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Posts: 48
Updated on: 25 Dec 2012, 17:47
Originally posted by artistanbul on 18 Oct 2011, 07:28.
Last edited by artistanbul on 25 Dec 2012, 17:47, edited 5 times in total.
Last edited by artistanbul on 25 Dec 2012, 17:47, edited 5 times in total.
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Hello Everyone,
For me, GMAT Debriefs were one of the most useful parts of this forum that’s I wanted to share my experience as well.
Hope this encourages few people to get back in the game!
Here is my initial attempt 600 (Q47 – V27)
---I wanted to add here my previous debrief link but ican't so please do find from my previous posts- I just have 3 so shouldn't be a problem
-----
I sat for the exam yesterday and scored 700 (Q50 – V34).
Key takeaways:
1) Know your weaknesses and work on them. I would say it was sentence correction for me as is the case for many non-native speakers.
But it has to be more than that, know which areas you are missing questions from and work on that particular area such as pronouns, modifiers, idioms etc.
I didn’t keep an error log but knew the topics that I wasn’t comfortable with. I have prepared my own flashcards, and I put in a word document every single question that I missed with the explanation that I gathered from the forums. (A basic Google search would do it)-Gmatclub forums are highly ranked in organic search results- No issue on that)
2) Do not underestimate the stress factor. Try to relax before the exam, I have watched almost the whole season of “Outsourced” the last couple days and tried to relax. Seeing the test centre helps greatly as well!
3) One of the best advise I found on this forum – Pick your battles- Very effective, very helpful. This was specially the case for Quantitative part in my first trial. I wasn’t able to let go some of the hard math questions, losing more than 4 minutes on each of them and running out of time before the last 3-4 questions. This is something that you can definitely improve during the practice tests. I learned when to skip a question. The moment that you find yourself doing calculations how many minutes I have left and how many questions I need to do, you start to lose the concentration on the questions normally you can crack! Bottom line is good time management is king!
4) “ Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” Believe in yourself, if you fail once, go try again.
5) Did I tell you don’t accept the failure and try again!
6) Set the overall target and the target for each sections of the test. Target is not hitting 51 in quant but getting a overall decent score so, there is no point wasting your valuable time on hard math questions when you are scoring badly on verbal.
7) Try to take the exam when you have the peak performance. I booked my exam a week before the test-date. Setting an exam date may help some people to focus but this wasn’t the case for me. Do which one works for you!
8) No need to say timing is very important, get yourself a stopwatch and practice with time in 20-30 questions set. You can crack most of the math questions in 4-5 minutes but solving them under 2 minutes is what matters. Having said that, I have identified absolute values, inequalities and probability were 3 areas I was missing questions. It’s been 6 years that I was graduated so I can say I was pretty rusty. Speed will come with familiarity.
9) Don’t underestimate AWA. Do not leave it for the last minute as it might be a stress factor as well.
10) For non natives- know all of the terms in math-such as distinct numbers, consecutive integer, prime number, denominator etc. It hurts when you have to skip a question because you don’t know the meaning of a word!
Preparation
Duration:After my first try in April-11, I have prepared once again for 8 weeks. (Late August-October)
Quant Preparation
I found a nice compilation on hard math questions and did my own compilation from Manhattan GMAT cats. Never got a chance to do the gmatclub math sets but heard a lot about them. I did the official guide questions from the 12th edition, I found the diagnostic test to be quite good for a start. And I think Manhattan GMAT cat maths questions are very good if you want to train at altitudes. I developed some check routines , for instance I was double checking the option B before selecting C on data sufficiency questions. I developed this after several times remembering the first information and ending up choosing C when the answer is B. Likewise, checking all values between -1 and 0 or between 0 and 1 if the numbers are not integers. The more you train the less you do silly mistakes on math. In my compilation I have also included the questions that was spending more than 3,5 minutes to figure out whether there is a faster way to crack!
