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Apr 2808:00 AM PDT
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Alright, let’s start backwards: Had my test this morning 02/23/10 and scored a 720 (94%) Q48(83) and V(41). AWA I will know in a couple days, but I am confident it is 5.0 or above. I had about 12mins left in quant and 3 mins in verbal I got out of the test center and in the car it hit me that I had two wrong answers to geometry concepts where GMAC –in its typical fashion – took like the simplest concept of concepts and buried it within an enormously complex coat. If you could see through that it takes less than 30s to answer that question – for example the first I spent over 4min on it and then f…d it up by forgetting to divide by 2 at the end. So may be I could have scored higher on the quant who knows.
Had an 8am appointment and I have been dogsitting for some friends for the last 3 days. I thought it be good to distract myself a little bit on the final days. Well, indeed it was good. However, I only stayed at there house the first night as the mattress in their guest bedroom was horrible. So I had to get up at 5.30am this morning drive to their house, walk the doggies (3) for a good 20mins, take a shower, get ready and hit the road. Worked all fine, except for while walking the doggies I realized that I had forgotten to bring my passport along – a must have when you test outside of your home country. So after getting ready it was back to my house – luckily on the way to the test center – and finally to the test center. Got there about 7.30 and they were letting people wait outside until 7.40. Found out I was the only one taking the GMAT, everyone else was taking nursing exams (NCLEX or something like that). Finally, they opened, got a number, got processed, two last sips of water and ready set go.
AWA, yeah well whatever, got your average essay questions, fairly certain I did good. All the prep I used was chineeseburned’s guide and 4 or 5 CAT’s I took with the AWA. Took my break.
Early during quant I realized I was flying through the section and I would be ok spending a little more time on the more challenging questions. So I did that as needed. Felt good after quant! Took my break, little chocolate, some water and a restroom break and back again at the verbal. Here I had 4 RCs, 2 short ones 2 long ones. I had 2 SCs were boy the sentences were sentences from hell. They were testing the craziest parallelism stuff – never seen a question like that in my entire prep. No idea if I got those right or not. Had a hard time focusing on the last 3 verbal questions, I just wanted to know my score. Second last question was a Boldface and it was a difficult one, but I know I got it right. Felt really good then! Didn’t care if it was an actual or test question, just felt good to have beaten that question.
Exam over, click through all the bs, didn’t fill in a thing. Click report score and really like 15s wait or something. Saw the score, first impression: GREAT. Second, oh come one you could have scored higher in quant. Now three hours later, it’s back to great. Done with the beast!
Now in hindsight: I did not have enough time to finish all the questions in OG12, I am missing the last 40DS questions. Wish I had had the time – reason I say that, I think I saw some very similar question from the later part of the OG12 PS stuff on the actual exam. As for the total time I spent studying probably about 150h with like 7 or 8 CAT exams. See here: am-i-ready-to-take-the-gmat-88895-20.html for details. I did end up feeling burned out at the end. So I do not recommend studying over time frames longer than 3months. It mentally drains you, your significant other is going to be bugging you and you will definitely compromise on your social life.
Actual study materials for me were: OG12, OG Verbal, Kaplan Premier 2010 Live, MGMAT Number Properties and SC. Hard to pinpoint which was most useful. Kaplan really taught me the basics: How to tackle certain question types etc. It’s a must read early on – these are all things OG12 does NOT address. Once I had a basis, MGMAT’s Number Properties was gold! It teaches you approach some problems more strategically and makes you apply concepts rather than brute force math. In the final week I only did OG12 questions, as I wanted to practice only official material.
For quant: A technique I initially almost completely ignored was backsolving a problem. I think I felt like I was cheating (myself) by not deriving the direct answer myself, but by using the provided answers. Once I got over that notion I used it quite often and it worked well for me!
For Verbal: MGMAT SC was ok. It did not do as much for as other’s claim it did for them. I really believe good RC is key, in my personal opinion many RC questions are just like but on shorter passages. So if you can manage the long section you should be in an even better position to handle the short sections.
As for a lot of my progress along the way, see the above link.
