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10 May 2012, 07:25
Kudos
Bookmarks
I wanted to share a quick debrief: after six months of studying I achieved a 760 on the GMAT. After studying Kaplan and Manhattan for a couple months I took the GMATPrep1 and got a 720. I was very surprised with the score and how it broke down - I had a middling quantitative percentile, somewhere in the low 60's and a 99th percentile verbal.
From that point on, I only studied quantitative. The resources I used were: The 8 Manhattan study guides, lurking on this forum and the OG and Quant Review. That's it.
I truly believe that in order to do well in the 700+ areas of the quantitative you should be extremely familiar with the underlying mathematical concepts and possess the ability to solve using 'straight math' or mathematical logic rather than with a patchwork of guessing and backsolving techniques. If I had a couple more months doing OG problems and Quant Review problems over and over I probably could have improved the Quant score.
I don't have much advice for studying verbal because I never really studied, and furthermore, never really knew what it was like not to know how to do it. I would suggest if you have over six months till the exam, start reading essays by David Foster Wallace. He is not a business writer but he writes with a rich vocaublary and has a penchant for densely informative but immaculately structured sentences about arcane topics - kind of like the GMAT writers do.
Now I need to jump into the admissions process. I have several lingering questions for which I will be likely seeking out this forum's help.
I would like to go to the best school I can that is a fit but I need to address a few things:
I am Canadian and went to a regionally respected college accounting program for my first two years of undergrad, obtaining a diploma and then transfering to a regionally respected Bachelor of Commerce program where I obtained years 3 and 4 of my degree (Royal Roads University). Neither are likely anywhere near prestigious in America.
Also I have extracurriculars that I am passionate about, including being a director of am undergrad business case competition in school (was also invited back to be a case competition judge as an alumnus) and working at a high level of responsibility for a city council campaign that was successful in obtaining a seat against a slate of 8 incumbents.
I also have been guest lecturer on marketing and branding at a local program that helps young entrepreneurs who don't qualify for traditional loans to get microloans.
Anyway my point is this is all really great stuff in the context of the city I live in, but it seems daunting to try and compare it to people who have done American-sounding things like work for think tanks and internationally-renowned non-profits.
Another question is there any kind of considerations I should take as a Canadian (an international student that isn't so international and could pass easily as an American).
I don't want to get off track from the journey of the GMAT though, I would suggest that if you are looking for motivation on the GMAT, always remember that the higher score you get, the more hourly wage you can command as a tutor - even if you don't get into your favourite MBA program!!!
Thanks so much to the forum - you kept me motivated through the longest half-year of studying of my life.
From that point on, I only studied quantitative. The resources I used were: The 8 Manhattan study guides, lurking on this forum and the OG and Quant Review. That's it.
I truly believe that in order to do well in the 700+ areas of the quantitative you should be extremely familiar with the underlying mathematical concepts and possess the ability to solve using 'straight math' or mathematical logic rather than with a patchwork of guessing and backsolving techniques. If I had a couple more months doing OG problems and Quant Review problems over and over I probably could have improved the Quant score.
I don't have much advice for studying verbal because I never really studied, and furthermore, never really knew what it was like not to know how to do it. I would suggest if you have over six months till the exam, start reading essays by David Foster Wallace. He is not a business writer but he writes with a rich vocaublary and has a penchant for densely informative but immaculately structured sentences about arcane topics - kind of like the GMAT writers do.
Now I need to jump into the admissions process. I have several lingering questions for which I will be likely seeking out this forum's help.
I would like to go to the best school I can that is a fit but I need to address a few things:
I am Canadian and went to a regionally respected college accounting program for my first two years of undergrad, obtaining a diploma and then transfering to a regionally respected Bachelor of Commerce program where I obtained years 3 and 4 of my degree (Royal Roads University). Neither are likely anywhere near prestigious in America.
Also I have extracurriculars that I am passionate about, including being a director of am undergrad business case competition in school (was also invited back to be a case competition judge as an alumnus) and working at a high level of responsibility for a city council campaign that was successful in obtaining a seat against a slate of 8 incumbents.
I also have been guest lecturer on marketing and branding at a local program that helps young entrepreneurs who don't qualify for traditional loans to get microloans.
Anyway my point is this is all really great stuff in the context of the city I live in, but it seems daunting to try and compare it to people who have done American-sounding things like work for think tanks and internationally-renowned non-profits.
Another question is there any kind of considerations I should take as a Canadian (an international student that isn't so international and could pass easily as an American).
I don't want to get off track from the journey of the GMAT though, I would suggest that if you are looking for motivation on the GMAT, always remember that the higher score you get, the more hourly wage you can command as a tutor - even if you don't get into your favourite MBA program!!!
Thanks so much to the forum - you kept me motivated through the longest half-year of studying of my life.