Verbal Preparation
SC:
Read all Manhattan SC and prepared flash cards. Read the SC notes available on this forum (Sahil’s SC notes etc.). Did the official guide questions. Started to do the 1000SC then gave up after 100 questions because of the wrong answers .Nothing can beat the official questions and I guess it’s more than enough. Also I looked into some special topics such eclipses etc. Couple weeks before the exam I found a document that includes all Sc questions from the gmat prep software. I wanted to do this badly, but never got a time. I guess I should have done this rather wasting my time on non official questions .I did a lot of Google search and read people’s explanations and discussions around the questions- Very useful very helpful. As you can tell from the number of my posts, I never attended discussions but have been an avid reader.
A week before the exam I read through all SC explanations from the official guide and try to familiarize myself what GMAC deem as definitely wrong. At the end of the day, this is a game by their rules.
CR:
Read the Powerscore CR and did the official questions. This was my strongest part in the verbal section. I had an accuracy rate of %90 on official questions, but I had some real trouble with 2-3 CR questions during the test.
Reading:
I have done the RC99, definitely is worth the money. Reading is all about digesting the text. I have always tried to think like the author of the text and first understand the tonality and the importance-role of every paragraph when reading. RC 99 is again a source to train at altitudes. I feel that it helped me a lot, for anything, I have made a list of 400 vocabularies that I didn’t know before and saw two or three of them in the real exam used couple new vocabulary in my essays
AWA:
Prepared a template and followed it. Wrote 5 essays for each type before the exam. They say the more the better and it takes time to write more. So practising also helps.
Practice Tests:
Real GMAT-1 600 Q47- V27) April 2012
GMAT Prep 710 (Q50 V35) August
Manhattan Cat -1 670 (Q47 V34) Sept
Manhattan Cat -2 680(Q48 V33) Sept
Manhattan Cat -3 690 (Q49 V34) September
Rest of the Cats were around 670-700 as well.
Gmat Prep-2 730 (Q50 V39)-5 days before the test
Test Day:
Scheduled the exam for 13:30 in Brussels .I had visited the test centre a day before the exam so I was comfortable with the parking etc. Just packed two bananas and a painkiller and arrived there an hour early. Read my essays once again and went afterwards for the check-in process. The staff was really helpful, put me on ease and showed the bathroom etc. Well the test room was a bit different experience, in my first experience the room was designed in away that everyone faces the wall without any distractions . (in Istanbul)This time the test centre was literally like a meeting room in which there is a person next to you that you can see his face but not his screen. And people started the test on different slots i.e. as I have entered the room 2 people had been doing the test already. I started typing the essays and I judge that they were doing the verbal part .(Sorry guys!)
Then they finished the exam new people came in when I was doing the verbal part. You have the full adrenalin that you wouldn’t care even they kill a person next to you (Ok, I would) during the test time, but it’s still a distraction. They can just turn the tables other way around facing the wall. Earplugs were good and I didn’t have that much an outside noise.
I was less nervous than my fist try (practice tests and also being a 2nd timer helps) , I relaxed completely after the AWA section. Argument essay was easy to find two assumptions and write 4-5 paragraphs. I wasn’t that comfortable with the issue one. I will update when I receive the results, anything more than 5 will do it.
I scored 50 on both of the GMAT prep tests and 47-50 on Manhattan GMAT tests. In my second GMAT prep test the very first question took me 4 minutes to solve because I read it wrong. SO I was comfortable with such unexpected situations. And It happened. The first quant question took 3 minutes to understand. A really easy number property question. But I stayed calm and kept my pace (14 questions done- 50 minutes left) Then the level of the questions got harder. There was a inequality question-DS around 15-16th question that I lost 4 minutes and then decided to do a educated guess and move on. I was sure that I got the next 3 questions right. So the tactic is clear f you know you miss a question, spend a little extra time to get the following ones right! Then I felt the level got easier, then somehow I was lagging behind during the 25th 26th questions.
And from that moment I panicked a little bit and then couldn’t figure out a geometry question and made another educated guess on a question that I could have gotten right if I had 2 more minutes. But it was all about one thing “pick your battles” then I had 5 minutes for the last 2 questions left. I solved the 36th question and right before I was selecting an option realized that even though I got the right answer I selected the wrong one. GMAC loves to do tricks among the options as well (Giving you an option X- π/3 instead of (X-π)/3.Under time pressure, it’s very easy to fall in this trap. Especially double check the answers very fast –specially if a simplification is involved) . Then I had a very complicated word problem, I found the right approach but as the question was very long couldn’t get the equation structured in 2 minutes. Then I made another educated guess. I have made 2 educated guesses and I was pretty sure I have also got the last math questions wrong. Including my silly mistakes as usual, I was pretty clear that I had screwed the Quant part when I had my break. I couldn’t help myself not thinking about the quant performance and even still trying to solve the last math question.
