Hey everyone,
I took the GMAT 2 days ago and scored 740 (Q51, V39, IR 8 ). First of all I want to make it clear that I will not be using this for MBA admission but for PhD admissions. I have decided to give GMAT after a few attempts at GRE and I was never able cross the 320 mark. My quant was relatively strong and Verbal was very week , I simply couldn't get a hang of the GRE words and was always scoring between 315-320 but never crossed the 320 mark. My friends suggested me to give shot at GMAT and after reviewing the verbal format and question types , I was confident that I can do a better job in GMAT verbal in comparison to GRE verbal. Also I had two prep buddies who were travelling with me in the same boat and discussions with them helped me a lot in terms of focusing my effort and to keep the tempo high.
I wanted to see where I stand before starting my prep and took
GMAT Prep Exam 1 to gauge my self. I scored
710(Q50 , v35)(21st May). This gave some confidence , I can score well. As most of the mistakes in verbal were in SC , my friends suggested that I should focus on SC and try to improve my Verbal score.
After this I got busy with my work and couldn't focus much on prep. I figured that until I have a deadline set , I will not study hard. I scheduled my test for 5th August. I purchased the Manhattan SC Guide and enrolled myself in the
E-GMAT Verbal program. The
E-GMAT subscription gave me access to
GMAT club tests.
In the next two weeks , I started preparing from the Manhattan book and
E-GMAT material . I was spending around 4 hours a day on my prep. For quant I was just working on the
OG questions which were pretty easy(baring a few questions). On June 30th I decided to test my self again and took the
Manhattan GMAT Test which I got for free with the book. I scored
620(Q41 , V34) (2nd July). I was quite surprised with the result. I was under the impression that quant is my strong forte and this test result was an eye opener for me. I also made no real progress in terms of my Verbal score , most of my mistakes were still in SC. My advice for guys take
MGMAT test is not to panic if you score low , I realized that the quant questions are way more tough than the actual GMAT and the scoring algorithm also doesn't seem right.
I figured that it is important to keep practicing quant as well if I want to score well. From then on I started taking GMAT club quant CAT's every alternate day. I took a total of 16 GMAT club quant tests and scored 47 in 4 tests , 48 in 2 tests , 49 in 5 tests and 50 in 5 tests. These are the best quant questions you can practice and these tests are the only reason for my Q51. I constantly kept adding the questions I was doing wrong into a collection(its a really cool feature) and kept revisiting them to revise those concepts. Even on the day before my test I just revised these questions (in the collection). Along with these I was doing GMAT Prep Qustion Pack 1 questions.(QP1 has some really good medium and hard questions for quant).
For Verbal I kept practicing
OG and Verbal review questions starting with
OG 12 and from there on I kept looking for next questions added in subsequent editions. GMAT Club was really helpful in this regard. Only problem I was facing was that some questions don't have clear solutions in GMAT Club posts so I had to refer to the books again for clarifications. Working in an academic institution was handy as all the
OG books were available in the library.
Along with this preparation , I started taking GMAT Prep EP1 and EP2 tests every weekend. Below mentioned are the score for the same.
GMAT Prep Exam 2 : 730 (Q50 , V39) (16th July)
GMAT Prep Exam 3 : 700 (Q49 , V35)(22nd July)
GMAT Prep Exam 4 : 710 (Q49 , V38)(30th July) (I got only 3 mistakes in this test in quant and I was surprised to see 49)
GMAT Prep Exam 5 : 700 (Q50 , V33)(1st Aug)Final test
GMAT Prep Exam 6: 720(Q50 , V 38)(3rd Aug)With these results I was confident that I can score some where around 700 mark and wanted to cross that 700 mark coz if I dont , it will be similar to my GRE story. By the way I never practiced IR till my exam. I felt that if I one is good in CR and Quant , IR will not be a problem. On the day before test dday , I just looked up a template for AWA on GMAT Club and revised the quant questions from my mistakes pool. For verbal I downloaded SlingFox's SC , CR and RC notes and reviewed the same.
Test Day: Aug 5th. I opted for the order stating with Quant. I kept a good pace while solving quant but I was getting some very very easy questions (distributed through out the test) and those questions were making me nervous , I was not sure if those were experimental questions or if i screwed up my test and I am getting such questions. I finished Quant 2 minutes before time. Took a 4 minute break and started Verbal , all through out the test I was never confident. When I was giving mock test , I was very confident about my CR and RC answers but I the main exam the RC's were toughest I have ever solved and CR questions were also very confusing. SC's as usual I was not confident. When I finished the verbal section , I felt that I screwed it up badly. Another 4 minutes break and started IR section which was very easy and by the time I started my AWA , I felt exhausted. I was depressed to some extent about the Verbal section and didnt write the essay well(need to see how much I will score).
The moment I pressed submit on my AWA section , the unofficial score popped up and I couldn't believe my own eyes. 740 with 51 in Quant and 39 in Verbal and 8 in IR. I felt good , really good, mainly because of my failure to score well in GRE.
My advise for fellow test takers: Keep practicing and keep a log of every error you make. GMAt club stores all your responses and you can revisit them again. Maintain a list of learnings from your mistake and just make sure you don't ever repeat the same mistake.
Resources I used :
OG (finishing all
OG questions is a must to do well in verbal)
E-GMAT - For SC
Manhattan SC Guide
GMAT Prep Question Pack(Really helpful for Verbal)
CAT's and Mock Test:
GMAT Prep - 6 Tests
GMAT Club - Quant CAT's ( a must if you want to score 50/51 in quant)
In the end I would like to than the GMAT Club community for the resources provided.
PS: Sorry for such a long post