Hi All, After reading hundreds of debriefs, the time has come for me to post my own. Take out 5-10 mins.. it’s going to be a loooooong one!! After working for 8yrs in IT industry, I came to my senses and planned to prepare for GMAT in month of September 2012. Immediately did my favorite thing on net - 'googling' and landed here on GMAT club. Little did i know that I would get addicted to this forum After initial research, started gathering prep materials and luckily in the same week GMAT Club featured 'veritas prep contest', very unusually and uniquely I was winner on same day in both quant and verbal section. Anyway, in short my search for prep material ended as I got lucky! I got one full veritas prep online course and the books (including 15 practice tests). I thought I am on right track! Now the time was to find out where did I stand- Like anyone else- and as suggested by everyone on internet, I took first GMAT prep on sept 22nd and scored 690. Again, I thought I am on right track! I decided to take GMAT exactly after 2 months from the day. 8 weeks to go - Classes started and so did usual learning concept/practice cycle. Also, started doing one practice test every other week and results? Din’t see any improvement in verbal. My practice test scores (kaplan/mgmat/vertias/pearson review- free ones) hovered around 700 with q49/50 and v in 30s. One month had passed and no improvement, desperate enough I sought for help and posted my query on GMAT Club. Next thing -I was advised to focus only on my weak area by experts. I did so. 4-5 weeks to go - Arranged for an old copy of mgmat SC (4th ed) from a friend and practiced only verbal. The only quant practice I did in next 2 weeks was the questions I solved on gmatclub. Any other time - verbal! This time I scored a 730 on veritas prep practice test with q51 and v44. I was overjoyed and as you must have guessed by now, thought that I was on right track! 2-3 weeks to go -Practiced some quants and verbal for next 1 week from OG was getting 85-95% in different areas. 10 days to go- thanks to some really twisted questions posted without OAs by some members, my confidence was shaken and I looked for some more help in SC. Thanks to BB, I registered for SC course on e-gmat. Excellent course. If only I had a time machine and I could go back 2 months in time, I would have joined e-gmat SC course on day 1 of my preparation. However since I did not enough time to complete the course, quickly went through all the videos one by one, but this left me with no time for practice. Meanwhile, 7 days before the planned date I booked the slot. Unfortunately, the only slot available was morning 9 am. I am NOT a morning person. NOT AT ALL. Couldn’t do much though, booked the slot on "Black Friday' 2 days to go - Took GMAT prep and scored 760 (q50,v42). This time I 'believed' I am on right track. 1 day to go - went to sleep at 11.30 pm. couldnt sleep. 12.30 am- still awake. 2:30 am- no luck yet...... 4.30 am - probably anxiety got better of me- no sleep yet. Frustration started building up. Probably slept for 2 hrs before waking up again at 7 am. Rushed to test center, which was next building to my work place and i was hoping not to bump into any of my work colleague to avoid any sort of Q&A session. AWA- Again got lucky - got a topic I had once seen on one of my Veritas prep CAT. Since, I had analyzed the argument earlier, ripped it apart. Hoping to get a 5+. IR question 1- GI question. Read once- heavy head dint help much. Read twice, shook my head and read a third time to solve it. By the time, I completed first two questions I had already taken up 10 mins. Bad start!! Ended up completing only 10 questions. However, I hope I did well on the ones I attempted. Time could answer how well I did though Break 1: Took a short break. Splashed water on my face to 'wake myself up'. Came back and though I still had 3 mins left into the break proctor started the clock for quant. Recovering from IR shock, I took extra effort to pace myself and din’t bother to look at time till last question. I had a shocking 18 mins remaining when I completed my quant. To pace verbal properly drew a table on scratchpad and took rest part of entire 18 mins for clicking 'next' and basically tried to spend those 18 mins relaxing. Break 2: Repeated exactly same thing in washroom and came back to my seat. In the meanwhile, proctor had removed my scratch book and kept a new one. frustrated, I asked her to return my previous scratch book. She gave me a strange look and returned my old scratch book. Started verbal as per my pacing table, however questions started getting tougher after 25 and soon were out of my league -thanks to my shaky verbal preparedness. Found it difficult to solve each of those in less than 2 mins. Anyway- I knew I had to complete the section so rushed through some questions and did other patiently. Completed the section just 15sec before the scheduled time. Formalities and then view score screen (I had this nightmare that on this screen I'll fail to report my score or by mistake will click on cancel my score ) Anyway, i did nothing of that kinds and there was my score -720 (q49, v38). Derailed, I was not on the track anymore! I thought I could have done better. At least fell short by 30 points. Here are few thoughts, on what NOT to do: 1. Don’t get hung up on a date. Take test on a later date if there is no urgency and if u don’t feel fully prepared. 2. Don’t ever ever ever take a morning slot if you are not a morning person. 3. Don’t practice verbal from unauthenticated sources and avoid questions posted without OA and OE - highly recommended!! 4. Don’t forget to pace yourself for each section, even if you know that you can complete in time. You don’t want to have extra time left at the end. Recommended books: MGMAT SC and number properties, e-gmat SC course. Veritas prep Statistic and combinatorics(difficulty level-only as much as you can get on GMAT). for other areas any book would do. Now contemplating on whether I should retake or should try my luck with this score. Will keep updated. Last but not the least, a BIG thanks to BB for creating this forum and for helping me throughout the GMAT journey. I hope and I am sure GMAT club will be instrumental in getting me to my dream school. Thanks, Vips

