GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief : Share GMAT Experience

drisss · 2011-03-15T11:08:08-07:00

Hi all, after hours (and hours and hours) spend going through the GMAT Club forums, and a couple of month of study, I take some times to share my experience and give advices for future test takers. My background Non-native english speaker (so initially quite weak in verbal) Engineering background (so supposedly quite good in quant) Note: I passed the GRE 18 months ago so I guess this helped me (a little bit) for the quant part my goal I was aiming to score as high as possible as I have a weak undergrad GPA which is likely to hurt me during the application process from where I started my first test (princeton review free) was ok, I think somewhere 680 with a very low score in verbal (V35 or so) and a decent score in Quant (Q45 I think). THis was kind od my diagnostic test at the very beginning of the study, I don't recall exactly the scores. My weaknesses were (obviously) verbal, mainly RC and SC. CR was ok as long as the vocabulary was not too hard. In quant, I think I needed to refresh some concepts and methods, but I was globally ok. prep material This is the material I used (chronogical order). I was under tight budget constraint so I was not really choosing my books, I was working on those that I found cheaply or given away by friends. A friend of mine bought me as a "Christmas Gift" the MGMAT Number properties (and hence the mgmat test): special thanks to her. - Mc Graw Hill , Mc Graw Hill Verbal, Mc Graw Hill Quant: believe or not this book is quite good, although there is a little bit too much of blabla in it, I guess to make it thicker. - Kaplan Premier - Manhattan Review SC (not that bad, not very well organised but still...) - MGMAT SC (must have) - MGMAT Number prop - MGMAT CR and RC (useless in my opinion) -Aristotle RC 99: best material for RC, clearly - Aristotle SC Grail: really good, and with practice which makes it a very good book to have in case you finished all the others - Flashcards from GMAT Club, another GMAT oriented site, half a dozen contributors (thank you big Panda), etc... my study plan I scheduled my exam 3 month ago. I thought I would have plenty of time to study. I started by spending time on the GMAT Club forums to have an idea of which strategies work and which do not. It helped me to organize my study plan and to select the study material. However, there might be the risk of procrastinating if you don't pay attention to your timing. I started by working through the Kaplan premier: a heavy book, with a lot of (more or less) useful information. It is quite good to give you a general overview of the test, and to have a grasp of your weaknesses (if any). Honestly, I think that as far as quant is concerned, everything that I needed to know for the gmat was in there (unfortunately, I did not know that before). The verbal is not necessarily the main strenght of the book, but if you are not aiming to score above 720... I think this could be sufficient. Again this will depend on where you start from. I'll get back to that later. After that I bought the OG 12nd and the Manhattan GMAT SC, and I worked quite a lot on the OG trying to understand every mistake i had done. The mgmat sc was good , but a little bit too basic I think. It gives an excellent overview though. To improve further my quant score I bought the number properties MGMAT and the Word translation as those were my weaknesses. It was quite helpful. I also used the Kaplan math workbook, which is ok, but not necessarily a must have if you are already scoring in the 720+. Finally, I came across a lot of prep material on the internet, and used few of them but I think it is better to stick to OG, Kaplan for math, and MGMAT. Also, there is no better way of improving than mock tests. Please note that I think strategies book are great, but it is important to spend the lion share of your time on practicing. Otherwise, the strategies are just abstract concept and techniques that you think you understand, but in fact you are not 100% sure to know how to use them on D-Day ( I mean the GMAT, not the WWII one :p For my RC and SC skills, I think reading newspapers helped me, especially for idioms etc... I forced my self to read regularly. practice tests. practice tests, and... practice tests Most of my preparation was based on complete practice test, I did every free test available out there, as well as the Gmat prep and powerprep, and obviously the 6 MGMAT. I also used the GMAT Club tests when they were free (president day etc... ) it is quite useful if you are good at math and want to be perfect... still, the questions are wella bove the GMAT level. Quite frankly, I think this made me improve a lot, and it helped for my stamina and my timing as well. Between each test I used to do some OG or Kaplan, as well as some flash cards of my own, and tried to focus on topics I was weak in. Here is a brief overview: Gmat Prep n1: 730 (Q49 V40) : did this one month after starting, ie one month before the actual test Knewton Free: 760 (Q49 V44) PowerPrep1: 730 V49 Q40 Powerprep2: 720 V 47 Q42 MGMAT1 740 (Q47 V45) MGMAT2 770 Q50 V45) MGMAT3 780 Q51 V45 MGMAT4 770 Q50 V45 MGMAT5 750 Q50 V42 MGMAT6 760 Q51 V42 Gmat prep 2: 760 Q50 V42 Several people ask about how representative those scores are: well I think the Quant MGMAT is pretty much representative (even though the question are a bit harder on average), however, the verbal questions are on average easier, and the score tend to be a little bit too kind in my opinion. The Gmat prep are pretty close to the real thing. Actual GMAT I did not prepare much for the AWA, so I struggled, and got caught by time. I don't think I did particularly well. The quant test was harder than I thought and I spent too much time on the first questions (I wanted to have them right though) and got rushed at the end. I was not comfortable with the plastic stuff they give you to right. The Verbal was more difficult than I thought too, especially the SC. I struggled from the beginning to the end, and had a lot of 50/50 guesses to make. The RC was ok though, I found that overall the level of the passage was not too hard. Score: 760 Q50 V41 I am happy with my score, although I felt I could have scored better in verbal (at leat that is what my practice tests made me think). Well I am not sure In mentioned everything here, but please feel free to ask fi you have any question. I would be glad to help you (after all, I think the GMAT Club helped me a lot so I owe you this Thanks to all admins and contributors, I wish I could invite you all for a drink, but it might not be possible: we could have had geeky and GMAT oriented jokes :p From now on, I leave the GMAT section and focus on the MBA one. Good luck everybody, who