From a 650 to a 710

Hi,

I've only posted on GMATClub less than 5 times, but decided to post my experience here to encourage others to beat the GMAT. When I first took the GMAT last year in November, I scored a 650. I realized that I needed a higher score to be competitive to the top schools and so begun the journey to the GMAT again.

I think the biggest difference between my first and recent preparations was using GMATClub and 1000SC at least 4 times a week, I would sit down to do some SC (25 questions) and for every question that I got wrong, I would search for the answer on GMATClub. It's really easy with the Search function - just search for a string of text from the question, chances are that somebody else has already asked about the question and explanations are available. I only managed to complete 350 questions from the 1000SC bank.

I also realized that my verbal improved when I caught myself running Sentence Correction procedures in my head during conversations with other people - correcting my own mistakes and their mistakes in my mind. I think part of the key to improving Verbal is to internalize the language as much as possible.

Other than that, I didn't touch much on Quant - just doing the OG again and reading the Manhattan GMAT Quant collection. Nothing exceptionally spectacular there except that I realized that I should perfect my basics. Manhattan GMAT has a pretty good run down on the basics. However, I'm thankful that my score didn't drop and maintained itself at Q48 (86%).

So, today I took the GMAT. The Quant ride was hard from the start and got even harder in the middle, however, easy questions started to pop up towards then end which made me realize that I had probably screwed up somewhere and wasn't going to score too high. Verbal was ok, I guess a lot of it was because I've conditioned myself by doing verbal so regularly that it felt like a practice session. So that was really good, some of the RC was really long winded and technical, so I figured that chances were I was doing something right.

To cap it all, I scored a 710 (Q48 V40). And honestly, I have to say, THANK YOU GMATCLUB for improving my Verbal. I don't know what I would have done without being able to check for explanations on GMATClub.

WHOA! I'M DONE WITH THE GMAT!

P/s have a good breakfast - I had 2 hardboiled eggs and a muesli bar. Something light yet filling, my breakfast was able to sustain me throughout the morning. I had another muesli bar during the 10 minute break.

p/p/s I just realized that my 710 is just 10 short of my target 720. Haha. Sweet.