Then I did the right thing, washed my face with cold water and told myself; Quant was always the saver for me , but this time my verbal performance will save me. I ate a banana and get motivated once again for the verbal part. Verbal was nothing different than the OG. I felt the level increased after couple SC questions, I kept hr pace till a long reading around the 20th question. I lost a bit of time, after those heavy inference type questions. My CR performance on the real test was worse, I literally went blank on 2 CR questions. (I didn’t get a boldface this time, even though I had one in my first trial) So stop treating the boldface as hard level indicators. Anyway, then I rushed at the end of the exam, having 4 questions and only 5 minutes. Cracked the first one, guessed the second one, tried to solve the 3rd one then ended up guessing 3rd and the 4th one. I have been scoring around 33-40 in verbal part and judging from my score I can say I had a bad verbal day. Keeping the motivation until the end of the exam is crucial. I was pretty sure I was doing pretty good on verbal before I had couple hard problems in the idle of the test and got them wrong. Then running out of time didn’t help.
Then I opted to report my score then saw the “700”. I could have done better, but definitely I could have done worse as well. So I am happy with the score. There is a bit of a luck element in this exam as well. I am a media guy working in a mobile telecommunication area and one of my text was around mobile communications and the other was around traditional media. I was scared of the heavy scientific or sociology RC passages, so it can’t get any better than this can it? And I was very happy about my quant score as well after making a big fuss about that in my break. So the lesson is, never try to judge your performance try to do your best!
I will just echo what I said above, don’t give up and try again!
[
For me, GMAT Debriefs were one of the most useful parts of this forum that’s I wanted to share my experience as well.
Hope this encourages few people to get back in the game!
Here is my initial attempt 600 (Q47 – V27)
---I wanted to add here my previous debrief link but ican't so please do find from my previous posts- I just have 3 so shouldn't be a problem
-----I sat for the exam yesterday and scored 700 (Q50 – V34).
Key takeaways:
1) Know your weaknesses and work on them. I would say it was sentence correction for me as is the case for many non-native speakers.
But it has to be more than that, know which areas you are missing questions from and work on that particular area such as pronouns, modifiers, idioms etc.
I didn’t keep an error log but knew the topics that I wasn’t comfortable with. I have prepared my own flashcards, and I put in a word document every single question that I missed with the explanation that I gathered from the forums. (A basic Google search would do it)-Gmatclub forums are highly ranked in organic search results- No issue on that)
2) Do not underestimate the stress factor. Try to relax before the exam, I have watched almost the whole season of “Outsourced” the last couple days and tried to relax. Seeing the test centre helps greatly as well!
3) One of the best advise I found on this forum – Pick your battles- Very effective, very helpful. This was specially the case for Quantitative part in my first trial. I wasn’t able to let go some of the hard math questions, losing more than 4 minutes on each of them and running out of time before the last 3-4 questions. This is something that you can definitely improve during the practice tests. I learned when to skip a question. The moment that you find yourself doing calculations how many minutes I have left and how many questions I need to do, you start to lose the concentration on the questions normally you can crack! Bottom line is good time management is king!
4) “ Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” Believe in yourself, if you fail once, go try again.
5) Did I tell you don’t accept the failure and try again!
6) Set the overall target and the target for each sections of the test. Target is not hitting 51 in quant but getting a overall decent score so, there is no point wasting your valuable time on hard math questions when you are scoring badly on verbal.
7) Try to take the exam when you have the peak performance. I booked my exam a week before the test-date. Setting an exam date may help some people to focus but this wasn’t the case for me. Do which one works for you!
