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Whether you are just beginning your MBA journey or fine-tuning your path to a 700+ score, GMAT Day is designed to give you a competitive edge.
02 Mar 2011, 07:34
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Hi everybody, wrote my GMAT on February 15th and just wanted to share my experience with everybody here, I don't think I could have done it without the help of this forum! I scored a 700 (Q44 V40) and so I'm absolutely ecstatic and would really like to thank the contributors here and on other forums as well! Also to note I did minimal prep for verbal (learned kaplan strategies, did second harder half of the official questions) so this post is pretty much all about quant.
First off, I've been studying Law for 4 years, haven't touched any math in about 5 years (I was good in math in high school and did the courses a year early). I knew quant was going to be my big struggle so I focused on it for the most part. I started out by doing about half of the official guide PS questions and I was eager to do a practice test. I like to think I'm pretty smart so I didn't do any other prep (no DS, no verbal). Scored 540 (Q31 V35), so I was pretty disappointed, at the time I saw the GMAT as some kind of aptitude test you didn't really have to prepare for. My biggest problem was timing, ended up guessing about 7 in a row at the end! In hindsight this may have motivated me to study harder, who knows.
I did a bit of research and figured that if I was going to meet my goal of 680 I would have to do 120 hours of prep, I had a month to go. I found an article by Dana Jinaru on beat the gmat (sorry can't link) about preparing in one month and based my plan around that, with a heavier focus on quant.
The rest of this post I'll split into things I did right, things I did wrong, and things I did but I'm not sure about!
Ok, jesus that is long, hope people can be bothered to read it all! Let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. I hope I can help other people who are trying to cram their GMAT prep into a short period of time.
First off, I've been studying Law for 4 years, haven't touched any math in about 5 years (I was good in math in high school and did the courses a year early). I knew quant was going to be my big struggle so I focused on it for the most part. I started out by doing about half of the official guide PS questions and I was eager to do a practice test. I like to think I'm pretty smart so I didn't do any other prep (no DS, no verbal). Scored 540 (Q31 V35), so I was pretty disappointed, at the time I saw the GMAT as some kind of aptitude test you didn't really have to prepare for. My biggest problem was timing, ended up guessing about 7 in a row at the end! In hindsight this may have motivated me to study harder, who knows.
I did a bit of research and figured that if I was going to meet my goal of 680 I would have to do 120 hours of prep, I had a month to go. I found an article by Dana Jinaru on beat the gmat (sorry can't link) about preparing in one month and based my plan around that, with a heavier focus on quant.
The rest of this post I'll split into things I did right, things I did wrong, and things I did but I'm not sure about!
Things I Did Right:
- One of the first things I did was to take a sheet of paper and draw 24 large circles. Each circle represented a 5-hour period of time, so 120 hours in total. Being able to visualize how much prep I had done, how much I had left to do was really helpful in planning my time. It also helped me set goals.
- The official guide was my best tool, and I also bought the quant review guide (2nd edition).
- I timed EVERY SINGLE practice question I did from the beginning, I can't stress how important this is. Especially for the quant stuff. I would typically do questions in blocks of 10 and use the split timer on my blackberry to see how much time I spent on individual questions.
- I did not keep as detailed an error log as some other people, but I marked all questions that I got wrong or where I took too much time and went over them in excruciating detail.
- Careless errors were a HUGE problem for me. My mental arithmetic has always been weak, on the test day I was still adding up 8's adn 7's because I didn't know my times tables - LOL. I later figured out that the number of careless errors I made was almost entirely based on my frame of mind. If I was not calm and collected I would typically make between 7-10 careless quant errors. That's A LOT and they were typically at the beginning and/or in long strings. More on how I dealt with this later.
- Kaplan GMAT Premier was very helpful with regards to question strategies.
- Kaplan and Manhattan verbal practice questions are horrendous in my opinion, and often wrong. I preferred Manhattan's quant, however, as Kaplan's was simply time-consuming.
- Near the end my study was based entirely on practice tests. I did 3 Kaplan (580, 670, 630) 2 Manhattan (680 Q46 V36; 670 Q43 V38). I then moved onto the GMATprep tests, I did a tonne of these (680, 630, 700, 700) with scores all over the place, especially in quant. Four days before test day I got a 630 on one of the tests, I was extremely discouraged, but this may have motivated me, my final two practice tests I scored 700 both times.
- After each practice test I googled almost every single quant question, usually ending up on the manhattan forum. This was probably the best thing I did and it really helped me to be able to look at questions and assess their type and difficulty, and also to learn innovative solutions. Timing was my biggest concern with quant and so I needed to know when to "bail out" of questions.
