finally 720

Question

well, just wanted to tell all the gmatclub members about my gmat experience..)))

well, the result of the test taken today- 720 (Q46, V42, 96%). this is the first time i took the test, and i guess overall i am quite happy about the result.

as for the strategy, it took me almost 6 month to prepare, but given that i could spend no more than 2 hours a day after work which is very demanding, i guess this is understandable. coming after work i was usually very tired and the progress on the preparation was rather small..

i took diagnostic kaplan test and scored 540 in the very beginning..so first of all i did all the OG, then did kaplan book.

after this i started doing 800 score tests - it was very helpful in terms of 
keeping the pace with the tests.. after this i started doing practice kaplan problems.. and also was constantly watching the postings on this website, which i found a limitless source of information. Although i did not post many postings, I constantly read what the others were posting. In addition to this, i downloaded these 1000 PS, DS SC and CR questions from the website..

did about 400 in each section.. this helped a lot- initially i had a lot of problems with CR, but after doing 400 problems it became a piece of cake! the same for SC.

problem solving turned out just a matter of practice.. after reading the 
stickies in probabilities and combinatorics section, practicing of the similar problems i was pretty much confident about these areas..

finally, my biggest problem was DS.. i struggled a lot with it..and i guess this is the only reason i got only 80% on my quant..

anyway, i decided to take 2 weeks off before the tests so i could prepare and spent about 12-16 hrs a day doing full time tests..overall i would not recommend anyway such strategy since i almost run myself into a complete exhaustion..


first i did 4 princeton tests (older verion) scored from 640-735 on them.. 
then turned on to kaplan tests..
scored about 540 on each of the 4 of these tests..

i was very freaked and was very frustrated.. not only i could not keep the pace and did not have enough time on the tests, I was just killed by the problems in kaplan tests, especially DS.

then i redid some of the DS and PS problems from respective sections in the OG, thouroughly and understanding how exactly and why one gets the right answer.
then did 4 princeton tests from the most recent version. scored about 650-730 on them.. 

and a day before the test i toook one powerprep test and scored 730 on it. Found it much easier than kaplan and as it turned out more closely to the level of the actual test.

as for the actual test- 
Q section was pretty tough I would guess, some probabilities and combinatorics questions surfaced but they were simpler than any of these questions discussed on the forum.. i am sure if you read the sticky from these sections, and some practicing you will be fine.

problem solving included the usual suspects - work problems, gross profits, %-ages, some algebra, etc. only one geometry problem
DS- well, a lot of inequalities with absolute values- exactly my weakest area.

anyway, i took a quick break after quant section and started verbal.
For me, it wasnt a problem at all, SC pretty much involved tenses, parallel structures and some idoms.. 
the texts and SC are also have been pretty ok to me- at least i was pretty much sure and did "educated guessing" only a couple of times..

anyway.. i guess doing my full time tests is a must from my point of view. this builds the stamina and helps you stay focused.. also i would like to thank all the people at this website - for postings, stickies and other valuable info i gained from it.


Cheers, and good luck to all the MBA aspiring students.


bryan_al01

PS. sorry for a messy email, but i guess i will need to get some tests and celebrare a bit today - the last 6 months have been very difficult for me.

PPS. I would be glad to answer any questions if any one you have any. )))

sperumba · Answer

Wow .. congratulations on a great score...

good luck with your apps.

vivek123 · Answer

Hey congrats :-D

Very good score, I'm happy that you didn't mention anything about much talked 'erasable boards'

Thanks for sharing the experience! Good luck with apps. Cheers

sperumba · Answer

I was wondering about the erasable board too.. 

how did you find them .. where they very similar to laminated paper?

how easy was it to write on them..

bryan_al01 · Answer

yeah, the test center here, in Moscow, was VUE or whatever it's called .. 
they did all this stuff with fingerprints and camera..
the test center was ok, but for some reason ac was blowing out of any proportion and by the time i finished i got completely frozen..
I mentioned this to administrator afterwards and she told me that i should have simply raised the hand and told her...oh well..

yes, they gave me these erasable boards and markers..the boards are bigger than a4 format and double-sided.. marker that i got was good enough and wrote quite legibly on the board.. of course i would preferred the usual scratch paper to the erasable board, but the latter one worked just fine for me..

the only thing that slightly bothered me was that they gave you 2 of these boards at the time and once you run out of space you need to raise the hand and wait until they bring it to you- so i guess to save time, just raise a hand in advance


good luck with the test

andy_gr8 · Answer

nice score dude... coul you mention your preparation strategies for rc and sc and from wht sources u prepared

sperumba · Answer

thanks a lot that was very helpful.

bryan_al01 · Answer

well, for RC the best strategy that worked for me was read the question (but not the answers), then read 1st para, then read the 1st and the last sentence in each para to get into idea. and if it would be a detail question i would simply go straight to the para and try to figure it out reading that sentence and the ones just before and after.

for SC, even though english is a second-language for me, that part was really the easiest for me on the whole test. i simply did OG, kept the error log, printed out the list of idioms i downloaded from either this site or somewhere else and was constantly reviewing them..

for SC the most important thing is to find at least one error on one of the choices, no matter how good it sounds. if you can spot the smallest mistake, eliminate the choice and move on.. so for me it was the pretty much the process of elimination, unless of course it was an idiom question and i simply new the idiom expression.

also there were a lot of parallel construction questions, but for these i did a lot of practice- downloaded 1000SC questions from this web-site and did like 400 of them, with a thourough understanding how once gets the right answer.

hope this helps

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finally 720

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