8) No need to say timing is very important, get yourself a stopwatch and practice with time in 20-30 questions set. You can crack most of the math questions in 4-5 minutes but solving them under 2 minutes is what matters. Having said that, I have identified absolute values, inequalities and probability were 3 areas I was missing questions. It’s been 6 years that I was graduated so I can say I was pretty rusty. Speed will come with familiarity.
9) Don’t underestimate AWA. Do not leave it for the last minute as it might be a stress factor as well.
10) For non natives- know all of the terms in math-such as distinct numbers, consecutive integer, prime number, denominator etc. It hurts when you have to skip a question because you don’t know the meaning of a word!
Preparation
Duration:After my first try in April-11, I have prepared once again for 8 weeks. (Late August-October)
Quant Preparation
I found a nice compilation on hard math questions and did my own compilation from Manhattan GMAT cats. Never got a chance to do the gmatclub math sets but heard a lot about them. I did the official guide questions from the 12th edition, I found the diagnostic test to be quite good for a start. And I think Manhattan GMAT cat maths questions are very good if you want to train at altitudes. I developed some check routines , for instance I was double checking the option B before selecting C on data sufficiency questions. I developed this after several times remembering the first information and ending up choosing C when the answer is B. Likewise, checking all values between -1 and 0 or between 0 and 1 if the numbers are not integers. The more you train the less you do silly mistakes on math. In my compilation I have also included the questions that was spending more than 3,5 minutes to figure out whether there is a faster way to crack!
Verbal Preparation
SC:
Read all Manhattan SC and prepared flash cards. Read the SC notes available on this forum (Sahil’s SC notes etc.). Did the official guide questions. Started to do the 1000SC then gave up after 100 questions because of the wrong answers .Nothing can beat the official questions and I guess it’s more than enough. Also I looked into some special topics such eclipses etc. Couple weeks before the exam I found a document that includes all Sc questions from the gmat prep software. I wanted to do this badly, but never got a time. I guess I should have done this rather wasting my time on non official questions .I did a lot of Google search and read people’s explanations and discussions around the questions- Very useful very helpful. As you can tell from the number of my posts, I never attended discussions but have been an avid reader.
A week before the exam I read through all SC explanations from the official guide and try to familiarize myself what GMAC deem as definitely wrong. At the end of the day, this is a game by their rules.
CR:
Read the Powerscore CR and did the official questions. This was my strongest part in the verbal section. I had an accuracy rate of %90 on official questions, but I had some real trouble with 2-3 CR questions during the test.
Reading:
I have done the RC99, definitely is worth the money. Reading is all about digesting the text. I have always tried to think like the author of the text and first understand the tonality and the importance-role of every paragraph when reading. RC 99 is again a source to train at altitudes. I feel that it helped me a lot, for anything, I have made a list of 400 vocabularies that I didn’t know before and saw two or three of them in the real exam used couple new vocabulary in my essays
AWA:
Prepared a template and followed it. Wrote 5 essays for each type before the exam. They say the more the better and it takes time to write more. So practising also helps.
Practice Tests:
Real GMAT-1 600 Q47- V27) April 2012
GMAT Prep 710 (Q50 V35) August
Manhattan Cat -1 670 (Q47 V34) Sept
Manhattan Cat -2 680(Q48 V33) Sept
Manhattan Cat -3 690 (Q49 V34) September
Rest of the Cats were around 670-700 as well.
Gmat Prep-2 730 (Q50 V39)-5 days before the test
Test Day:
Scheduled the exam for 13:30 in Brussels .I had visited the test centre a day before the exam so I was comfortable with the parking etc. Just packed two bananas and a painkiller and arrived there an hour early. Read my essays once again and went afterwards for the check-in process. The staff was really helpful, put me on ease and showed the bathroom etc. Well the test room was a bit different experience, in my first experience the room was designed in away that everyone faces the wall without any distractions . (in Istanbul)This time the test centre was literally like a meeting room in which there is a person next to you that you can see his face but not his screen. And people started the test on different slots i.e. as I have entered the room 2 people had been doing the test already. I started typing the essays and I judge that they were doing the verbal part .(Sorry guys!)
Then they finished the exam new people came in when I was doing the verbal part. You have the full adrenalin that you wouldn’t care even they kill a person next to you (Ok, I would) during the test time, but it’s still a distraction. They can just turn the tables other way around facing the wall. Earplugs were good and I didn’t have that much an outside noise.
