I was not always able to review the questions after the test - but I did make a point to review all the SC questions I did. I have a notebook, where I kept noting down all the characteristic stuff I encountered in a particular SC question.
I got so busy during the last few weeks that I just managed to complete the OG for the first time with review for SC sometime on last Thursday.
Not advised, because ideally one should review the OG atleast once.
I was having problems with CR, so I started reading why I was making mistakes. I realised that most of the time I was thinking in different lines, and sometimes I would choose an answer which was completely out of scope. I did try and concentrate a hell lot more on each CR question I attempted, but I guess I never mastered the subject.
I also happened to notice how the 7 basic principles of SC in any GMAT book ( kaplan or princeton) is pretty much all about an SC. If you closely follow OG, you will see that atleast half the questions have some form of parallelism.I think that is another thing that got hammered into my brain.
I was pretty ok in the RC section, albeit the time I took to answer all questions correctly was usually more than the time I took to complete an RC with 70 % accuracy. I made a mental note of this, and also that I will need more time to tackle CRs in the real test.
I absolutely didnt do any PS questions from the OG, and did hardly last 50 questions in the DS ( strike rate was not very good). I knew that Maths comes naturally to me, so I kinda got overconfident. But during the last week before the exam, I kind off felt that only Maths could save my score if I screw the verbal section. So I quickly revised a little bit of Permutation of Combination, and whatever I could about Statistics ( as far as I know, statistics questions are all about applying the fundamentals of mean median and SD correctly ) - that's all there is to stats, nothing more. I dont say you dont prepare harder, but I think it will be a let down. In all my mock tests at home or at the local univ, I realised that maths was easy. I usually used to finish the section atleast 20 mins before time, but that generally resulted in me making a few silly mistakes. A friend advised me to follow the 25-25-25 rule ( for 12 - 12 - 13 ) questions, and that helped - because I got a 51 and 50 in the last two GMATprep tests I gave.
I got a 49 in the PP2 - I think because I finished the section in 30 mins dot
Lesson no 3 for future GMATers - Do your OG well
Guys - got discontinue now...will be back to complete this post...anyways - this post was getting a tad long, so I need to give a break to prevent my fellows out there from running away out of boredom.
Apr 27
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Apr 28
08 Aug 2005, 02:27
