Hi everyone
I gave my Gmat on the 29th of March and scored 760 (Q50(93%)V42 (95%)) and AWA 5.0.
Is 5.0 in AWA a bad score?? It says 56%.
Will certainly write my debrief in a few days.
The debrief
Background - I have completed my Btech in 2010 from UDCT{Institute of Chemical Technology} (Mumbai) in May 2010, and despite having a job I came back to join my father in the family Business.
It all started during the time I was preparing for CAT and went to an MBA fair in Mumbai.After visiting the fair I decided to go for an MBA only after gaining some work experience.
In September 2010, I bought Barron's while going through a local bookstore. I spent more than a month on the book only to realize that I am just wasting my time.
Two months passed and I finally decided to seriously study for the exam but could not give it my best shot due to some unavoidable circumstances.
It was January 2011,when I began studying for the GMAT and many a times I would get stuck solving the 12th edition
OG, the only book I had.
On 27th January i came across GMAT CLUB and I can definitely say it made the difference as now I had access to the toughest of questions and answers to my queries (already answered).
I used a lot of books.
First, 10th edition, 11th edition and 12th edition of the official guides
Quant review second edition and Verbal review 2nd edition.
Quant
1) Nova's Gmat math prep
2) Nova's Gmat data sufficiency (for practice only)
3) Kaplan 800
4) Bunuel's collection of questions - I would search and solve all of them maintain error logs, the 700+ questions were a great help. Thank you so much.
5)
Gmat club testsVerbal
1) Manhattan CR ( I did not like the method)
2) Manhattan SC
3) Manhattan RC
4) PowerScore CR Bible
5) Aristotle SC grail
6) Aristotle RC 99
7) The Official LSAT Superprep
8) 1000 SC, solved 700 of them
after going through all of the above, I was still unhappy with my verbal performance so I took the
E-Gmat sentence correction course.
9)
Gmat club testsAWA
I was scared of the AWA section so I got the Arco's Answers to real gmat questions.
Chineseburned notes also helped.
My scores on the Practice tests were as follows:-
GMAT Prep 1 - 680
7/2/11MGMAT 1 -730 (Q51V38)
10/2/11MGMAT 2 - 680 (Q47V36)
16/2/11MGMAT 3 - 690 (Q49V35)
22/2/11MGMAT 4 - 670 (Q45V36)
At this point I actually thought of quitting as there was no improvement even after studying so much. Thank God I did not. No tests for a while and focused only on my weak areas. This was the time when i took the E - GMAT course.
11/3/11MGAMT 5 - 700 (Q51V35) - THIS MADE ME FEEL GOOD
14/3/11PRINCETON FREE TEST - 720 (Q50V40)
17/3/11VERITAS FREE TEST - 730 (Q51V44)
21/3/11KNEWTON FREE TEST - 690 (Q49V33)
22/3/11KAPLAN FREE TEST - There was some problem with the score got a reply from people at Kaplan as well. The test did not register all of my Quant responses but Verbal score was 42
23/3/11MGMAT 6 - 770 (Q51V44)
24/3/11GMAT PREP TEST 2 - 710 (Q50V35) - - was taken aback by my verbal score so now focused only on my verbal.
25/3/11GMAT PREP TEST 1 RETEST - 770 (Q50V44)
26th. 27th and 28th I went through all my mistakes.
In all the above tests i tried my best to simulate the test experience. I wrote essays and took exactly 8 mins breaks.
During the tests, I utilized the breaks as much as I could. During each break, I drank Gatorade, ate a chocolate and washed my face.
If anyone is interested in buying the books,I have posted in buy/sell forum.