Review: 730 (Q49,V41), IR 8.0, AWA 6.0

Hi GMAT candidates,

I took the GMAT last week and just received the official score report. I got a 730 (Q49,V41), IR 8.0, AWA 6.0. I read a lot of reviews during my prep and most of them were really helpful, and now it's time for me to post my GMAT tips. I'll focus on my story and then summarize my key takeaways:

Background/ Story:
I'm a South American living in Mexico, currently working in consulting. For the past year or so I've been staffed in really tough projects, working between 12-15 hours a day, so I didn't have too much time to study for the GMAT. Anyway, the first time I took the GMAT Prep was one year and a half ago. I spent a week reading the Manhattan GMAT Quant guides and scored a horrible 550. I was really disappointed because I usually score high in standardized tests... and gave up on my study plan and decided to procrastinate for the next year.

About half a year ago I took the GMAT Prep again, after reading a couple of Manhattan guides (again). The result was the same: 550. I started to get nervous because I wanted to apply in the first round for the 2015 top MBA programs.

Clearly, my method of just reading the Manhattan GMAT guides sucked. So I decided to change the scope of my study plan. 2 months after my second GMAT Prep failure I started studying 1 hour of Quant every morning and 1 hour of V at nigh (7:00 am and 11:00 pm), with the objective of finishing ALL of the OG's problems. This took a while, and I didn't finish all of the RC problems because I found them boring and my accuracy was pretty good. I tracked my progress in an Error Log that I created from several error logs I found here. (I'm attaching the error log: It might be helpful for some of you, just type your answer in each question and you can track your accuracy by question type in one of the labels.. It doesn't use macros.)

When I had done ~50% of all OG questions I took the GMAT Prep again (the one I had taken a year and a half ago), and scored 640! My new method was giving results! So I continued working on the OG questions.. but I got scared after reading some of bb's reviews in which he mentioned that the OG does not include a lot of +700 level questions, and that it would not be enough to get a +700 score. I emailed bunuel about this, and this was his answer:



I was a bit skeptical about that, as I was learning a lot with each new question the OG provided. Finally, after completing the OG guide I took the Gmat prep again, and scored a 700! I was very happy, but it was a still lower than my target (740). Now I was certain that bunuel was right, I needed more resources to get a higher score. I used 2 main resources to improve in my Verbal and Quant.

Gmat Club Tests
For Quant I paid the 70 USD fee to get a 3 month access to the GMAT Club Tests. These test are amazing! I'll summarize my opinion of this tool:
Pros: The toughest Q questions I've seen out there, If you do enough CATS (I did 15 Quant CATs with this tool) you start learning how to deal with almost any type of Quant problem... Second, the interface is almost identical to the actual GMAT. When I got to the real test I felt I had done it thousands of times before.
Cons: The algorithm is not that precise, it is very variable.. so don't get scared if you score 51 and the next day you score 26! I don't think the objective of this tool is to predict your Quant score, but rather simulate a real GMAT experience, but with much difficult questions.

OG, 700-800 series, a hundred +700 level SC questions
For verbal I mainly used the OG and downloaded a bunch of pdfs from this forum. I focused on the PDFs the last 2 weeks before the test.

My study plan the last 2 weeks before the test consisted of doing 1 (or 2) GMAT Club Test Quant CAT per day, and some 30-40 V problems. It is important to build up stamina, and I believe doing CATs is the only way to accomplish this.

For the IR I didn't study, as I scored 8 in every single GMAT Prep I took before the test.

Finally, for the AWA I used this blog:
tips00.blogspot.in/2012/08/how-to-score-that-perfect-60-on-gmat.html
I wrote 1 essay per day the 3 days before the GMAT. The key is to memorize an introduction and conclusion, and just spit out analogies/examples (Even though they are irrelevant with the topic at hand) to get to the 500 word count. I scored 6.0 with this strategy.

In conclusion, my key takeaways are:
* Practice, Practice, Practice
* Manhattan GMAT guides are great, but you have to do a lot of practice after reading specific topics
* Start with the OG guide to get a grip on all the basics
* Design a methodical study plan and don't skip on your study hours
* If you want to improve in Quant, The GMAT Club tests are great!
* Build up stamina by taking lots of CATs!

CAT history:
Gmat Prep 1 (Jan,2013): 550
Gmat Prep 2 (Apr, 2014): 550
Gmat Prep 1 (Aug, 2014): 640
Gmat Prep 2 (Sep, 2014): 700
Actual GMAT: 730

Gmat Club Quant Tests History:
Quant 15 51 Sun Sep 21, 2014 22:12 PM
Quant 14 34 Sun Sep 21, 2014 17:57 PM
Quant 13 35 Sat Sep 20, 2014 16:58 PM
Quant 12 46 Thu Sep 18, 2014 22:57 PM
Quant 11 46 Tue Sep 16, 2014 23:30 PM
Quant 10 32 Tue Sep 16, 2014 00:03 AM
Quant 9 22 Mon Sep 15, 2014 08:36 AM
Quant 8 48 Sun Sep 14, 2014 14:11 PM
Quant 7 42 Wed Sep 10, 2014 19:18 PM
Quant 6 42 Tue Sep 09, 2014 17:16 PM
Quant 5 42 Mon Sep 08, 2014 19:28 PM
Quant 4 51 Mon Sep 08, 2014 00:35 AM
Quant 3 28 Sat Sep 06, 2014 13:35 PM
Quant 2 48 Fri Sep 05, 2014 16:47 PM
Quant 1 26 Thu Sep 04, 2014 17:33 PM

Thanks a lot to Bunuel and bb for all the help and for creating this forum! Best of luck to all of you!