- After looking at so much of the official material I started to really get a feel for the questions. This was most evident with DS where I found little variation in the question types I had difficulty with. By the end I was able to guess DS questions with almost 80% accuracy and this saved me so much time. Knowing that I was a good guesser also helped me feel confident about bailing on questions and making a guess.
- One strange thing I did (not sure if anybody else does this) is to PURPOSEFULLY get GMATPrep questions wrong which I had previously seen and got incorrect. I did this to make the practice tests more 'realistic'. I believe this is one of the reasons my actual score was not lower than my practice tests.
- On test day I got a taxi out, chatted to the driver the entire time. I was extremely nervous so it was a relief to have someone to distract me. When I arrived at the location I found a quiet area and talked to myself out loud, telling myself that I could get a 700 and that I'd done it before (700 was my new goal). I also talked to myself about previous academic successes. Probably the most important thing I told myself in my psycho-rant was that I was looking forward to writing the GMAT. Not because I would be finished with it but because I was curious to see the questions, and excited to see my final score, whatever it might be. I think this whole test-day process was the best thing I did, I also repeated it during my breaks, focusing on the positives of the previous section.
Things I Did Wrong
- I should have given myself more than a month to prepare!
- I thought the GMAT was a some type of IQ test you could not prepare for. WRONG. If you don't have any specific weaknesses in quant or verbal it is ALL ABOUT PREP, especially if you have strong verbal, the quant is just a matter of learning/practice.
- Near the end I became completely obsessed with estimating my score. I can't tell you how many different forum posts I read about people's practice and actual scores, I even compiled my own database and made a spreadsheet to estimate my own score. This was a complete waste of time.
- I did about half the official guide material before learning the Kaplan techniques for questions (backsolving, picking numbers, DS). I wish I had read these strategies first as I had already learned bad habits and I found it difficult to integrate these strategies into my techniques. Even on test day I did not effectively use these effective strategies.
- I bought the Kaplan 800 book, biggest waste of money ever. The questions are so easy that I solved most of the quant ones in my head while lying in bed one night.
- I borrowed the Manhattan quant strategy guides from a friend. I wish I had spent more time addressing my weak areas and studying these books, I instead opted to do more practice tests and obsess over estimating my score.
- I should have done more research before I started studying. I did not have anybody close to me who recently wrote the GMAT (and did well) and I feel like I only really came to know the ins and outs of GMAT preparation too close to the end.
- I should have done more verbal prep. Although my verbal score was 40(89%) it improved every single day and almost every single practice test up until the actual one.
Things I'm Not Sure About
- I often started a practice test and only did the quant section.
- I often did a practice test in the morning, then two quant sections or even another practice test later.
- Only did one practice test along with an AWA, it was the only one I wrote and I didn't take it that seriously. Scored a 5.5 on test day. I'm a law student so I wasn't too worried, I had expected to get a 6.
- I did a tonne of prep the day before, did a practice test and a half. Stopped working at 6 though and took the evening off. I know people say to take the day before off but I don't really believe that and I felt like I still could improve so much.
Ok, jesus that is long, hope people can be bothered to read it all! Let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. I hope I can help other people who are trying to cram their GMAT prep into a short period of time.
02 Mar 2011, 07:55
Kudos
Bookmarks
Nice improvement man 
Congrats on breaching the 700 barrier!
Your score is rather interesting
I took the test on 26th Feb this year and I got a total of 710 with 40 in verbal and 48 in quant.
I find it rather amusing to see that there's a 4 point difference in the Quant raw score for 700 and 710! :D
Also... In my first attempt I scored a total of 650 with 44 on quant and 37 in verbal!
So the 3 point increase in your verbal score propelled you from 650 to 700! :D
Congrats on breaching the 700 barrier!
Your score is rather interesting
I took the test on 26th Feb this year and I got a total of 710 with 40 in verbal and 48 in quant.
I find it rather amusing to see that there's a 4 point difference in the Quant raw score for 700 and 710! :D
Also... In my first attempt I scored a total of 650 with 44 on quant and 37 in verbal!
So the 3 point increase in your verbal score propelled you from 650 to 700! :D
02 Mar 2011, 08:04
Kudos
Bookmarks
I also thought it was interesting, when I saw my 44/40 split on the screen I did not expect to see a 700 below it! According to a any analysis of what quant and verbal scores result in a 700, I lucked out! (not complaining though!)