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Black friday debrief! (720, q49,v38)

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Archit143

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25 Nov 2012, 02:44

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Vipps

After reading your explanations on various questions, i feel that 720 is too less for you... but yes it doesnt matter with the kind of profile.
Best of luck for your application.... I am planning to enroll with egmat SC

Best of luck for your future

gmatbull

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25 Nov 2012, 04:57

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I never knew you've already gone for the test..

But when i saw "Black Friday", I just couldn't reckon what the sad event was until i saw 720!

By all estimation, you have been a source of inspiration to many and a 720 is equally a great score.
However, i know you deserve more than that.

Nonetheless, congratulations and wishing you all the best in you applications.

roygush

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25 Nov 2012, 05:46

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nelz007

Process of elimination most answer choices can be eliminated cos they are irrelevant.

well this is always true for 3 out of 5.
still need to get more edge when picking between the last 2.
thanks.

anon1

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25 Nov 2012, 17:32

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VIPS you are the man. I always get excited when you post on one of my posts because I know it will be high quality. Will you continue to post on the forums or will you check out now that you have the score?

720 in my opinion is incredible and is the average for all the top schools in the world. congratulations

I took a GMATPrep practice today and got

IR-8
Q-42 59%
V-38 83%
Total: 650 79%

I am sweating because I really want to apply this year.

I see that you recommend E-gmat, I went to their site and it says it is for non-native test-takers, I'm a native english speaker, should I look elsewhere ?

Although my Quant is the weaker part of my game, I feel like Q is the key to 700+ since verbal comes easier to me than Math.... but not sure.

Vips0000

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25 Nov 2012, 19:37

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Archit143

gmatbull

I never knew you've already gone for the test..
But when i saw "Black Friday", I just couldn't reckon what the sad event was until i saw 720!
By all estimation, you have been a source of inspiration to many and a 720 is equally a great score.
However, i know you deserve more than that.
Nonetheless, congratulations and wishing you all the best in you applications.

Thank you so much for your kind words. I know, I should have done better to get more than 720 but unfortunately I cant even retake atleast for a month now.
I am planning to apply to a few selected schools in round 2 with this score and then retake early next year if nothing works out.. atleast will have a better gmat score to show as a re-applicant. :-P

Vips0000

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25 Nov 2012, 19:48

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anon1

Thank you so much for such praise, which i'm surely not worth (not anymore for sure after 720 :-D

)
I saw from your posts that you've come a long way in your gmat preparation and the way you are putting effort, u'll surely soon cross the 700 mark.

Being a native grammar, idioms and specially identifying illogical meaning should come natural to you. So probabaly you dont need a separate course in verbal (Lucky to be born as native speaker eh? ;-)

), but if you are troubled by meaning based questions then you may try this SC course. However, as you already know, and moreover since you are planning to apply this year, you can improve in quants to maintain 80/80 split.

I've gained a lot from GC and would continue to be here.. I'm still too far from getting into a school :-D

Do pm me incase you need any help..

igloo

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25 Nov 2012, 23:26

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Vips,

Hearty congrats bud. Good to know that someone from the same boat (Yes, I won the new veritasPrep course too on the last day

thanks to gmatclub contest ) slashed the beast. Hmm in fact I too initially thought of booking a date on Nov 23(Black Friday) but changed my plans to schedule the test by a month or two. Given the quality of your posts here, it is not surprising to see the score you achieved !

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26 Nov 2012, 04:07

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MacFauz

jumsumtak

MacFauz

If anyone can clear this up for me.... If I have selected the answer choice for my last question and the timer runs out before I click next.. Will the question count as answered??...

Unfortunately it will not be counted as answered. Only your AWA are recorded even if you run out of time and dont press the next button.

Well.. That's a shame.. Happened to me with the last question.. Did not notice the timer and was verifying the answer before the time ran out.

I'm sorry. Seems, I was misinformed!

