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nate_vj
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GMAT Focus 1: 645 Q82 V83 DI80
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Going to take GMAT on monday 10 Aug 2024, 04:36
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Quote:
­Gratz on the 97%ile!!

Time permit, could you dive deeper on the following?

1. What was your initial diagnostic score (or an estimate)? How was your prep like for the 645?
2. How did you upgrade on the Non-Math related and Verbal (analysis/critique, inferred idea) elements?
3. A significant jump in score in such a short while has certainly grabbed the attention of many experts... Is there anything else about your prep in the past two weeks you could identify, apart from the three shared insightful inputs?
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­Hey Hoehenheim . I wanted to answer your questions in a separate message. So here they are.

1. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, a week before my 645 attempt, I gave my 2nd free official mock test, and got a 695(98%ile). Which is why I am now convinced, that the original was a tad bit harder than the free mocks. For the 645 attempt, my plan entailed the following,
  • I am from an Engineering background in India. So Math was by no means unfamiliar to me.
  • Magoosh was recommended to me by a family member who had used it a few years back. The reason for recommending Magoosh over others, was mainly because it just focused on the test-taking aspects, and less over data analysis of your prep.
  • This helped me first build a solid platform, conceptually wide and deep enough, before I started focusing/worrying on other aspects of my prep.
  • After I went through magoosh, I started solving the OG, especially for verbal. As I believe, nothing comes closest to simulating actual GMAT verbal questions as the OG. That and there being only a scarce presence of quality DI questions in Magoosh.
  • I did section tests by concocting a mix of medium, hard questions by mimicking the question difficulty split of my free mock tests in other GMAT-prep platforms. Then did every possible free mock tests, took the 2nd free official mock in the end.
  • Also I did the GMAT Olympics event religiously , as the event luckily coincided with the last weeks of my prep. So it did keep me sharp, and aware of different difficulty levels in the GMAT.
2. Non-math related DI questions, are such a hack really. What I picked up on was, merely by reading through all the options before you start evaluating them will save you most of the time. 7/10 times, it becomes dead obvious which pair of options will fit the MSR, after your first read. This obviously worked out very well given my Non math DI score. This by no means, is a viable strategy for verbal though. I tried to put in some effort into improving in verbal, but I realised that I was getting a pretty good accuracy across 23 questions, and my time would be more impactful if spent on quant and DI, and hence didn't spend much time exclusively for Verbal. But I can say the GMATNinja playlist, is the single best resource to get your verbal strategy down. Magoosh verbal was by no means, satisfying, and I for one was left with more questions than answers. So to sum it all up wrt verbal, GMAT ninja for test strategy, OG for practice.

PS: Also, if you are not comfortable with your english in general, reading through Business Sections of your local newspapers, would certainly help familiarise yourself with the kind of language used in GMAT(got this idea from magoosh btw). Try to focus on connectors, like "however","nonetheless", "In addition to",etc and their usage.


3. I think the first attempt was a bit more difficult than I anticipated, which is why I was a bit startled mid way through the test, because my initial plan of "get all the first 10 questions right in each section" was a flop in the first section already. So learning to identify your target score, and altering your test taking strategy according to it so that you reach that minimum score no matter what, in an accurate simulation of the test environment(buy mocks 3 and 4), is what I'd keep as the bottom line to why I got the score jump I did.­
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Going to take GMAT on monday 10 Aug 2024, 05:08
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nate_vj - thank you for the words of appreciation. Given where you are, your biggest headroom is in Verbal. While you may be able to improve Quant to Q90 and get a 705/715, you would need to improve Verbal to V85 to reliably improve your DI (remember, TPA and MSR would get more and more challenging).

The skills needed to improve Verbal are not very different. You just need to be a bit more deliberate in RC and CR. Attend my RC webinar next week, work on RC for a week, and then you should be there (if you want to improve)

-Rajat
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nate_vj
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Going to take GMAT on monday 10 Aug 2024, 05:28
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egmat
nate_vj - thank you for the words of appreciation. Given where you are, your biggest headroom is in Verbal. While you may be able to improve Quant to Q90 and get a 705/715, you would need to improve Verbal to V85 to reliably improve your DI (remember, TPA and MSR would get more and more challenging).

The skills needed to improve Verbal are not very different. You just need to be a bit more deliberate in RC and CR. Attend my RC webinar next week, work on RC for a week, and then you should be there (if you want to improve)

-Rajat
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­Thank you for the insights Rajat. I think I agree as well. I'll add the webinar to my calendar👍🏼.
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GMAT Focus 1: 715 Q83 V90 DI83
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Going to take GMAT on monday 11 Aug 2024, 23:23
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Big shoutout to AjiteshArun, for being super encouraging in analysing my initial attempt, and assuring me of my competence in verbal reasoning based on his inference. Bit anti-climatic given my final verbal score ik😅, but nonetheless I think the confidence I gained from the conversation with you had a role to play in my better attempt. Thank you for that 😊🤝. Hope this forum continues to benefit many other people like me.
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­Glad I could help! V82 isn't bad at all (did you run out of time in verbal?), but you are almost certainly already capable of getting an even higher score. It's the total score that matters though, and 685 is an excellent score!­
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nate_vj
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Going to take GMAT on monday 12 Aug 2024, 10:35
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AjiteshArun

nate_vj
Big shoutout to AjiteshArun, for being super encouraging in analysing my initial attempt, and assuring me of my competence in verbal reasoning based on his inference. Bit anti-climatic given my final verbal score ik😅, but nonetheless I think the confidence I gained from the conversation with you had a role to play in my better attempt. Thank you for that 😊🤝. Hope this forum continues to benefit many other people like me.
­Glad I could help! V82 isn't bad at all (did you run out of time in verbal?), but you are almost certainly already capable of getting an even higher score. It's the total score that matters though, and 685 is an excellent score!­
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­I think I was a bit less focused during the section than I'd like to admit. I feel it was because, I was a bit excited that I did my Quant and DI well, and was really eager to finish the test the soonest. But I also do think, some of the questions I got during the exam did get seem a bit more of a tougher draft than usual. I wish I could be more precise, but this is all I can remember regarding verbal.
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