Dear All
First of all i want to thank all forum members for their wonderful support in this forum.And of-course special thanks to BB & Bunuel.
After a long journey of more than 2 years i finally ended up with a decent GMAT Score. I took my test on 14th Nov 2012 and I am happy with my recent score.
Take 1: 600 (Q47, V26) AWA 5.0 (Oct'10)
Take 2: 540 (Q45, V19) AWA 4.5 (Dec'10)
Take 3: 580 (Q48, V23) AWA 4.5 IR 5 (Jul'12)
Take 4: 710 (Q49, V40) AWA/IR Awaited
I don't want to discuss about my first 2 attempts. The summary is - I was not prepared fully for GMAT and only used
OG 12 & few
MGMAT Verbal books for my preparation. I prepared for only 2-3 months and i knew that my prep was not sufficient. After that I took a break for 1 year.
Take 3: Started my prep once again in around Feb 2012. I took a local GMAT coaching class too. I knew my weakness was my verbal part. I was moderately good on Quant side, so did not bothered to devote much time in Quant. I focused 80% of my study towards Verbal.
Test Prep Materials Used:1.
OG 13
2.
MGMAT SC, CR, RC
3. Powerscore CR Bible
4. Kaplan 800
6. Grockit ( I almost solved 7000+ Question in Grockit) My XP is 56660
7. 4GMAT material (local coaching centre) : Quant is quite good and teachers are also good in quant.
MOCK Tests:GMAT prep1.0 1: 650 (48, 32)
MGMAT 2 : 690 (46,38)
MGMAT 3 : 680 (47, 36)
MGMAT 4: 670 (46, 35) (Taken at office)
MGMAT 5: 710 (49, 38)
MGMAT 6: 720 (47, 41)
GMAT prep2.0 1: 700 (48,38) IR 5
GMAT Prep2.0 2: 680 (48,35) IR 8
GMAT prep2.0 Retake 720 (50,37) IR 7
But in real GMAT on 25th July 2012 I scored a dismal 580 (48, 23).
And I attribute that failure to my sleepless night before Test day. I could not sleep for a minute that night due to intense anxiety. It happened in my 2nd attempt too. My test was scheduled on 9.00 AM and during the test i was feeling as if I was having a hangover with severe headache. Some how I tried to concentrate on the exam but could not do my best. Quant questions were moderate and I was able to answer properly. Got 2 Question on probability and 1 on combination. I thought I was doing good. In verbal I could not concentrate after first 10-15 Questions. I was feeling that I should finish the exam as soon as possible. And i was picking up answer quickly without applying the strategies I learned during my studies. I could not concentrate on RCs (2 from social sciences). I felt they were much convoluted with heavy words. I did not felt any difficulties with timing both in Q/V parts.
I was pretty down after my 3rd attempt. I came back home and posted my 1st post on GC forum that day. From then I am following this forum very actively and started solving/sharing thoughts on GC questions. And on the same day I subscribed for
e-gmat verbal live course and started once again my preparation for 4th attempt.
Takeaways from 3rd attempts: 1. A good sleep is much more important before the Test
2. For increasing Q score beyond 47-48 is to nail down much more DS question. I was quite good with PS. I almost solved all PS Qs in GMAT Prep Mocks. I used to get 10-12 Qs wrong in Quant and almost all are DS.
3. For Verbal I need some quite good strategy to crack RCs (unfamiliar topics: For me social sciences)
Take 4: This time I booked my test slot in afternoon session ie 1.00 PM
Test Prep Materials1.
OG 13 (Focused heavily on Official verbal questions)
2.
e-gmat Verbal Live
3. GC Tests (I am lucky to collect 25 Kudos in 15 days after i started participating in forum)
4. Gmatprep Verbal RC/CR/SC Questions collection by Souvik101990 (Thanks bro for this awesome collection).
5. GC forum questions (Thanks to Bunuel, Evajager, Gurpreet, piyatiwari and all for their incredible contribution)
6. Took only 3 mocks (
MGMAT 1A: 710, Q49,V38) Veritas1: 660 (Q49, V35) GMATPrep 1:720 (Q49,V39)
After I subscribed to
E-gmat course I realized my shortfalls in my verbal strategy. The course was very very helpful to bring up my V23 score to V40. And I would fully attribute my verbal success to
e-gmat. A ton of thanks to the ace teachers of
e-gmat (Rajat, Payal & Shraddha) for putting up their efforts in this forum too. I got everything I needed to crack SC and RC (the RC strategy worked very well with me). Knowledge of sentence structure & attacking SC question by splitting the clauses was the key in improving on SC.
To get a good sleep before the exam I had to cheat my brain this time. The evening before the test day I went to a long Jog and did 100 squats. Leg muscles are quite large muscle and i know if i can give a good stretch on those i will get a good sleep due to fatigue. Somehow I managed to sleep 4-5 hours in early morning hours. I woke up at 9.30 AM and i was feeling very good. Took some good food and headed towards Test center.
Test Day Experience Take 4:AWA was quite normal and i could manage to utilize the strategy of chineseburned.
IR has bombed me with back to back MSR Question from 2nd question onward. It look a lot of my time and i had to guess a lot. I think I did very bad in IR and will end up in poor score. One of my concern right now.
Quant was very good almost like GMAT Prep Questions. Most of the question on number properties, ratio, percentage, statistics. Got 1 DS prob & 1 Combination. And few Geometry questions. I could not solve last two questions due to insufficient time. But the questions were very easy. I utilized my breaks quite well with a banana and some glucose water, washed my face and stretched my self a bit ti increase the blood circulation.
Now Comes the verbal: Started with 2-3 SC questions and then CR. Initial questions were easy ones and I just followed the
e-gmat strategy to solve all verbal questions. I did not bothered what is right. I just made sure i strictly apply the strategies learned through
e-gmat. I was not searching the right answer, rather i was eliminating the wrong ones. (This is the key in verbal portion). This time I went very smoothly with first 3 RCS and i was very confident about the answers. The strategy for RC was to comprehend the passage-answer few basic questions to myself (what is the authors point, what is the inference, how diff paras support each other) and attack the questions. While answering i did not look at option and rather pre-thought the correct answer and then POE. This time I got 2-3 difficult SCs- the structure was so complicated/awkward that i could not get the meaning of sentence. CR was pretty straight forward with 3-4 Strengthen Qs, 1 Evaluate, 2 weaken Qs, 1 Assumption and few complete the passage. I did not face any BF Qs. I got my last RC at 34th question and it was a short one. I had 8 mins to go. I kept myself cool and did not bothered about the remaining time. After that 2 easy SC and 3 CRs. I just finished in time.
Did the survey and clicked to report the score. I saw a 710 with 40 on verbal. I was just shocked and quickly went out to take my unofficial score card.
Only few suggestions from my side:1. Good sleep is most important factor before the Test Day. Make sure you get a good sleep by anyhow.
2. Keep cool during the exam and always try to apply the strategies you learned in your studies.
3. Don't start preparation with
OG. First make your base and then hit
OG. Good quality Verbal questions are rare.
4. And please don't waste time and break your head on un-official questions from unreliable sources. This will waste your precious time.
I am extremely sorry for my poor english and this long post. Please feel free to post any question. I will try my best to answer those.
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Updated on: 15 Nov 2012, 10:23