May be just a final word for those that worry where they currently stand in their prep, in my case GMATprep was dead on in predicting my actual score:
GMATprep 1: Q49/V40 720
GMATprep2: Q47/V42 720
Real GMAT: Q48/V41 720 so in essence dead on.
Final final note: I never thought of the GMAT as test, I always thought of it as a challenging game. If you actually have fun with – I know it sounds ridiculous – it will go easier. A lot easier!
Had an 8am appointment and I have been dogsitting for some friends for the last 3 days. I thought it be good to distract myself a little bit on the final days. Well, indeed it was good. However, I only stayed at there house the first night as the mattress in their guest bedroom was horrible. So I had to get up at 5.30am this morning drive to their house, walk the doggies (3) for a good 20mins, take a shower, get ready and hit the road. Worked all fine, except for while walking the doggies I realized that I had forgotten to bring my passport along – a must have when you test outside of your home country. So after getting ready it was back to my house – luckily on the way to the test center – and finally to the test center. Got there about 7.30 and they were letting people wait outside until 7.40. Found out I was the only one taking the GMAT, everyone else was taking nursing exams (NCLEX or something like that). Finally, they opened, got a number, got processed, two last sips of water and ready set go.
AWA, yeah well whatever, got your average essay questions, fairly certain I did good. All the prep I used was chineeseburned’s guide and 4 or 5 CAT’s I took with the AWA. Took my break.
Early during quant I realized I was flying through the section and I would be ok spending a little more time on the more challenging questions. So I did that as needed. Felt good after quant! Took my break, little chocolate, some water and a restroom break and back again at the verbal. Here I had 4 RCs, 2 short ones 2 long ones. I had 2 SCs were boy the sentences were sentences from hell. They were testing the craziest parallelism stuff – never seen a question like that in my entire prep. No idea if I got those right or not. Had a hard time focusing on the last 3 verbal questions, I just wanted to know my score. Second last question was a Boldface and it was a difficult one, but I know I got it right. Felt really good then! Didn’t care if it was an actual or test question, just felt good to have beaten that question.
Exam over, click through all the bs, didn’t fill in a thing. Click report score and really like 15s wait or something. Saw the score, first impression: GREAT. Second, oh come one you could have scored higher in quant. Now three hours later, it’s back to great. Done with the beast!
Now in hindsight: I did not have enough time to finish all the questions in OG12, I am missing the last 40DS questions. Wish I had had the time – reason I say that, I think I saw some very similar question from the later part of the OG12 PS stuff on the actual exam. As for the total time I spent studying probably about 150h with like 7 or 8 CAT exams. See here: am-i-ready-to-take-the-gmat-88895-20.html for details. I did end up feeling burned out at the end. So I do not recommend studying over time frames longer than 3months. It mentally drains you, your significant other is going to be bugging you and you will definitely compromise on your social life.
Actual study materials for me were: OG12, OG Verbal, Kaplan Premier 2010 Live, MGMAT Number Properties and SC. Hard to pinpoint which was most useful. Kaplan really taught me the basics: How to tackle certain question types etc. It’s a must read early on – these are all things OG12 does NOT address. Once I had a basis, MGMAT’s Number Properties was gold! It teaches you approach some problems more strategically and makes you apply concepts rather than brute force math. In the final week I only did OG12 questions, as I wanted to practice only official material.
For quant: A technique I initially almost completely ignored was backsolving a problem. I think I felt like I was cheating (myself) by not deriving the direct answer myself, but by using the provided answers. Once I got over that notion I used it quite often and it worked well for me!
For Verbal: MGMAT SC was ok. It did not do as much for as other’s claim it did for them. I really believe good RC is key, in my personal opinion many RC questions are just like but on shorter passages. So if you can manage the long section you should be in an even better position to handle the short sections.
As for a lot of my progress along the way, see the above link.
May be just a final word for those that worry where they currently stand in their prep, in my case GMATprep was dead on in predicting my actual score:
GMATprep 1: Q49/V40 720
GMATprep2: Q47/V42 720
Real GMAT: Q48/V41 720 so in essence dead on.
Final final note: I never thought of the GMAT as test, I always thought of it as a challenging game. If you actually have fun with – I know it sounds ridiculous – it will go easier. A lot easier!
23 Feb 2010, 12:57
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Congrats man!! Great job.
