This is my first post although I have been visiting this site for a long time now. I must thank this site and the guys that are involved in this forum. This site has been the most useful and the best resource for me in my preparation for the GMAT. I come from Nepal and the score I just got yesterday is apparently one of the best scores ever from Nepal so that has given me added satisfaction. Although I have used this site extensively I hadnt posted earlier because in a way I was intimidated by the geniuses who post in this site. My hats off to all the geniuses. In my mind everyone here is a genius in his own right and the guys behind this site are for sure geniuses. By the way the challenges on this site was the best math resource for me. My GMAT score is 750 (98th percentile), Q 48 (86th percentile), V 44 (97th percentile). I think that is a pretty balanced score so m happy for that too. In the end THANKS to all the guys again.
ok guys i know m a little late writing this debrief but have been in such a shock for the past couple of days that it took me this long to gather myself n write this.
First of all guys lemme assure u that u shudnt believe the practice tests of various vendors even one bit. I had never gotten to 750 on any of the practice tests so u can imagine that I was pleasantly shocked when I saw that score on the screen after I had finished with my GMAT exam.
Personally for me I think m a little better at Verbal than on Quant. m good at maths but m not the sharpest. I mean m not as sharp as most guys whi regularly post on this site. I was always pretty confident bout Verbal but was not expecting a 97th percentile score on test day however. The only problem I had in Verbal was the Sentence Correction part so I worked the hardest on that section. I worked hard enough to nail every rule that the GMAT generally tests except for IDIOMS. U know what I mean by that.
I think I worked harder on my Quant than Verbal because I was least confident about Quant. For the Quant section I realised pretty early on in my preparation that I was getting lower scores not because I didnt know how to solve the problems but because I was making a lot of silly mistakes. I then started to concentrate on the basic stuff a lot just to make sure that I was not missing the easy questions. I knew that even if manage to score hasf of the toughest questions on the GMAT I would do well so I basically concentrated on getting the easier n the medium difficulty questions a 100% right although I didnt manage to do so. I think I got pretty close though. After doing that I did a lot of hard questions but on the hard questions I soon realised that however much I practice there will always be a couple of questions in every exam that will put me in a fix. So I guess the hardest thing for me to do was to accept that I was not going to be able to solve every question on the exam so I will have to just bite the bullet and guess on some. I think for someone who is used to be called intelligent by others the toughest thing to do is so accept that u r not going to be able to do everything n just concentrate on limiting ur losses. I think strategy wise that is the wisest thing to do. In the end when I saw a 48 on the quant I realised that my strategy had paid off. I could have probably done a little better had I worked a little more harder on tougher problems but that I am sure would have come at the cost of missing some easier problems. I have to say I am happy with what I got in the end.
The score that I am really delighted with was the Verbal score. I had never even thought that I would score that high on Verbal. I would occassiaonally get 44 in practice test but my score ranged from 37 to 44 on practice tests. On sentence correction the method I used was brute force. I just did a lot of questions to make sure that I got all the rules absolutely correct. I never tried to memorise all idioms because I knew that it was not possible for me to do so. Again as with maths here too I tried to make sure that I never missed questions which were based on the 7 rules. After I got these almost correct I tried to remember just a few of the more commom idioms questions. Here too I felt that I would not be able to get every questions correct so I just let it be.
Was always good at RC and was above average at CR always so I was not too worried about them anyway.
The books I used most were:
Nova (excellent book to get started on Maths and to get a grip of the basics in maths concepts. Dont make the mistake of even looking t Verbal from this book)
OG 11 (bible)
GMAT Quantitave Review (again a bible)
GMAT Verbal Review (again a bible)
Princeton Cracking the GMAT (useful but not 2 good according to me)
Kaplan Premier Program (Again useful but not 2 good according to me)
Kaplan GMAT 800 (This book is really not worth the money coz it claims to be more that what it is)
Tests that I used:
Kaplan CD (extremely good especially for Maths. I dont think the Verbal part is not too representative of the actual GMAT though esp the RC part)
Princeton CD (again a good resource but the questions r either too easy or too tough but I would recommens this strongly)
GMATClub challenge (I think by far the best resource for Maths that there is. Hats off to the guys that put in such a lot of effort to do this. I would strongly recommend this to everyone who wants to score high on Quant. It is worth every dolllar that u pay for it)
800score tests(I guess the secont best for the Maths questions after GMATCLUB challenges. I think their Verbal tests are way off from the actual GMAT so wouldt recomment the Verbal tests but great Maths tests)
GMAT prep tests(Extremely similar to the actual GMAT. On the test I felt like I got a lot of questions that looked similar to what I had got on these tests)
My Test Results:
Kaplan (630-690)
Princeton (660-690)
Gmat Prep (720&730)
800 score (once I got a 610 here which made me so depressed that I felt like dropping the GMAT but I kept at it convinced that the verbal tests are not representative of the actual GMAT which was right. I only did the quant tests after one test n my quant results were 38-45)
In the end I would like to thank anyone who has managed to read thru all this stuff till now n persevere with me. Finally my biggest suggestion to anyone would be to get so good at the easy n medium range questions that u dont get even one of them wrong on the test. Dont b too flustered if u dont get every tough questions right. People who can do that r real geniuses. Remember that u dont have to get every question right to get a good score. just accept the fact that u r not goin to get everythin right n m sure u will c the results.
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Updated on: 11 Aug 2007, 03:28
