finished - 780 (q51 v45)

Question

well... i had huge head start with an undergraduate math degree... so my only concern about the quant part was how not to make stupid mistakes. well... given the score i probably did one or two, toward the end of the test.

on the other hand - i am no native english speaker... so the verbal part was nightmare. especially sentence correction.
i work full time and i was on business trip two weeks before the test... so had only one week to really study.

i studied almost 16 hour a day. did 5 full tests and any prep questions i could think of.

few tips:
- for all you perfectionists - do questions again and again, until you get it right. i solved almost 500 verbal questions in 4 days, then took 100 of them, and did them again to see how much i improved.
surprise surprise... it helps a lot !!!!!!

- kaplan 800 prep was the best in explaining stuff.
- the official guide verbal (with over 300 very good questions) was best in questions (variety, difficulty, accuracy).
- kaplan CATs where nice to learn to pace myself. found 2 mitakes in the math sections. completely unreliable in terms of score.
- princeton review. quite useless. at least one error in math that i found (but i generally skipped 90% of math questions).
- official gmat prep CAT. very good, although i performed much better on test day.

will be happy to answer questions if you have some...

good luck to us all...

amit.

trivikram · Answer

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cute_smiley · Answer

Wow congrats!!!!!! Good job!!!!!

I'm a foreigner also and eglish isn't my native language and i'm strong in math but verbal part is the most difficult for me so i can imagine how difficult was that.

uvs_mba · Answer

Damn!!!! 780 in one week :shock:

Well Congratulations!!!! Since you are not a native english speaker, how was your CR? Can you please offer some CR tips as I suck at those. Thanks a lot and good luck for the apps. :-D

AK47 · Answer

excellent suff.
u were able to put in so much in last few days speaks volume about ur efforts.u made the best use of ur time.
for all non native speakers of english,please give some tips.

cheers.

hobbit · Answer

the general problem i had with CR and RC was timing. it took me ages to read the questions... so the first challenge was to pace myself.
at the end i was olving CR at about 2 mins/question or slightly less, spent about 3 mins reading each RC passage, and balance this long times by solving SC quite fast (about 1-1.25min/q).

once i found the timing the rest was less difficult. critical reaoning is after all critical reasoning... it is all about logic, not something which is language specific. 
i never used "cracking methods" found in the prep books. jut thought about the matter logically.
however, the one concept that did help me from prep books was the concept of "scope". identifying scope of questions/pasages helped me rule out options quite fast, saving some reading. usually, after reading, and identifying the correct scope i left with only 2 options.

having said all that - find your own ways... critically try the methods offered in books, but listen to your mind and intuition to find what work for you best. some of the methods suggested in books (especially in math) or totally crap, but some can be the seed for your own peronal cracking method...

good luck.

uvs_mba · Answer

I agree with you, I am having issues with timing as well with CR and RC. And yes my main problem is with the scope, I can usually come down to two choices. I guess I need to read the OG explanations again. I sometimes miss some key words in the CR passage and I end up selecting the wrong answer

But thanks for the tips.

rhyme · Answer

Interesting how he got a 780 with 1 week of study but reported he got a 770 on july 9th.

Calling him out on this cause I'm tired of people lying.

kidderek · Answer

Who knows whether hobbit ever scored a 780 or 770 or a 520 for that matter. I just give more credence to people who are more than 'interns.'

Hey rhyme . . . how about a trophy for some of us more recent 700+ scorers?

jayy178 · Answer

holy cow..780 with one full week of studying. thats pretty insane if its true.

Fig · Answer

Uhmmm.... I hoped that his post in this section would be forgetten and that an end to this story would be given

To put an image on the situation, I think that this guy is already running completly nude in the middle of the streets of the big town of GMATClub, and all are looking at him.... And now, what we want more than this?

I think the message to him is passed.... As well, I believe that the purpose of this forum is not to make exemple of not good people but rather to..... help each other

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finished - 780 (q51 v45)

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