10 May 2012, 08:19
Kudos
Bookmarks
That's an incredible score. I can see in your writing that your verbal is outrageously good. I am at the same starting point for Quant and hope to have an improvement similar to yours. Good luck in your applications and don't doubt yourself. You've done some great things, be proud of them and be confident in yourself.
10 May 2012, 18:35
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi all,
I'd like to expand on my debrief and hopefully impart something more practical - I was very exuberant in the original post and rushed it a little bit. Let me try and break down some very specific points to supplement my original post:
As I indicated, the vast majority of my study was with the MGMAT guides - I credit these guides with giving me the score I did. Right from the first guide and the explanation of prime factor boxes, I found that these guides were able to break things down and make the clear in a way that I didn't even get in high school. I also found the guides particularly good with alegbra, number properties and geometry. For statistics and combinatorics, I preferred the OG and the Internet.
I did a GmatPREP practice day the day before the test day and scored a 730. This was inflated by knowing some of the RC passages.
AWA
I did not study for the AWA portion. I simply read what the essays were about a few months before. I would recommend a simple 5-paragraph structure with an intro paragraph, three supporting points, and a conclusion paragraph that has a little flare like a quote from a philosopher or something. Treat the analysis of an argument like a CR passage, conceptually. Look for the 'assumptions that weaken' and 'lacking evidence'. Always disagree with the argument.
I would also like to note that as I was readying for the test, getting my locker key, having a Nutrigrain bar, drinking nineteen classes of water from soft plastic cone cups from the water cooler, etc. I was having near-fatal anxiety about the quant section. I found that taking an hour to write AWA lessened my anxiety considerably. I enjoyed getting a verbal and writing warm-up before going under the clock for quant. I suggest in practice, that you learn to treat AWA as a meditation session. Stick to a structure, believe you will get 6.0, relax, don't panic. I believe that if you possess an undergraduate degree, nothing on the AWA should require strenuous writing effort but I understand that English is not the language everyone did their degree in.
Quant
I saw the first question and panicked. I may have got it wrong. After a few questions right I got into some data sufficiency and may have done not so well in that. Through out the middle third of the exam I started getting some very 'standard' quant questions (overlapping sets, percentage change, pos-neg number properties DS) and conceded that maybe the test has placed me at a middle-ish level and that I wasn't going to get a great percentile. However, I started to hit my stride near the end, nailing a few trap geometry questions (ie. presenting what looked like a sphere question but was at its core merely a circle question) and the eight questions were hard. I think I got the last two or three correct and felt a high coming off it although I knew I probably got the standard 12-13 questions wrong.
If I could give one unorthodox piece of advice it is this: give yourself ONE 'extra cheat time' question on the exam. That is: if there is a question that is slightly above your ability to conceptualize and answer in two minutes but you have a gut feeling you can do it in 3:30 - DO IT, take the extra time, don't squander, and nail the question - do it so you feel great and nail it. There is something particularly insidious about questions that KNOW you could get in 4-5 minutes in your living room. The first time you encounter one of these questions I would say see it through as a confidence booster but DO NOT DO THIS TWICE or you will screw up your overall timing. I think adrenaline over the next three questions or so after getting a tough one in 3-4 minutes will make up for the extra time you spent.
Verbal
This is my advice for a top score:
SC
Run this method. Do not deviate:
1. Read the sentence. If you mind blips that 'A' is awkward, eliminate it immediately and do not look at it again. Then go through the sentences and split them into pairs or threes and twos based on similarities - you know what I mean - two sentences will have 'affect' and three will have 'effect' in the same spot. If you can eliminate a group based on knowing the superior choice. Eliminate the group. Never look at it again. Then find another way to split the remaining choices. This has served me so well in SC.
NEVER let your eyes glaze over all 5 sentences at once, trying to sort let the best answer pop out at you. ALWAYS eliminate worst and keep eliminating until one remains. If I have eliminated 4 answers with 100% confidence based on immutable flaws, sometimes I will not even read the 5th option.
NEVER return to a sentence you have previously eliminated with high confidence, do not let your eyes wander back to it. If you killed it, it doesn't exist, it is dead and gone.
ONLY compare two sentences side-by-side if you eliminate and are down to two, or, and this is should be the worst-case-scenario, if you go through the elimination process and eliminate all 5. If you eliminated all 5 it means one of the flaws by which you eliminated a sentence was not actually a flaw. Return to the flaw you felt was least egregious and work backwards to see if you can uneliminate a flaw. Hopefully this happens to you only once or twice on the whole exam.