knows I'll see some of you in my future BS (hopefully).Hi all, after hours (and hours and hours) spend going through the GMAT Club forums, and a couple of month of study, I take some times to share my experience and give advices for future test takers. My background Non-native english speaker (so initially quite weak in verbal) Engineering background (so supposedly quite good in quant) Note: I passed the GRE 18 months ago so I guess this helped me (a little bit) for the quant part my goal I was aiming to score as high as possible as I have a weak undergrad GPA which is likely to hurt me during the application process from where I started my first test (princeton review free) was ok, I think somewhere 680 with a very low score in verbal (V35 or so) and a decent score in Quant (Q45 I think). THis was kind od my diagnostic test at the very beginning of the study, I don't recall exactly the scores. My weaknesses were (obviously) verbal, mainly RC and SC. CR was ok as long as the vocabulary was not too hard. In quant, I think I needed to refresh some concepts and methods, but I was globally ok. prep material This is the material I used (chronogical order). I was under tight budget constraint so I was not really choosing my books, I was working on those that I found cheaply or given away by friends. A friend of mine bought me as a "Christmas Gift" the MGMAT Number properties (and hence the mgmat test): special thanks to her. - Mc Graw Hill , Mc Graw Hill Verbal, Mc Graw Hill Quant: believe or not this book is quite good, although there is a little bit too much of blabla in it, I guess to make it thicker. - Kaplan Premier - Manhattan Review SC (not that bad, not very well organised but still...) - MGMAT SC (must have) - MGMAT Number prop - MGMAT CR and RC (useless in my opinion) -Aristotle RC 99: best material for RC, clearly - Aristotle SC Grail: really good, and with practice which makes it a very good book to have in case you finished all the others - Flashcards from GMAT Club, another GMAT oriented site, half a dozen contributors (thank you big Panda), etc... my study plan I scheduled my exam 3 month ago. I thought I would have plenty of time to study. I started by spending time on the GMAT Club forums to have an idea of which strategies work and which do not. It helped me to organize my study plan and to select the study material. However, there might be the risk of procrastinating if you don't pay attention to your timing. I started by working through the Kaplan premier: a heavy book, with a lot of (more or less) useful information. It is quite good to give you a general overview of the test, and to have a grasp of your weaknesses (if any). Honestly, I think that as far as quant is concerned, everything that I needed to know for the gmat was in there (unfortunately, I did not know that before). The verbal is not necessarily the main strenght of the book, but if you are not aiming to score above 720... I think this could be sufficient. Again this will depend on where you start from. I'll get back to that later. After that I bought the OG 12nd and the Manhattan GMAT SC, and I worked quite a lot on the OG trying to understand every mistake i had done. The mgmat sc was good , but a little bit too basic I think. It gives an excellent overview though. To improve further my quant score I bought the number properties MGMAT and the Word translation as those were my weaknesses. It was quite helpful. I also used the Kaplan math workbook, which is ok, but not necessarily a must have if you are already scoring in the 720+. Finally, I came across a lot of prep material on the internet, and used few of them but I think it is better to stick to OG, Kaplan for math, and MGMAT. Also, there is no better way of improving than mock tests. Please note that I think strategies book are great, but it is important to spend the lion share of your time on practicing. Otherwise, the strategies are just abstract concept and techniques that you think you understand, but in fact you are not 100% sure to know how to use them on D-Day ( I mean the GMAT, not the WWII one :p For my RC and SC skills, I think reading newspapers helped me, especially for idioms etc... I forced my self to read regularly. practice tests. practice tests, and... practice tests Most of my preparation was based on complete practice test, I did every free test available out there, as well as the Gmat prep and powerprep, and obviously the 6 MGMAT. I also used the GMAT Club tests when they were free (president day etc... ) it is quite useful if you are good at math and want to be perfect... still, the questions are wella bove the GMAT level. Quite frankly, I think this made me improve a lot, and it helped for my stamina and my timing as well. Between each test I used to do some OG or Kaplan, as well as some flash cards of my own, and tried to focus on topics I was weak in. Here is a brief overview: Gmat Prep n1: 730 (Q49 V40) : did this one month after starting, ie one month before the actual test Knewton Free: 760 (Q49 V44) PowerPrep1: 730 V49 Q40 Powerprep2: 720 V 47 Q42 MGMAT1 740 (Q47 V45) MGMAT2 770 Q50 V45) MGMAT3 780 Q51 V45 MGMAT4 770 Q50 V45 MGMAT5 750 Q50 V42 MGMAT6 760 Q51 V42 Gmat prep 2: 760 Q50 V42 Several people ask about how representative those scores are: well I think the Quant MGMAT is pretty much representative (even though the question are a bit harder on average), however, the verbal questions are on average easier, and the score tend to be a little bit too kind in my opinion. The Gmat prep are pretty close to the real thing. Actual GMAT I did not prepare much for the AWA, so I struggled, and got caught by time. I don't think I did particularly well. The quant test was harder than I thought and I spent too much time on the first questions (I wanted to have them right though) and got rushed at the end. I was not comfortable with the plastic stuff they give you to right. The Verbal was more difficult than I thought too, especially the SC. I struggled from the beginning to the end, and had a lot of 50/50 guesses to make. The RC was ok though, I found that overall the level of the passage was not too hard. Score: 760 Q50 V41 I am happy with my score, although I felt I could have scored better in verbal (at leat that is what my practice tests made me think). Well I am not sure In mentioned everything here, but please feel free to ask fi you have any question. I would be glad to help you (after all, I think the GMAT Club helped me a lot so I owe you this Thanks to all admins and contributors, I wish I could invite you all for a drink, but it might not be possible: we could have had geeky and GMAT oriented jokes :p From now on, I leave the GMAT section and focus on the MBA one. Good luck everybody, who knows I'll see some of you in my future BS (hopefully).