Even if you select the last answer and don' t confirm it, it seems it is counted.
last-question-unconfirmed-142881.html

Apologize for the confusion.

stoy4o

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26 Nov 2012, 05:44

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@Vips0000: Congratulations, V! Great score (I'm jealous)

I've been prepping for a while now and have been following your posts, comments and methods of reasoning and they are inspiring, indeed... so thank you for your contribution on the forums. Although your potential shows to be much higher, given the stress level and anxiety as others pointed out you've overachieved. Plus, I think that your 8yrs of professional experience a good substitute for the lack of 20-30 additional points. That's just my personal opinion, though.

You mentioned you had 18 minutes to spare after zipping through the quant section. Do you mind sharing the types of questions, their patterns and level of difficulty that you encountered?

What about verbal: RC - number and length of passages; SC - you said one of your weaknesses was sentence meaning. Were the majority of questions of those type? I'm sure you aced the RC part but were questions straight forward or quite twisted?

Sorry for the variety of questions but this is all in my head now

Vips0000

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28 Nov 2012, 06:49

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igloo

Vips,

Hearty congrats bud. Good to know that someone from the same boat (Yes, I won the new veritasPrep course too on the last day

Thanks a ton bro.. thats good.. take ur time.. and give it ur best shot! Good luck

Vips0000

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28 Nov 2012, 06:59

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stoy4o

@Vips0000: Congratulations, V! Great score (I'm jealous)

Thanks Stoy4o.
Are you sure that I've overachieved :shock:

I rather felt i fell short by 30 points :roll:

As for as quant is concerned, the questions were similar to ones in gmatprep. It felt like its another pratice test. a few tricky ones and mostly ok types. I got 4 RCs; 2 medium lenght average difficulty, 1 very long but average difficulty and last 1 medium length but overtly complex. (biology). SC questions were ok- with few meaning based.. It was 4th RC that derailed me around 35th question.

stoy4o

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28 Nov 2012, 17:46

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Thanks for the insight, V. Good luck with the application(s) now! ... but don't forget us

vomhorizon

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29 Nov 2012, 03:07

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Congrats on an awesome score. I have a couple of questions:

* How long did it take you to finish the E-GMAT SC course? I am interested in taking it, but do not know when to do so. Some say its better to take it about a month before the exam so that the once you finish it and practice enough you can hit the exam. Others recommend taking it early in prep.

* What would you recommend for Quant ? I am consistently hitting 42-44 and have consulted mainly Manhattan strategy guides, OG and a few Veritas Books ( DS, Adv word problems)..

Vips0000

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29 Nov 2012, 03:16

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vomhorizon

if you've solid foundation in SC then probably you dont need it. But if its shaky then u can consider taking this. That said, I'd suggest taking it atleast 1 month before the due date for sufficient time to practice. Specially because the strategy tought in this course would slow u down a bit and probably with sufficient practice one can imrove on pacing as well while using their strategy.

For quants, I think MGMAT number properties and Veritas combinatorics are awesome books. For Geometry veritas + mgmat both needs to be see together. But again most important point here is - to find out the pain area and then see which guide could help u best.

vomhorizon

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29 Nov 2012, 03:24

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Quote:

For quants, I think MGMAT number properties and Veritas combinatorics are awesome books. For Geometry veritas + mgmat both needs to be see together. But again most important point here is - to find out the pain area and then see which guide could help u best.

Thanks, I did not find most the SC's challenging in the OG (Greater than 80% accuracy in the last 50). I studied about a couple of months for the GMAT (basically read the MGMAT SC once + OG, Power Prep LSAT LR + OG and no RC material) and scored in the 75th percentile (V) on my first GMAT prep. I had devoted around 70% of my prep time to quant which i hadnt touched for a decade (started from the real bottom) .I still feel that in order to push myself beyond 40 in Verbal i might need the E-Gmat course which comes highly recommended from almost all that have taken it. CR comes naturally to me and RC is also OK..

Did you try the advances Problem banks (Online) that one gets with the purchase of each MGMAT strategy guide? I just took their word problem set, and the 700-800 questions were BRUTAL :-(

, did you find their questions (in the banks) and CAT's tougher than the actual GMAT questions?

Sachin9

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29 Nov 2012, 07:47

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Hey Vipps, congrats

How much was your first score on a mock before starting the preparation?

Vips0000

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30 Nov 2012, 02:45

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Sachin9

Hey Vipps, congrats

How much was your first score on a mock before starting the preparation?

Ha ha.. thats the problem with long debriefs.. people tend to skip it ;-)

Just kidding..
My first mock score was 690 on gmatprep; taken on 22nd sep -exactly 2 months before the gmat.

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