My Gmat experience: 680 (48Q, 34V, 6.0 Awa)

My Gmat Experience 680 (48Q, 34V, 6.0 AWA)

Hi everybody. I wanted to share my gmat experience with everyone since reading other peoples posts helped me quite a bit in my prep. To start off with, I was very dissapointed with my score as I was shooting for around a 720. My verbal was quite dissappointing since I usually score in the 40-42 range on practice tests. Really, I think I faltered because I was feeling under the weather and just didn't have the endurance by the time I got to the verbal section. Hopefully my awa will help to offset the low verbal (anybody think it will?). Anyway, I think the 680 should be good enough at this stage.

I just wanted to share my study prep and what I think should be done to obtain a good score. The gmat is a difficult test and thorough understanding of fundamanentals is important.

1. I started with princeton review to get a basic understanding of the gmat and the questions. I did all the bins and got a decent understanding of the test. I would recommend using the princeton review - pretty decent. I also looked at the Kaplan book but didn't like it.

2. The next thing to study is the OG 11, OG verbal and OG quant. Do all those problems. It is true that alot of them are easy, but learning the concepts is important. I am an engineer with strong math skills, but I've been out of school for ~10 years and really needed to relearn alot of basic concepts. Most of the concepts on the test people don't use in their daily lives. I highly recommend doing all the problems.

3. Do many of the GMAT challenges (https://gmatclub.com/wiki/Tests) and learn from your mistakes. I think these challenges also helped me go from 42 to 48 level.

4. I bought a few of the Manahattan books. The SC was pretty good, I would recommend it. The most useful book was the numbers properties book. I would highly recommend that book. Its short and you can go through it in a day.

5. Lastly, after you have gone through the rest of the material and kept a log of your wrong answers and reviewed them, start the GMAT Prep. If you have the time, devote the last 3 weeks of your prep to solely the GMAT Prep. Take them over and over again. Don't worry about the repeats - they will help you get harder problems. I think this is a very important step since I think people don't give it enough time to review. Review ALL the problems that you get wrong on this test and will help your speed on the real test.

I think that study prep is pretty much all you need. I looked at a bunch of other books as well such as Kaplan 800, some MGMATs and a few others. It was a waste of time for me. Stick to the basics and don't overload yourself. Again, a bit dissapointed that I didn't reach 700, but hopefully everything works out.

Good luck to all!