Hello forum users,

I have been a silent visitor to this forum for last five weeks. That is when I had decided to take my GMAT. I finally took it this morning and am happy to share with you people my experience. I scored a 710 on my GMAT. Here is the breakup

Verbal -> Scaled Score -- 40 -> 91 Percentile
Quant -> Scaled Score -- 48 -> 86 Percentile
Total -> Scaled Score -- 710 -> 95 Percentile.

I would like to thank all the users who post their experiences here. Unkowingly they have helped me and I am sure many more users like me. I feel obligated to at least post my experience here.

Here goes.

I started preparing for the test exactly five weeks back. Like many, I work full time so most of the preperation was limited to after work or on weekends. I got some books from the public library here in town (luckily they had all relatively recent books except for the official guide (OG)which I bought from ecampus.com). First I prepared from Kaplan's books and finsihed the verbal work book. When the OG arrived by mail, I started working on the verbal questions from it. Then I realized by someones post that these questions would be repeated on the powerprep test, so I decided to take the power prep tests first. I scored a 680 and 720 (I might be off by a bit since I have taken too many tests since then). I then continued working on the OG. Mainly on the verbal part. Then I took the four tests from Kaplan Higher Score CDs. I scored from 540 to 590. This was a harsh jolt. I got scared. That is when I was comforted by this posts on this forums. I saw here that most users had similar experiences with kaplan tests.

Feeling a little relieved, I carried on practising from OG. Then I got the Princeton review book, mainly for the CD, but ended up reading strategies for sentence correction and AWA from it again (after reading those from Kaplan's book earlier). I took all four tests on Princeton CD. All the bad things I heard about those tests (software wise) were true. But I felt that the princeton tests were close to the actual test. I scored 690, 710, 690, 620 on the princeton tests.

I finished all the verbal part from OG and all data sufficieny questions. Solved last couple of hundred questions from the Problem solving. As everyone here had suggested, last questions are tougher on the OG for all sections. Other than this, I did not do any special preperation for quant. Did look at the probablity and Permutations/Combinations tutorial on this site. Good info here.

In the actual test this morning, the writing assignment were not very abstract and that was good because this part was the scariest for me (am not very good at writing, being from India and a non-native english speaker). Took full 5 minutes of the break. Streched, went to the restroom, splashed water on my face, had some iced tea.

Quant section which was usually not a problem for me. Turned out that there were some questions that I had no clue as to how to solve them. I basically guessed (little intelligently) for these. I hope those were the experimental question that ETS throws in and which do not count toward the score. I finished 20 minutes before time on my quant section. Took full 5 minutes of the break, did most of the things described earlier.

Verbal Section was pretty similar in difficulty to princeton and Powerprep questions. Four reading comp passages, 4, 3, 3, 4 questions each. Topics varied from management (market share), Scientific (enzymes), African American History and literature (book review). Critical reasoning were pretty similar to OG and so were Sentence correction. All in all, I was a little surprised to see myself score a 710 ( I hope they dot scale it back in the official report from what they had given in the unoffical score report).

I would strongly suggest to anyone preparing for GMAT to completely solve OG completely (atleast last questions). I shall be visiting this forum for next few days and would answer questions that anyone has. I wish you all a very good luck in all your endeavors.

Thank you.

Wow. that is very nicely written !. Congratulations from GMAT Club. Thanks for taking the time to write in such detail.

Its a nice score. Could you outline your strategy in the different sections of the GMAT. I am sure it will help our members.

Sincerely
Praet

Bravo! Nice performance. You can be proud of yourself

Music Lover, why were silent?
Was there anything that was intimidating a new-comer?

Can we improve anything to remove this feeling of separation?


--Bogdan...
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Thank you guys for your wishes.

Bogdan, No I was not intimidated as a new-comer. I was just silent becasue all the questions I had were being answered before I asked them. One thing I believe is not to waste any one's time unless you have to. I know you guys would have come forward and helped me, but why ask the questions that have been answered. When it came time to contribute, I have stepped up to the plate.

Praet, Outlining my strategy would probably be a longer post and I shall do that soon. Not that I had any special strategy. I will post it in near future.

thanks for your note.

We hope to hear from you soon

Best Wishes
Praet

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Excellent score...excellent post ...way to go 'musiclover'.

Vivek.