RC
I believe in reading through the entire passage at medium speed, while looking for the key elements. How many points of view are there (ie. is there one neutral point of view? Is there one point of view in the 1st paragraph, a reported refutation in the second paragraph, and then finally the author's third and final point of view in the last paragraph? - If there are statistics or percentages take quick notes almost as if it were an overlapping sets problem, so if you get a What can be inferred? question you are ready to cruch some simple numbers)? Read at medium speed, you won't be coming back to read the whole thing so take a steady pace, comprehending every sentence as you read. Hopefully it will take 3-4 minutes and then you can nail three questions in a row in 30 seconds each. Use the elimination method, always, starting from worst until one choice is remaining.
CR
This one is the hardest to give advice for. I briefly looked at the Kaplan method of Read the Question Stem - Read the Passage - Predict an Answer - Look at the answers - See if your prediction is there. If your prediction for what would weaken the assumption is there, congrats, you probably got it right. If not, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. I find that if you even get a bit emotional with it it helps - for instance if in a What would weaken? question I see something that would actually strengthen the argument, I think in my head "Whoever wrote this (c) suggestion is an idiot, or if the choice is out of scope or irrelevant I gleefully cross it off in my notes, literally thinking in my head "What does this have to do with anything?? they were asking about the per capita GDP growth not OVERALL GDP growth?? D GET OUT OF MY HOUSE." This visceral reaction to questions that are wrong gives me a great confidence boost when I choose the one that is right.
Finally, in the minute you have to read the instructions before starting verbal I recommend turning your scratch paper sideways and writing A B C D E as many times as you can in rows across the page so that when the time starts you have a built-in place to scratch in x's during an elimination. If I ran out of little A B C D E's to put x's under I would sometimes turn the page and start writing them on a fresh page while reading a RC passage. At least get good at quickly writing A B C D E without looking so you can read a question and do it at the same time so when it comes to start eliminating you can just look down at your paper and go rather than making a quick row of answers every time.
There are some particularly insidious sentence correction questions on the GMAT but always remember that it is NOT ARBITRARY. Near the end I had a bit of extra time left and I got a top-level SC questions that I sat with for 4 minutes because I just couldn't find one question that looked right. After a massive elimination process, I finally realized that the Mobius-strip like wording of the question meant that a preposition did not actually refer to the verb before it but a verb obscured by commas everywhere that was much earlier in the sentence. With this revelation, finally one choice made sense.
Don't give up unless you have to. If you have to give up, feel no emotion and flip a mental coin on the two answers that are left (no question should so hard that you can't eliminate down to two better-than-the-rest answers).
When the exam was done my heart was pounding and a 760 popped up on the screen. I left room, got my score, got my stuff and walked out into the parking lot, stunned.
I had sent my GMAT scores to Ivey, Queen's, Fuqua, Darden, and Said. The journey had just begun, but the hardest part was over and could hold my head high.
I'd like to expand on my debrief and hopefully impart something more practical - I was very exuberant in the original post and rushed it a little bit. Let me try and break down some very specific points to supplement my original post:
As I indicated, the vast majority of my study was with the MGMAT guides - I credit these guides with giving me the score I did. Right from the first guide and the explanation of prime factor boxes, I found that these guides were able to break things down and make the clear in a way that I didn't even get in high school. I also found the guides particularly good with alegbra, number properties and geometry. For statistics and combinatorics, I preferred the OG and the Internet.
I did a GmatPREP practice day the day before the test day and scored a 730. This was inflated by knowing some of the RC passages.
AWA
I did not study for the AWA portion. I simply read what the essays were about a few months before. I would recommend a simple 5-paragraph structure with an intro paragraph, three supporting points, and a conclusion paragraph that has a little flare like a quote from a philosopher or something. Treat the analysis of an argument like a CR passage, conceptually. Look for the 'assumptions that weaken' and 'lacking evidence'. Always disagree with the argument.
I would also like to note that as I was readying for the test, getting my locker key, having a Nutrigrain bar, drinking nineteen classes of water from soft plastic cone cups from the water cooler, etc. I was having near-fatal anxiety about the quant section. I found that taking an hour to write AWA lessened my anxiety considerably. I enjoyed getting a verbal and writing warm-up before going under the clock for quant. I suggest in practice, that you learn to treat AWA as a meditation session. Stick to a structure, believe you will get 6.0, relax, don't panic. I believe that if you possess an undergraduate degree, nothing on the AWA should require strenuous writing effort but I understand that English is not the language everyone did their degree in.
Quant
I saw the first question and panicked. I may have got it wrong. After a few questions right I got into some data sufficiency and may have done not so well in that. Through out the middle third of the exam I started getting some very 'standard' quant questions (overlapping sets, percentage change, pos-neg number properties DS) and conceded that maybe the test has placed me at a middle-ish level and that I wasn't going to get a great percentile. However, I started to hit my stride near the end, nailing a few trap geometry questions (ie. presenting what looked like a sphere question but was at its core merely a circle question) and the eight questions were hard. I think I got the last two or three correct and felt a high coming off it although I knew I probably got the standard 12-13 questions wrong.
