Hello everyone
I gave my GMAT today and I am happy to say that my score is 740. Reading debriefs helped me a lot in my studies so I am planning on writing a useful one.
I prepared for 4 months and I think it was more than enough. I believe that more studying would have actually harmed my score as I already felt tired.
Test DayRumours about GMAT getting harder are not true. The quant section was extremely easy...or maybe I was lucky and the questions were based only on my strengths. I had exactly ZERO questions on combination, work/rate, range etc.
That was actually a bit of a problem since my strategy was to guess any combination problems I might encounter (I cannot solve a comb/prob question to save my life).
I had 2 geometry problems and all other questions concerned number properties, inequalities and percents.
I think I might have guessed on 5-6 questions because I was fallingbehond on timing.
BTW I didn't respect the 2 min timing. Other than simplyfing fractions or something equally ridiculous, I almost always needed more than 2 min.
Verbal was HARD. SC was actually easier than expected with very clear answers. RC was similar to
MGMAT tests. CR turned out to be my nemesis. I had to read every wuestion twice and even then I was confused. Sometimes the answer choices seemed to be all wrong or not related to the text, sometimes 3 choices seemed right...I would say CR was on par with
MGMAT CATs CR.
PreparationWhen I took my first diagnostic test I had no idea what CR and DS were so I guessed on all of them. The result was 520(Q30,V31). I was shocked as I had always been good at both math and english (I am not a native speaker).
Quant1.
MGMAT books-just buy them. They were the most important part of my prparation. Their books are simply superb. If you go through their books and take notes you are guaranteed Q48-49
2.
Gmat Club tests- for me , they were a loss of time. The questions are pretty unrepresentative of the gmat and I didn't really feel that they taught me something I didn't know
3.
MGMAT CATs-again a hit from
MGMAT; despite the fact that their questions are sgnificantly harder than the GMAT, in comparison with
GMAT club tests I felt that these problems really helped
VerbalSC1.
MGMAT SC book-very good
2. Document from this forum with GMATPrep SC + search the
MGMAT forum for answers. I think every single question was answered; the tutors there are EXCELLENT
CR1. Powerscore CR bible-very good
2. LSAT questions- pretty easy and unrepresentative of the gmat; don't loose your time
3.
MGMAT CATs-excellent CR resource; prior to the test I thought their questions were ridiculously hard...after the exam I believe that they were the closest, in terms of difficulty, to the real exam;
OG is good to understand the basics but useless otherwise
RCImproving my RC acurracy brought my practice test scores from v37 to v44
In the beginning I thought taking notes would just make me lose time. But I noticed that after reading the text carefully i couldn't remember very much and I was losing a lot of time trying to find that info again.
So I began to take notes: key word from each paragraph. This helped me because:
1. I understood the structure of the text
2. I maintained my focus even when reading the most boring texts
3. I remembered the text much better
I rarely had to go back to my notes because I remembered the text so well; but without taking notes I just couldn't memorize so many things...
Practice on LSAT RC...they have the longest, most boring texts I have ever seen in my life. Very good training.
Practice tests1.
MGMAT-brilliant;
I have seen on this forum ppl saying they did the tests untimed because they were so difficult => BIG MISTAKE ; use these tests to uild up strategies. I recognized at ones where my weaknesess were and either tried to improve them (rate problems) or decided I was so bad I couldn't improve (prob & comb). I remember finding a doc on these forums with prob& comb problems and after doing about 10 problems I gave up.
Furthermore,
MGMAT's math problems involving number properties and inequalitites are VERY similar to questions from the real test. Their verbal part has very good CR questions. SC and RC are also good.
Scores:
MGMAT 1: 710 (Q47, V40)
MGMAT 2: 700
MGMAT 3: 690
MGMAT 4 : 680
MGMAT 5: 700
MGMAT 6: 730
2. GMATPREP - very good predictor ; pisses me off that they don't have explanations and I had to search various forums for answers
GMATPREP 1: 520 (Q30,V31) - prior to any preparation
GMATPREP 1 (2nd take): 740 (Q48, V44) ; no repeat questions as the first time I only got very easy questions
GMATPREP 2: Q49, V37- don't remember the overall score
Error log
I didn't keep one. I thought, and still think it is a major waste of time. I simply circled on the end of each chapter the questions I did wrong. IN verbal I re-did them before the test, on quant I didn't bother. I re-did the last 50 questions in both PS and DS...mind you I still got more than half in DS wrong but apparently it didn't hurt on test day.
I believe the idea of analyzing is a bit exagerated. In quant there is only that much you can get from 1 question. Just read the explanation and understand the concept behind it.
In verbal you have to understand why each answer choice is wrong.
A final word: you don't have to know everything for this test. Yes, improve your weaknesses but please, please don't spend hours on unimportant topics like prob&comb. It's useless.
If you have any questions I will be happy to answer them.
P.S I am not in any way affiliated with
MGMAt in case you wondered. I just think their boks saved my life.
close
12 Jun 2010, 13:22
