GMAT debrief - 770 Q51(96) V42(96) IR 8

Hi all,

Now that I am done with GMAT its time to share my experience for the benefit of others. I am an Indian male working in the US in the medical devices field.

I started GMAT prep a couple of months back. I gave a GMAT prep mock cold without any prep to gauge my level and got 730 which wasn't too surprising as I had a 331 GRE without much prep and had seen that its equivalence is about 740. Since I had given the test very casually even checking Facebook a couple of times in middle of the test, so I thought the score was fine.

I started preparing with Magoosh and did mostly verbal from there. Didn't remember most of the terms they used such as adverbial clause and stuff. After completing about 70 percent of Magoosh Verbal I started reading Manhattan SC book and after going through it once started solving OG. In the meantime I was giving GMAT prep every week.

Since I had given the first GMAT prep a month ago I reset it and started.

My GMAT scores were:
Prep 1: 750
Prep 2: 760
Prep 3: 750 again disappointing
Prep 4: 740 highly disappointing. Got only one question wrong in Maths but the result was same as always Q50
Prep 5: 770 Q50 V44 Now we are talking
Prep 6: 770 Q50 V46 Good going
Reset Default prep tests and gave them again
Prep 7: 770 Q50 V44

At this point I was less than 2 weeks from the test and I was trying to find any weaknesses to prepare. However my verbal scores were kinda erratic. I had in one tst bad RC score however in the next RC was 51. Similarly for CR.
So I just revised a few chapters from Manhattan SC book and watched Ron Purewal videos. Also I was in exception territory by this point for SC and this affected my performance as I wouldn't immediately eliminate using touch rule and stuff like that.

Last prep 760 Q50 V42 I felt I was going down. As you can see Verbal was coming down continuously.

Then came the test day. Appointment was 12.15, I reached by 11.15 and test started at 11.30. Perfect room temperature so had no problems there. Maths felt pretty easy. Except 1 question I am pretty sure all rest were correct. Verbal was tough and I couldn't tell how much I would get.

Ended up getting Q51 which I had never got, but good that I got as it compensated for lower Verbal score of 42 ensuring 770. I feel like hitting peak timing of giving GMAT is important. I had rescheduled GMAT and I think if I had got a date 10 days earlier I could have got V44 or 46 and who knows might have got 780. But anyways for all purposes my score is fine and I am glad to be done with this.

I am planning to apply to IIMs via the overseas route.

Some things which helped me: Ron Purewal videos for parallelism completely cleared that concept for me.
Manhattan SC book must read.
Powerscore CR Bible also must read. Apart from this just do OG especially the last quarter of SC questions are really good. Also buy the extra questions and tests and do them. Nothing else is required.
AWA just used Chineseburned format.
Also special mention to GMAT Ninja. That guy is really good. Saw some of his videos and some of his responses on a few difficult parallelism questions. His way of analyzing the parallelism and the question was awesome.
Another thing in Maths in coordinate geometry I got question about perpendicular lines. Since I am an engineer I know that slopes of perpendicular lines when multiplied give -1 but I dont think this is taught at GMAT level.