The Lucky One - 760 Q50, V42

Hello all,

This forum had sent me 2 reminders previously that I had not logged in in a while, when I was preparing for my GMAT. Here I am posting my debrief and I would like the admin to know that, even though I do not log in, I used this forum rather extensively during my last month of prep as I was facing questions of high difficulty.

There are a few people I want to thank: my brother, my mum, and my best friends. My brother is a quant whiz (Bunuel-level) who tried to teach me about probability and combinations, but unfortunately, I’m not a very good student. Nevertheless, I learnt the tricks of geometry from him, which proved to be very useful on the GMAT. My mum put up with 8 months of no weekend shopping. My best friends thought I could do it all along, even when I didn't think so.

I got into the GMAT because the masters course I want to apply to requires me to report a GMAT score. How I got around to thinking of doing a masters has got to do with one of my best friends. This journey began around December 2015…

Books & materials used (in order of usefulness):
1. OG Review 2016, Quant Review 2016, Verbal Review 2016, GMAT Prep
2. Manhattan SC, MGMAT CATs
3. Kaplan GMAT Premier Coursebook edition, PowerScore CR bible
4. E-gmat free verbal live sessions, GMAT club downloads
5. Other misc., e.g. Veritas, Magoosh, GMAT Pill, The Economist, Princeton Review (for free CATs mainly)

General strategy (in chronological order):

1. Start by going to the GMAT website and reading through what the test entails, etc.

2. Go create your study plan. I used this 6-month plan from Magoosh initially (3 months?) then tailored it as I went along (Google “Magoosh 6 month GMAT study plan”).

3. DISCIPLINE. Stick to your study plan every day. Ok, I cheated on some days (went out for drinks, etc), but I always made back time on the weekends to cover the weeknights off.

4. Do every single problem in OG Review 2016, QR 2016 and VR 2016. Use an error log to track your mistakes. For all those you got wrong the 1st time round, find a day or 2, depending on how many mistakes you made, to redo these wrong problems and use the error log to track these 2nd round mistakes.

5. Create cheat sheets for your weak sections (I had 1 for quant, 1 for SC and 1 for CR. I’m good in RC so no need for one.). Your 2nd round mistakes are those areas to focus on; make sure your cheat sheet has a section where you note down which problems you got more than 3 times wrong, 2 times wrong, 1 time wrong.

6. I took my first practice CAT (The Economist) after I exhausted OG Review. The score was good enough to get me into the school I wanted to go and the course, but I wanted to break 700. I took one CAT every weekend since my first, occasionally skipping some weekends. All in all I took 16 CATs and I always did AWA and IR where available; some scores below. I always used ear plugs whenever I took CATs.

7. I got the Manhattan SC only after I exhausted all the OG questions. I wanted the 6 practice tests that came with the book. I would say this book is easy to understand if your first-language is English. Particularly, the chapter on modifiers is very useful. Otherwise, buy this nevertheless for the 6 practice CATs and start with GMAT Club’s Ultimate Grammar Book (I had to revise my verb tenses… these questions can be very confusing).

8. Check out other test prep companies’ materials. PowerScore CR bible has good problem sets on CR at the end of each chapter, so try those problems even if the chapters are too long to read. E-gmat’s free verbal live session PDFs are useful as they show the question analysis in detail. Finally, GMAT Club has 2 very useful books: Math Book and Ultimate Grammar Book.

9. Visit the test center way before your test day. Locate the toilet. Time yourself (if necessary; I didn’t do this), how long it takes for you to walk from the test room to the toilet, pee, wash your hands, dry your hands, get back to the test room. You can then figure out how much time you have left to walk around before checking in.

10. If you are working, like I am, take a week off before your test date. Shut out work; do not open your work laptop unless it is an emergency. This test cost me USD 250 and I’m not rich and neither do I feel like retaking unless absolutely necessary (i.e. my score is not good enough to get me into the course I want at the school I want). Take this week to review your “more than 2 times wrong” problems, take the remaining MGMAT CATs/free CATs and take GMAT Prep Test 2. Make a judgment call 3 days before your test date, whether to give your worst topics a final shot or ditch them completely (I ditched probability and combinatorics).

Mock scores (in chronological order):
• Economist – 640
• Princeton Review – 640
• Veritas – 660
• Kaplan – 640
• Veritas (retake) – 680
• GMAT Prep 1 – 710
• MGMAT 1 – 640
• MGMAT 2 – 640
• MGMAT 3 – 660 (done in week before test)
• MGMAT 4 – 680 (done in week before test)
• MGMAT 5 – 690 (done in week before test)
• MGMAT 6 – 660 (done in week before test)
• GMAT Prep 2 – 710 (3 days before test) – slightly disappointing

Test day:

• I got up an hour earlier than expected. Watched some motivational youtube videos (TED-Ed: 8 traits of successful people – Richard St. John). Revised my AWA template (see attachment), which I crafted the night before – I had some template in my head each time I did the AWA section in my mocks, I just had to write it out the night before to remind myself. Revised my cheat sheets. Had lunch then left for the test center.
  
• I arrived slightly early and went to the washroom first before sitting outside and getting my head together. Around 15 minutes before the appointment time, I went in. The test center people had me read an NDA and sign on a piece of paper before scanning my eyes and palms. Then I was escorted to the computer. I plugged in my ear plugs.
  
• There is some time given for you to chose your schools, go through the tutorial, etc. I was quite grateful for this extra time to really calm myself down and get into the zone.
  
• AWA – not the hardest argument I ever attempted.
  
• IR – started off ok then got progressively tougher. Not too sure why but I had a feeling I wouldn’t get 8 like I did for GMAT Prep 2; thought I would get a 5 or 6.
  
• Time for break! I got out, drank water, went to the washroom, walked one round, paused for a moment before going back into the test center. I had 1 minute left in my break when I was logged in.
  
• Quant – started off ok then got progressively tougher and then got easier. To my relief, I got no probability or combinatorics questions. But I thought I might have missed a few questions in the middle because they took way too long to solve and I just made a random guess.
  
• Time for break! I got out, drank water, went to the washroom, walked one round, paused for a moment before going back into the test center. I had 2 minutes left in my break when I was logged in.
  
• Verbal – tougher than GMAT Prep IMHO. The first question I got was an SC, which was ok, then a CR, which was still ok, then another SC and a RC. After the first RC, things started turning for the worse and getting confusing until I found myself short of time after the final RC (round about question 34). I thought, oh boy, there goes a good verbal score and I’m actually better at verbal than quant. I proceeded to try my very best on the remaining questions but did not make it to see question 41 (I only answered 40 questions).
  
• I was praying for 680 by now. There were these few slides on background info, contact details, etc. Went through them slowly even though these were all pre-filled, dreading to see the unofficial score…

Unofficial GMAT score: IR7, Q50, V42, Total = 760.

P.S. 5 days later… AWA 6.0.