From 670 to 770(Q50 V44)....the Debreif

I believe the key differences between the two attempts was

1. I slept much better the night before during the 2nd attempt.
2. Took the exam at 1:15PM instead of 9AM. This really helps because you dont have to get up early and rush to the exam centre. The key to the thing is slow down your day. Do everything slowly and be relaxed.
3. Took full advantage of the breaks. Go take your mind of the exam. Eat and drink something to keep up your energy. Make sure that each section almost feels like attempting a different exam.

During my first attempt my gmat prep scores were 720 and 740 so i did hope to cross 700. So 670 was a disappointment but i would have never hoped to hit 770 as i did in the second attempt.

I took my first attempt in march 07. So the important thing i took enough time between the attempts. I started studying for the second attempt in July. So i effectively had 2 months.

I knew verbal was my weakness especially scentence correction but RC and CR were not that strong either. But i was quite confident in Quants. But i made sure that i utilized my strength well. I still practiced difficult quant questions in between to make sure i hit anything between 49-51 in quants.

For the SC, i did almost 850 of 1000 SC set. This really helped me get an idea of almost all the types of different questions i can encounter on the exam. I wanted to make sure that I got all the easy to medium difficult questions right. For this i used the GMATTER software that was available on the web. Of course Manhattan SC book was my grammer bible.

I think my strength on the verbal was CR and RC. The key to both is to eliminate atleast 3 choices and learn to choose the best answer between the two.
1. Be ruthless when it comes to eliminating answers. Eliminate all unrelated answers and answers that are not supported by the premises.
2. Do not choose extreme answers(Must, will etc)

For RC when you encounter a long passage just read through it quickly to got an idea of the structure. Then while answering the questions read the relevant portions again carefully. But otherwise apply most of the rules that apply for CR.

My scores for GMAT prep were as follows. I did have some repeats for the verbal section.

GMAT Prep Q49 V44 760
GMAT Prep Q51 V44 770

Since i was quite strong in quants I really cant give much strategies for that.

1. I bought the difficult GMAT challenge questions and did them
2. Learn to guess effectively. Looking at the question narrow down your answer choices and then take a guess. This is a art and has to be learned. For example if the questions involves triangles and has angles like 30 and 60. then you know the ratio of the sides are in 1:root 3:2. So based on this you can narrow down the answers
3. Practice and practice and get your basics right. I believe that spending too much time learning complex probability and combinations is a waste. Just get your basics right.
4. Put down even the simplest of problems on paper and solve. I tend to commit a lot of mistakes if i just look at the problem visually and solve mentally.

The most important of all. Be confident and relaxed. I went for a jog the day before the exam to clear my mind of all the stress that builds up in the last few days prior to exam.

Best of Luck to all aspiring gmatters.

Cheers,
Aditya