target2010

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

17 Jul 2011, 23:31

invincibleforce wrote:

target2010 wrote:

invincibleforce wrote:

I agree that I didn't do well on the first test I took, but that doesn't mean that the RC strategy didn't work. It'll only be through that one can improve and I'm not hesitant about improving myself and getting a better accuracy the next time. I'll show it to the world that I have it.

The last sentence really made me laugh :D No offense though but I always thought that the world takes notice of you if you do something great.Never knew that the world notice you because of your GMAT also :D

I think that long battles in life are won one by one ,not together at the same time. Today it's GMAT,tomorrow it will be something greater than that

I didn't mean to hurt you dude. Sorry if you felt offended. We all are here to work hard and tame this monster called the GMAT.
Let's be "brothers in arms"

invincibleforce

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

24 Jul 2011, 03:27

target2010 wrote:

I didn't mean to hurt you dude. Sorry if you felt offended. We all are here to work hard and tame this monster called the GMAT.
Let's be "brothers in arms"

Yeps . Truce from my side also. Let's focus on cracking the GMAT :-D

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

06 Aug 2011, 22:01

@driss
Congrats driss! I have just kicked off my prep some days back and I am really longing for the score you have. :-D

What is the duration for which you studied ? And which schools are you targeting at ?

chandu4gmat

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

06 Aug 2011, 22:20

Congratulations and all the best for your applications! Cheers!!!

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

06 Aug 2011, 22:30

Well, rocking the GMAT may not be an earth shattering event, but it really means the world to the individual to see that 700+ (or 750+ score for the more competitive folk) pop up at the end of a 3.5hr test, especially if you put in a ton of time and effort.

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

08 Aug 2011, 05:13

jwy22 wrote:

I find it disturbing that your MGMAT scores were higher than your real exam. I've been scoring in the low 700's, def worse on Q, and felt a bit better because many people have posted that MGMAT's Quant questions are harder than the real thing.

Do not worry .MGMAT CATs are supposed to be tougher than the GMAT ones. You may wanna take a GMATPREP to get an estimate of where do you stand with your preparation at this point of time .

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

09 Aug 2011, 07:30

not bad!

shovitdhar

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

11 Aug 2011, 00:47

supereco87 wrote:

not bad!

LOL! How much more should a person get to get a "good" from you :D

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

16 Aug 2011, 10:32

awesome

mission2009

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

17 Aug 2011, 02:40

Congrats on your score and all the best for your applications!!

B

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Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

20 Aug 2011, 02:31

Awesome score and all the best for your apps

gmatclubot

Re: GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief [#permalink]

20 Aug 2011, 02:31

GMAT done!! 760 Q50 V41: my debrief

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