From 470 to 680: My Story

Profile:
Male, 30, Married
Member of Institute of Cost & Management Accountants (No GPA like other finance professional bodies)
WE: Budgeting & Business Planning 6 years; 3 years in a biotech pharmaceutical company, 3 years in GSM telecom operator.
Why MBA: Change in career from Finance to Strategy & general management

History:
It was early 2009 when I decided to go for GMAT. Earlier I was of the view that I can rely on government scholarship for my MBA, but later found that the gov. sponsored business schools are not even in top 50. So the only option left was to take GMAT & then apply for b.school at my own. For GMAT, I searched the web & collected a ton of material. In search of physical stuff, I found Barrons GMAT in a nearby book store & started my gmat preparation. Those were the days when I had a new baby & the little bit of study I was doing was no more possible. Some more family & work issues led me to decide that I will not be applying in Fall 2009 but at the same time I continued to search some material for GMAT. In June last year, I found gmat club googling one day. Being a member of very few forums, I was most likely to surf & leave the forum, but somehow I decided to signup. That was the crucial moment. After going through some of the stuff, I came to know MGMAT & other test prep companies. I went through the free diagnostic CAT of MGMAT & got a lovely 470. After reading a number of reviews, I decided to order MGMAT complete set here in subcontinent. Last August after receiving the set, I started the SC guide. Till Jan, I completed six out of eight guides & after that I was lost in office projects. Came back to study in March, completed my MGMAT guides in the end of May & took my appointment for 09-Aug in June. Took a month off from office, went through a number of CATs, understood exactly where am I standing, today sat for test and got exactly the score which I was expecting. The score has raised a simple question, which I will ask in the end, meanwhile I will take you through specific areas of GMAT in detail.

SC- Nothing special to say. MGMAT SC is the bible. I was unaware of every little aspect & concept that is tested for SC. MGMAT SC helped me recognize the patterns & after a lot of practice I was able to solve the SC in less than 2 minutes. As many other have pointed before, to get a solid grip on SC (to cross 700 mark), one needs to recognize the pattern of every question & this can be done only with practice.

RC- RC was the real beast. When I went through some RCs in the initial stage, I didn’t manage to read & answer the first RC question in less than 8 minutes. That was an alarming situation as this was a significant timing issue. Then I went through the Gins Guide & started to focus a bit more. During my early days of GMAT, I went to install some applications on my black berry including Times, Washington Post, The Economist etc. Since that time I have been going through these websites daily & used to read atleast two or three articles daily. I must say that this habit helped me a lot in verbal section. After trying a number of RCs on GMATTER, my success ratio increased substantially & RC became my favorite section in verbal. Infact in the end, I loved the long RCs as these are followed by atleast four questions which give me more opportunity to hunt the right answers. For RC, I got little help from MGMAT, infact I didn’t complete the RC guide as it was not effective for me.

CR- CR is my weakness. I initially tried to follow the MGMAT CR methodology of making a T account & writing very short notes. But that methodology didn’t work for me as it was time consuming. I relied my own memory to decide between choices & it worked well as far as the timing is concerned.

Quantitative- MGMAT guides are good enough to cover all the aspects of GMAT Q. Number properties & Word translations helped me a lot in understanding the advanced concepts, which I was unfamiliar with. Combinatorics & probability was also a problem but I found a easy solution to this issue. I decided to make the best guess on these & move forward. This strategy worked quite well for me & with the same strategy I scored Q 50 in one gmat prep.

My Resources-
-MGMAT with question banks & CATs. Great collection
-GMAT Club tests- Great for boosting the quantitative scores. I loved these tests as these were too tough for me:)
-Veritas CATs- A good CAT collection, the scores I got there were very near to me actual gmat.
-GMATTER-For verbal practice. Good tool for getting the OG guestions in a software.
-1000 SC (Didn't use, as there were many flaws in that document)

If you are interested in my last month of preparation, kindly go through this thread.
eight-nine-ten-the-countdown-begins-96780.html

Test Day- I was not feeling any tension during the last few days as I was in office . Even the day before test I was in office for a project review. The night before test was also fine, slept early & got up early in the morning too (though I had a dream regarding AWA ). I reached the test center an hour before the scheduled time. Invigilator asked me If I wanted to start early & I accepted that offer. The AWA topics were quite ok but the issue I faced was the key board of the desktop PC. My fingers were having pain as I am used to laptop soft keys. Somehow I managed the AWA as per the plan. Took an eight minute break during which I consumed a part of energy drink. Then started the Q section. I was still not tense as I knew my score will be around 48. I was going according to the time plan (you can see the time plan in the attached link above). After the math section I went for the second break thinking that the verbal will decide my fate. I was always a Q 48 guy but my verbal scores fluctuated during my CATs. Verbal section started good, during the mid-time different thoughts started to shake my mind. I tried to refocus & comply the time plan butt in the end I knew the verbal had hit me. I was scared for the first time & when I clicked "report score" my heart beat pumped high for the very first time during my GMAT endavour. It was 680 (85 percentile) Q 48, V 34. I was sad to miss the magical 700 but at the same time was glad to cross 670. My friends asked me not to retake & to emphasize on my application & essays. My wife is also sick of GMAT now. After getting the expert opinion in a separate thread, I will decide my course of action.

Thanks for reading. I am open to questions.