If I could give one unorthodox piece of advice it is this: give yourself ONE 'extra cheat time' question on the exam. That is: if there is a question that is slightly above your ability to conceptualize and answer in two minutes but you have a gut feeling you can do it in 3:30 - DO IT, take the extra time, don't squander, and nail the question - do it so you feel great and nail it. There is something particularly insidious about questions that KNOW you could get in 4-5 minutes in your living room. The first time you encounter one of these questions I would say see it through as a confidence booster but DO NOT DO THIS TWICE or you will screw up your overall timing. I think adrenaline over the next three questions or so after getting a tough one in 3-4 minutes will make up for the extra time you spent.
Verbal
This is my advice for a top score:
SC
Run this method. Do not deviate:
1. Read the sentence. If you mind blips that 'A' is awkward, eliminate it immediately and do not look at it again. Then go through the sentences and split them into pairs or threes and twos based on similarities - you know what I mean - two sentences will have 'affect' and three will have 'effect' in the same spot. If you can eliminate a group based on knowing the superior choice. Eliminate the group. Never look at it again. Then find another way to split the remaining choices. This has served me so well in SC.
NEVER let your eyes glaze over all 5 sentences at once, trying to sort let the best answer pop out at you. ALWAYS eliminate worst and keep eliminating until one remains. If I have eliminated 4 answers with 100% confidence based on immutable flaws, sometimes I will not even read the 5th option.
NEVER return to a sentence you have previously eliminated with high confidence, do not let your eyes wander back to it. If you killed it, it doesn't exist, it is dead and gone.
ONLY compare two sentences side-by-side if you eliminate and are down to two, or, and this is should be the worst-case-scenario, if you go through the elimination process and eliminate all 5. If you eliminated all 5 it means one of the flaws by which you eliminated a sentence was not actually a flaw. Return to the flaw you felt was least egregious and work backwards to see if you can uneliminate a flaw. Hopefully this happens to you only once or twice on the whole exam.
RC
I believe in reading through the entire passage at medium speed, while looking for the key elements. How many points of view are there (ie. is there one neutral point of view? Is there one point of view in the 1st paragraph, a reported refutation in the second paragraph, and then finally the author's third and final point of view in the last paragraph? - If there are statistics or percentages take quick notes almost as if it were an overlapping sets problem, so if you get a What can be inferred? question you are ready to cruch some simple numbers)? Read at medium speed, you won't be coming back to read the whole thing so take a steady pace, comprehending every sentence as you read. Hopefully it will take 3-4 minutes and then you can nail three questions in a row in 30 seconds each. Use the elimination method, always, starting from worst until one choice is remaining.
CR
This one is the hardest to give advice for. I briefly looked at the Kaplan method of Read the Question Stem - Read the Passage - Predict an Answer - Look at the answers - See if your prediction is there. If your prediction for what would weaken the assumption is there, congrats, you probably got it right. If not, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. I find that if you even get a bit emotional with it it helps - for instance if in a What would weaken? question I see something that would actually strengthen the argument, I think in my head "Whoever wrote this (c) suggestion is an idiot, or if the choice is out of scope or irrelevant I gleefully cross it off in my notes, literally thinking in my head "What does this have to do with anything?? they were asking about the per capita GDP growth not OVERALL GDP growth?? D GET OUT OF MY HOUSE." This visceral reaction to questions that are wrong gives me a great confidence boost when I choose the one that is right.
Finally, in the minute you have to read the instructions before starting verbal I recommend turning your scratch paper sideways and writing A B C D E as many times as you can in rows across the page so that when the time starts you have a built-in place to scratch in x's during an elimination. If I ran out of little A B C D E's to put x's under I would sometimes turn the page and start writing them on a fresh page while reading a RC passage. At least get good at quickly writing A B C D E without looking so you can read a question and do it at the same time so when it comes to start eliminating you can just look down at your paper and go rather than making a quick row of answers every time.
There are some particularly insidious sentence correction questions on the GMAT but always remember that it is NOT ARBITRARY. Near the end I had a bit of extra time left and I got a top-level SC questions that I sat with for 4 minutes because I just couldn't find one question that looked right. After a massive elimination process, I finally realized that the Mobius-strip like wording of the question meant that a preposition did not actually refer to the verb before it but a verb obscured by commas everywhere that was much earlier in the sentence. With this revelation, finally one choice made sense.
Don't give up unless you have to. If you have to give up, feel no emotion and flip a mental coin on the two answers that are left (no question should so hard that you can't eliminate down to two better-than-the-rest answers).
When the exam was done my heart was pounding and a 760 popped up on the screen. I left room, got my score, got my stuff and walked out into the parking lot, stunned.
I had sent my GMAT scores to Ivey, Queen's, Fuqua, Darden, and Said. The journey had just begun, but the hardest part was over and could hold my head high.
