My Gmat Experience - 770 (Q50, V44)

Hi,

final scores on the day that mattered
770 - Q50, V44

Finally finished the GMAT last Thursday. Celebrated by taking 5 days away from any computer :D.

firstly, i would like to thank all the members who have helped me by submitting questions, and answering questions. some names which jump to mind are buffdaddy, walker, x2suresh, bhushangiri, arjtryarjtry, nmohindru, tarek99, durgesh79, GMAT TIGER, rahulgoyal1986 and many more who i have forgotten to mention.

Classes and Practice Tests

Practice test scores:

GMATPrep1: 750 (Q50, V38)
GMATPrep1: 780 (Q50, V44)
MGMAT1: 670
MGMAT2: 680
MGMAT3: 770
MGMAT4: 730
MGMAT5: 760
MGMAT6: 780

Real GMAT: 770 (Q50, V44)

Gmat Club

Test % Correct Percentile
m00 60.00% 63.50%
m01 70.30% 59.30%
m02 73.00% 47.30%
m03 67.60% 62.70%
m04 81.10% 85.50%
m05 70.30% 70.20%
m06 55.60% 41.40%
m07 83.80% 90.50%
m08 62.20% 72.70%
m09 70.30% 70.40%
m10 75.70% 81.10%
m11 73.00% 73.30%
m12 62.20% 43.30%
m13 81.10% 88.00%
m14 81.10% 90.90%
m15 73.00% 66.70%
m16 67.60% 46.20%
m17 83.80% 75.00%
m18 78.40% 66.70%
m19 75.70% 52.90%
m20 83.80% 47.10%
m21 67.60% 61.50%
m22 73.00% 57.10%
m23 89.20% 91.70%
m24 83.80% 93.30%
m25 86.50% 91.30%
v01 68.30% 71.60%
v02 78.00% 87.80%
v05 63.40% 83.30%
v06 82.90% 0.00%



Tools Used
1) GMAT Prep Book and Software
2) GMAT Verbal Review
3) GMAT Club Tests - bought these - very good investment
4) Manhattan SC Book - also gave access to 6 practice exams - very good investment
5) Kaplan Practice exams - 4
6) Other Websites that i read very regularly :
- https://www.mansw.nsw.edu.au/members/ref ... no4yen.htm
- https://www.purplemath.com/
- 7-t68037?hilit=inequality+infinity
- 1-t64327


The journey

I started preperation very feebly in May this year by slowing doing questions from the GMAT prep. However this was not very focussed. Come July, I realised that I was not really making inroads as I had not booked a date.

Therefore, booked for September 4th, giving myself about 2 months of focussed preparation. First thing I did was to solve the diagnostic test in the GMAT prep. Quant was ok, with about 5 questions wrong. RC and CR needed some improvement, however got more than half of the sentence corrections wrong. Clearly SC

needed major improvement.

Quant :
At the same time, logged on to GMAT club and started doing the problems. I was advised to start solving practice exams, and this was my tactic.

After a few practice exams on Gmat prep, early on realised that in Quant had 3 major topics of problems
1) Probability - Combinatorics
2) Rates - x number ppl doing work in x hours, how long y numbers etc. drove me nuts!!!
3) Mixture - mixing of acids or sugar with water was also a lost cause

Therefore, started reading tutorials on the internet for these. Found https://www.purplemath.com/ to be very useful, and by the end, def fixed my problems. In parallel started doing the questions from GMAT prep.

Verbal :

For SC, I started, reading the Manhattan SC. Read teh book twice without solving any questions. Third time of reading, starting doing the relevant questions for each chapter and learning from mistakes. For SC, i read all the official explanation to check that I had identified all the faults in the scentence. In parallel, started the RC and CR questions. I used to read explanations for all the incorrect answers to understand the GMAt way of thinking

Practice Exams :
Every weekend, I used to do 2 practice exams, one from Kaplan and one from Manhattan. This included writing practice essays to simulate AW. This is very important as the essays drain you, esp when one reaches Verbal. First exams scored very low, and this freaked me out into studying even more. Word of caution - the marks on Kaplan do not reflect anything, and just use these for practice. Any practice is fine as long as it tests your ability to sit in one place for 4 hours and focus. I tried to do two exams in one day, but it never worked out. I found that i was drained after one exam. Moreover, looking at questions which i got incorrect was very important and used to take up 2 hours each time.

During weekdays in the morning, I used to do one of the Quant exams from GmatClub. Saved the verbal exams for later to simulate more practice exams.

Gmat Prep Exam:
Took one about 1.5 months before the Gmat, and the second one 10 days before the exam. I think I should have ideally taken them a little earlier.

Last 2 weeks:
I took the 10 dayts before the exam off as I had the luxry of leave. I had 2 manhattan, 1 Kaplan, 1 Gmat Prep, and 6 Gmat Club exams left. Every morning, I used to do one of the exams. For the GmatClub exams, used to randomly pick AWs topics from the book, and then solve one quant and verbal exam.

Additioanlly, redid the diagnostic test, all the questions from Gmat prep book and from the Gmat review during the time.

The two days before the exam, did not do any exams. Just relaxed and solved a few problems here and there. Also read the Manhattan SC book, (probably the 8th time)

The actual exam :

got up at 6 on the morning, and scanned some SC tips. had a heavy breakfast and left home at 7.30. Had packed a chocolate bar, and 2 bananas. Got to the test centre by 8, and was the 10th person in the queue. However, I was very quickly doing the exam.

First AW (Finding flaws in a argument) was easy. Easily wrote 500 words on this. The next topic was hard and struggled to get many valid points, and might have ended with 350 words.

Took the optional breaks. During the break, had a sip of water, has some chocolate. When I came back, 3 minutes were left. Started the quant. First question was resonably tough. After 4.5 minutes, I took and educated guess and moved on. Second question was a killer, and after 10 minutes was still on it. Again took an educated guess. At this point I was freaked out, as 10 minutes, 2 questions, and 2 guesses. After that things got a bit smoother, and I started catching up on questions. I was able to do most questions quickly and find the tricky parts. For the last question I had four minutes, but still ended up guessing it.

I was not very happy with the way the quant went, but there was no point mulling over it. So took the break. Again sip of water and some chocolate. came back with 3 minutes on the clock.

During practice exams I was speeding through the verbal (without high correction rate) and I had to force my self to slow down. Ensured that I took my time for the questions. verbal went as expected, some easy, some hard. It was gratifying to see that I could pick the mistakes in some of the SC. Got bogged down in the middle, and had three minutes for the last two questions, and finally 1.5 minutes for the last one. It was a SC, and in the end just guessed it. I was too tired by then.

When it asked if I want to see the scores, I thought briefly and decided that I might as well see them. There was no way I wanted to prepare for another 3 months. I was expecting a 49 (Q) and 38-41 (V) and was jumping up with joy when the marks were displayed.

Final Tips
- exersice daily - i used to either run for 6kms or cycle for 40 minutes in the days up to the exam. - very helpful
- sleep well the night before the exam
- find your flaw early, and fix them
- practice, practice and more practice - especially under time conditions
- do lotsa exams as doing doing verbal freshly is very different from doing it after writing 2 essays and one quant section
- take full advantage of the breaks.
- dont spend many months studying. once u get to the point of diminishing returns, just take teh exam
- fix a date so that you have a goal to work to.

once again thanx everyone, and good luck to every body else :D