GMAT 750 - My Debrief

Hi guys,

I gave the test on Monday and got a 750 (Q50 , V41). This was in line with my two GMATPrep test scores but slightly below my MGMAT CAT scores. I'd like to thank Ron Purewal and Stacey Koprince and all the other MGMAT staff who man the Manhattan forums. Well, the test was interesting for a couple of reasons and I do have some thoughts to share about my preparation as well.

My profile:
A non-native test taker, with undergrad in engineering and then, a Masters of Science in the same field from a top-5 US University. I gave the GRE in 2006 and interestingly, my GMAT score is exactly half of what I got in the GRE. I have been working in US for almost 2.5 years now.

1. Books Used
I bought a good collection of books. I went through the reviews on GMATClub.com's Best Books and then got some others on the way. The ones I used were:

• General
  Official Guide 12 and 11
  Kaplan GMAT Premier Edition
  
• Verbal
  PowerScore CR Bible
  MGMAT Sentence Correction Guide
  Aristotle SC Grail and SC Question Bank (Kindle edition)
  Aristotle RC99 (pdf)
  Official Verbal Review 2nd Edition
  
• Quantitative
  MGMAT Number Properties and VICs
  Official Quantitative Review

2. Preparation Strategy

I bought the OG and Kaplan's Premier in July 2010 and started my preparation in August 2010, studying 2-3 hours on alternate weekends to get a feel of the exam. By end-October, I had gone through PowerScore CR, MGMAT SC and OG 12. Needless to say, MGMAT SC was a tough read and took the longest time to read through. While reading through it, I wasn’t sure what material was important enough to remember and what was not. In hindsight, I should have gone through SC Grail first. OG Math was a breeze and I almost never had to solve for any of the DS questions and this made me believe (mistakenly) that DS was the easier section in Quant.

Well, after travelling and partying through all December, I picked up my books again in January. I did all of OG11, the Official Verbal Review and Quant Review and found out that SC was a weak point in my preparation. I bought Aristotle SC but most importantly, started googling for any SC that I got wrong. Guys, be sure to go through the forums. I never really posted anything on MGMAT forums but just reading through the staff's explanations helped me a lot to see what was wrong with every choice. If you land up on a MGMAT SC thread, just navigate to RonPurewal's or Stacey's posts and you'll realize there is a lot of useful stuff in them that's not mentioned in the book. I went through Aristotle's SC Question Bank (which is pretty close to actual stuff especially for the common rules) and the Brutal SC doc. In mid-Feb, I started doing the Kaplan Premier CD's section tests and finally graduated onto the CATs.

I started off with Kaplan CD's 4 CATs and then went on to do MGMAT's 6 CAT's (finished the last one two days before my test). I booked my date on Mar 1, after giving the first GMATPrep test in standard conditions and I scored 740. I then did GMATClub's Quant Tests in untimed conditions and stopped after six. Next, I went through some SC notes floating around GC - Slingfox's , Sahil's etc - since I still wasn't happy with my SC performance (I was getting 70% right). They didn’t have any new material for me, unfortunately. 10 days before my test, I gave my second GMATPrep and got a 750.
I then decided to go through all GMATPrep questions. There are two documents in GC's CR and SC forums that have all GMATPrep questions with answers. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND everyone to do these documents after giving two GMATPrep tests since the tests are useful only for estimating the scores - not for improving upon them. The SC doc had 186 questions and the CR one had 108 questions - which is like another OG in itself and one that's much closer to the actual level. Well, I had to put in a lot of hours in my last week to go through these docs and look up their solutions on MGMAT forums, so I suggest you do them well in time. I ended up with about 85% accuracy in SCs. Oh, by the way, I was doing 3-4 RC99 passages on the side every day for about 20 days. Finally, I gave my test on 21st.

My test scores:

Kaplan CATs :
CAT1: 670 (Q50, V37)
CAT2: 630 (Q50, V32)
CAT3: 660 (Q48, V36)
CAT4: 660 (Q50, V36)

MGMAT
CAT1: 730 (Q48, V42)
CAT2: 680 (Q45, V37)
CAT3: 770 (Q50, V45)
CAT4: 760 (Q51, V42)
CAT5: 760 (Q51, V42)
CAT6: 750 (Q51, V41)

GMATPrep
CAT1: 740 (Q49, V41)
CAT2: 750 (Q50, V41)

3. My Test Experience
There is nothing much to tell about the general environment. Palm scanning and the ID check takes place before every entry and exit from the testing area. 8 minutes are sufficient to gobble up a chocolate and gulp down Gatorade haha . Quant started off easy but after Q6 or so, it wasn't a breeze. I guessed a couple of DS questions around Q23 since I was falling behind and these two looked tough. Do read through MGMAT Number properties - especially finding the factors sections. Work rate questions and overlapping sets questions were DS type.
On the verbal section, I found the CR's to be tougher than those in GMATPrep - 50% of them were fill in the blank kinds. I didn’t get any boldface CRs ,however, I remember 3-4 RC questions that put some part of the passage in bold and asked specific questions on that portion. RC's were kind of easy, much easier than RC99's questions. SC's were decent as well.

Things I wish I knew or I would have done differently

• I would have allocated last two weeks for GMATPrep SC, CR and RC documents. Also would have done all of GMATPrep Quant questions. I just did verbal and that's nearly 300 questions in 4 days - brutal!
• Skipped RC99. I didn't agree with some answers. I did great on the OG passages and actual exam was close to their standard.
• Started exploring the Manhattan forums earlier.
• Maybe could have used a bit more practice in Quant DS questions.
• Viewed all video of Thursdays with Ron. It’s a great way to go over a key concept in as little as 1.5 hrs.

(Some) Things that I did that I also recommend

• Make notes of concepts that you stumble upon in forums, or want to remember after going through question explanations in OG. This is not a Error Log per se, but v.v.useful.
• GMATClub's question of the day - a great way to do questions nice and fresh in the morning.
• GMATPrep documents

Well, I guess that's all I can think of passing on to you guys. Study hard and do well everyone!

Cheers,
IndigoIntentions