I was less nervous than my fist try (practice tests and also being a 2nd timer helps) , I relaxed completely after the AWA section. Argument essay was easy to find two assumptions and write 4-5 paragraphs. I wasn’t that comfortable with the issue one. I will update when I receive the results, anything more than 5 will do it.
I scored 50 on both of the GMAT prep tests and 47-50 on Manhattan GMAT tests. In my second GMAT prep test the very first question took me 4 minutes to solve because I read it wrong. SO I was comfortable with such unexpected situations. And It happened. The first quant question took 3 minutes to understand. A really easy number property question. But I stayed calm and kept my pace (14 questions done- 50 minutes left) Then the level of the questions got harder. There was a inequality question-DS around 15-16th question that I lost 4 minutes and then decided to do a educated guess and move on. I was sure that I got the next 3 questions right. So the tactic is clear f you know you miss a question, spend a little extra time to get the following ones right! Then I felt the level got easier, then somehow I was lagging behind during the 25th 26th questions.
And from that moment I panicked a little bit and then couldn’t figure out a geometry question and made another educated guess on a question that I could have gotten right if I had 2 more minutes. But it was all about one thing “pick your battles” then I had 5 minutes for the last 2 questions left. I solved the 36th question and right before I was selecting an option realized that even though I got the right answer I selected the wrong one. GMAC loves to do tricks among the options as well (Giving you an option X- π/3 instead of (X-π)/3.Under time pressure, it’s very easy to fall in this trap. Especially double check the answers very fast –specially if a simplification is involved) . Then I had a very complicated word problem, I found the right approach but as the question was very long couldn’t get the equation structured in 2 minutes. Then I made another educated guess. I have made 2 educated guesses and I was pretty sure I have also got the last math questions wrong. Including my silly mistakes as usual, I was pretty clear that I had screwed the Quant part when I had my break. I couldn’t help myself not thinking about the quant performance and even still trying to solve the last math question.
Then I did the right thing, washed my face with cold water and told myself; Quant was always the saver for me , but this time my verbal performance will save me. I ate a banana and get motivated once again for the verbal part. Verbal was nothing different than the OG. I felt the level increased after couple SC questions, I kept hr pace till a long reading around the 20th question. I lost a bit of time, after those heavy inference type questions. My CR performance on the real test was worse, I literally went blank on 2 CR questions. (I didn’t get a boldface this time, even though I had one in my first trial) So stop treating the boldface as hard level indicators. Anyway, then I rushed at the end of the exam, having 4 questions and only 5 minutes. Cracked the first one, guessed the second one, tried to solve the 3rd one then ended up guessing 3rd and the 4th one. I have been scoring around 33-40 in verbal part and judging from my score I can say I had a bad verbal day. Keeping the motivation until the end of the exam is crucial. I was pretty sure I was doing pretty good on verbal before I had couple hard problems in the idle of the test and got them wrong. Then running out of time didn’t help.
Then I opted to report my score then saw the “700”. I could have done better, but definitely I could have done worse as well. So I am happy with the score. There is a bit of a luck element in this exam as well. I am a media guy working in a mobile telecommunication area and one of my text was around mobile communications and the other was around traditional media. I was scared of the heavy scientific or sociology RC passages, so it can’t get any better than this can it? And I was very happy about my quant score as well after making a big fuss about that in my break. So the lesson is, never try to judge your performance try to do your best!
I will just echo what I said above, don’t give up and try again!
[
18 Oct 2011, 21:07
Kudos
Bookmarks
Great score 
How did you find the actual GMAT questions compared to prep materials in terms of difficulty? (Particularly the Official GMAT Guide)
How did you find the actual GMAT questions compared to prep materials in terms of difficulty? (Particularly the Official GMAT Guide)
19 Oct 2011, 00:14
Kudos
Bookmarks
No need to be scared of the real thing- Questions are very much the same as OG questions. Not harder not easier! I never believed the hype that questions are getting harder everyday. If anything, i found the RC even easier. (maybe my bad verbal score explains that "easy" part though )
) 
