note from a looong time lurker - 720 (48q 41v) (96%)

Good job! Congratulations!

That is one cool score. Congrats!!
No matter where you apply, I am sure this score will hold you in good stead!

Good Luck!!

I thought I could post a detailed experience last weekend but couldn’t due to travel. Finally, got some spare time today. here it goes… (be prepared, its quite lengthy. Scroll down to the very end if you are just looking for pointers and materials used etc. skipping the rest of the mumbo-jumbo)

Preparation:
I had started to prepare quite sometime back. But did not buckle down and put in a concentrated effort until this April. However, the on-and-off preparation did help me in picking up some tricks and a lot of study material.
I had picked up some gmat books way back in 2004. I was on vacation in India and I did go thru the books(Kaplan 04, PR verbal 04) and thought it was not a big deal and I could take it when I really wanted to do an mba (big mistake…) note : have a target date in mind. It is very easy to work with a moving target but the objective would be lost.
After that I never really did anything until April 05. So one fine weekend I brushed up the question types and familiarized with the exam format and decided to take an exam. I took the Kaplan CAT and scored 500 (25q,25v). It was a rude awakening. I knew then that I had a long way to go and a tough road ahead. That’s when I started scourging the net for pointers. I stumbled upon gmatclub. I did not participate much but I used to read the experiences and the various tips and techniques. I decided to get the manhattan SC book and OG 10th edition (11th edition was not out then and I was planning at that time to take the gmat under ETS). Then due to work pressure I had hardly did anything until October. But I used to go thru the forums for a few questions here and there. try to understand the logic discussed or grammar rule etc., For the most part it made sense when I read them but I would forget them soon and would be starting all over again. note : if you are not committed, you might as well not do anything. Always study when you really want to. No point spending endless hrs without learning something new.

I still did not have a date in mind but decided to work toward completing it while ETS was still conducting the exam. I still had not gone through OG. I had briefly went through Manhattan SC but did not work the different types with OG. I took the first powerprep exam. I scored 650(46q,34v). Well some progress I thought, but I wanted a 700+ score. So I decided to sign-up for the exam as soon as I crossed 700 in my practice. I think this is a good strategy but u need to put some effort and try and achieve the target. I, on the other hand, came up with all kinds of excuses not to do so.
I did some analysis on the pp1 exam and figured out for quants, if I study all the concepts I should be able to get 48+ but verbal needed some help badly. RC was ok (I think I had 1 or 2 wrong in that exam) but CR and SC needed some work.
note : Identify your weaknesses early in the game.
I decided to work on CR first. I started with the forums. Tried to do as much CRs as possible during lunch at work and whenever I found some time. Until this point my strategy for attacking CR was intuition. Though I had a 60% success rate, it was not good enough. Then I came across a few documents on the internet which helped me understand the structure of an argument and how to break them into pieces. I also read some links on logical fallacies etc. That really helped me understand CR and I was getting 85+% success rate. I practiced 100+ questions using LSAT. It improved my timing and my success rate jumped to 90%.
note : Attack the weaknesses one at a time.

Satisfied with my CR level, I then started working on SC. Again I started with the forums and worked my way through the 1000SC document. I would search for every question in the forum and study the understand the concepts. At this point I started maintaining an excel sheet with the notes. I now realize that this is the first thing I should have done.
Note : Maintain a document with “yourâ€

Thanks much for your report. and Congrats once more.

Cool - thanks for the info. Great work -- congrats on the score. I take mine tomorrow. We'll see...

Marcus

Congratulations!!!!

Thanks for attaching your error sheet.It gives one a fair idea of how to keep a tab on one's errors.

congrats on the awesome score! thanks for the great summary!

party time!

Nice brefing thingZero!

******** Party Time !!! **************

Congrats, great score !!

Congratulations and thanks for the great suggestions.