Done at last!

Question

At last feeling light now. 700 (49,35) - not the best of scores, but I didn't expect more.

GMAT Club, along with some other sites have been of great help and I wish to thank them all.

I had mainly utilized Grockit, GMAT Prep and a couple of other free sites that offer full length tests. I must say that Grockit and Prep came closest to the type and difficulty of questions that I faced in the real exam. In fact, Grockit predicted 690 for me (with a range). So, I would say pretty darn close!

Some of the things that worked for me (may or may not work for you - so, please be selective and use your judgement)

0. Practice, Practice & Relax!
1. GMAT is not difficult - if you are not tensed, if your test is not timed, if you are a native English speaker.

- the only way NOT be tensed is to relax and rest.
- the test will be timed - so forget about this factor.
- if you are a non-native, then the only way is to practice.

It is important to consider GMAT a Marathon. When you are practicing for a Marathon would you be running test Marathons everyday? If no, then do not take a full length practice test everyday! Some folks get tensed and overwork themselves. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO RELAX AND REST! I took two exams per week towards the end - MAX! A total of 8 - 9 full exams from different sites, including a diagnostic test. On most of them the range was between 650 and 720; the later ones were 680 - 700.

I was around 600-ish when I started about an year back. I got myself overworked, trying to maintain a rigorous study routine after work. Tried to practice mock full lengths everyday; I thought the more I practice the more I could perfect myself. After about 3-4 tests, my score came down to 530-ish. I got frustrated and quit studying. A couple of months back, I gathered the enthusiasm once again and I started one final push. This time around, I studied for around 2-4 hours twice or thrice a week (depending on the situation - work, life, family, friends ...). I felt more relaxed and was able to concentrate on the problems more than I was about ten months back.

Thus, my suggestion to all test takers: the quality of time you spend is important the quantity is NOT. Hence, know your limits and either Practice, Practice & Relax or Practice, Relax & Relax. DO NOT try to Practice, Practice & Practice. Of course, I know if you have read so far, you are not trying Relax, Relax & Relax.

:-)

Now, with all your good wishes let me continue my program and school hunt!

Kudos are welcome if you have found the read interesting / helpful.

Now, with all your good wishes let me continue my program and school hunt! Kudos are welcome if you have found the read interesting / helpful.

sandeeepsharma · Answer

congrates and good luck for application part
please share your prep strategy specially for verbal

dev4mba · Answer

Congrats!! I am planning to take ur advice of doing some Qs daily... thanks!

goforanmba · Answer

Sandeep,

For verbal, I had the same problem as everyone else. I considered a lot of things to be right that are considered wrong in GMAT. However, I benefited a lot from my practice sessions at Grockit. e-GMAT is also a good site. I didn't get a chance to subscribe to e-GMAT as I discovered that site way later in my preparation road map; however, I checked out the free sessions that they offer. Those were quite helpful.

There are only a finite set of set of concepts tested in GMAT. So, the first thing that you need to know is those concepts such as, the use of among/between, the use of like/such as, subject verb agreement, pronoun agreement, parallelism etc. You will get a full list in the Grockit / e-GMAT site. It's fairly easy to learn the concepts - and you can do so just by searching the internet and referring to free study materials. What is difficult is to apply them correctly. In the real GMAT, if you are scoring higher, you would face difficult questions - the difficulty may be due to the fact that the questions are very verbose or due to the fact that more than one answer choice would seem to be correct. Hence, for non-native speakers it is easy to reach a certain level after which it gets real tough. You will find most non-native speakers start from a score of 25-28 and reach 30-33 fairly quickly. But if you want to be within the 90 percentile, it will not only take a lot of practice but you would have to keep yourself away from your usual environments that would unconsciously reinforce the wrong application. For example, in my case, every time I attended a non-GMAT related public gathering it was very painful to consciously reject the incorrect use of English that I had taken so much of pain to unlearn during my study sessions. Since, I am a working professional, it was not possible for me to avoid such gatherings; office meetings and office emails were the biggest source of distraction. At times I made a valiant effort to use them as examples of sentence correction questions. But that is not so easy when the actual topic being discussed in them is an urgent and important one requiring all your attention towards the resolution of an issue or topic.

For the sentence correction, I had an error log. Every time I made a mistake and learnt a new concept or the application of a concept, I made a small note in the log. I reviewed this log once every week to make sure that I do not repeat the mistake. It was a great help. For the difficult questions, where two or more answers look correct, it may be likely that one of them changes the meaning conveyed by the original sentence. Thus, it is very important to understand the meaning that the original sentence is trying to convey.

For critical reasoning, it is important to find the conclusion of the paragraph correctly. If you are not able to find the conclusion correctly, it is very likely that you will go wrong. In addition, some paragraphs will have a main conclusion and 1 or at times, 2 sub-conclusions or secondary points. For difficult questions, you need to detect whether the question refers to the main conclusion or the sub-conclusion and answer accordingly. For the bold face arguments, they would be variations of the following types:
1. Conclusion
2. Evidence
3. Belief (at times the conclusion may be a belief)
4. Counter Evidence
5. Alternate Conclusion
6. Prediction
(** courtesy e-GMAT)
So, if you can classify the bold faced sentences into any of these, you will have a better chance of getting to the right choice quicker. In my real exam, I got only 1 bold face question.

For reading comprehension, sheer practice and habit is what you need. Difficult questions on RC that relate to the style and tone of the author can be very confusing. But follow whatever the standard study materials tell you to do - 
1. Take abbreviated notes against each paragraph - you may not refer to these notes later but because you are writing, you will understand better. Notes may include, the main conclusion of the paragraph and the structure of the paragraph.
2. Take a shot at the purpose of the RC passage. And the title or main conclusion. If you get confused by the answer choices later on, take the one that roughly touches the main points in all the paragraph and is closer to the final paragraph.

Finally, if you have an "incorrect English environment" around you - try to avoid that as much as possible. That will be the greatest dampener. If you are unable to avoid it, just don't push too hard - you may as well get frustrated, which is even worse. Always remember that the GMAT is ONLY A PART of your entire application. It's not the end of the world if you do not score a 95-99 percentile. In the real life balancing will be more important than getting a 750 in GMAT.

Hope this helps and all the best!

Regards,

Kudos are welcome if you have found the read interesting / helpful.

sodhig1 · Answer

Hi - would you mind sharing the sites which have the free full length tests?

Thanks for your help!

sandeeepsharma · Answer

Hi goforanmba

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience in detail

nathandrake · Answer

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience in detail

goforanmba · Answer

Hi Sodhig1,

There are many sites that offer free full length tests. But remember, as I said earlier, you do not need to take a whole lot of full length tests. Anywhere between 5 to 10 is ok - depending on your comfort level. I took around 8/9.

Most GMAT test prep sites have diagnostic tests which are an excellent choice for full lengths. However, I found the diagnostic tests to be a little higher in difficulty level compared to the actual exam. So, if you are scoring a tad below your expectations you don't need to worry.

The best way to find a free full length test is to search for "GMAT Full Length" in Google. Many of the sites that you would get would be free. Here are some examples:

1. Grockit - has a 3 days free look in period. (doesn't have AWA)
2. Manhattan GMAT - has 1 free diagnostic.
3. When you register for GMAT - you will get 2 free full lengths.
4. Crack GMAT
5. Winning Prep
6. Princeton Review

.... many more.

Regards,

Kudos are welcome if you have found the read interesting / helpful.

bb · Answer

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