Debrief: 710 Q50 (93%) V36 (78%) AWA 5.5

Question

Hello All,

Today morning I took GMAT and scored 710 Q50 (93%) V36 (78%).
I wish my score was 710 Q49 V37; however, I am not that worried about it. Instead I have decided to concentrate my energies on the application process.
I really want to thank this wonderful community. Gmatclub helped me immensely in my GMAT prep.

I will write a debrief about my prep in a day or two.

Thank you!

l0rrie · Answer

Congratulations, do share your successful tips withus!

eskimoroll · Answer

Congrats on a great score!

skbjunior · Answer

My debrief:

Hello, I was immensely benefited from numerous invaluable insights of Gmatclub members throughout my gmat preparation. I would like to do my best to give it back to the fellow-members. I am sharing my personal gmat preparation experience with you all. In general, I will explain how I tried to overcome my troubles in verbal and succeeded to certain extent.

Length of Study: August'10 - May'11

Book and materials used:
(1) Veritas Prep entire course material
(2) Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction Strategy Guide
(3) Manhattan GMAT Number Properties Strategy Guide
(3) Manhattan GMAT Word Translations Strategy Guide
(4) Manhattan GMAT Equations, Inequalities, & VIC’s Strategy Guide
(5) OG 11, 12
(6) OG Verbal Review 2nd edition

My practice test scores:
2010-09-06 GMAT Life V37 Q51 690
2010-09-12 ManhattanGMAT CAT I V27 Q44 590
2010-09-25 GMAT Life V32 Q43 610
2010-09-26 GMAT Simulator V33 Q44 630
2010-10-09 GMAT Life V39 Q40 630
2010-10-31 GMAT Simulator V32 Q46 630
2010-11-14 GMAT Simulator V22 Q46 570
2011-03-27 GMAT Simulator V29 Q49 640
2011-04-03 GMAT Life V39 Q51 700
2011-04-09 ManhattanGMAT CAT II V35 Q45 660
2011-04-10 GMAT Life V44 Q39 660
2011-04-16 ManhattanGMAT CAT III V36 Q48 690
2011-04-21 800 Score V38 Q50 720
2011-04-24 GMAT Prep I V38 Q50 720
2011-04-30 ManhattanGMAT CAT IV V41 Q47 720
2011-05-05 800 Score V38 Q48 700
2011-05-06 800 Score V43 Q48 730
2011-04-09 ManhattanGMAT CAT V V36 Q47 680
2011-04-24 GMAT Prep II V35 Q49 700

2011-05-24 Actual GMAT V36 Q50 710 (GMAT Prep tests are very accurate indicators of the actual test score.)

This is how I went about my GMAT preparation in general:
By the end of July'10, I decided to pursue FT MBA and to apply for Fall'12. Since I am a non-native English speaker ( I have been living in US for the past 8.5 yrs though), I knew that I would struggle with Verbal. Therefore, I decided to join Vertias Prep online 6 weeks class starting from Aug'10. As an engineer, I did not have much problem with quantitative. (Please do not get me wrong here, I had to keep practicing problems to remain sharp throughout my GMAT preparation journey.) However, verbal was always a bottleneck for me. My key problem was poor comprehension and consequently, poor reading speed. As a result of poor reading comprehension and speed, I would lose confidence during the mock-test, feel nervous, choke and end up scoring poorly. I did not, however, have any significant problems in internalizing RC, CR, and SC strategies and rules. By the end of Veritas on-line class, I did not see any marked improvement in my verbal score, so I decided to attack the basic impediment to my verbal score: poor comprehension and reading speed. I came across the link on gmatclub books-to-read-improve-verbal-score-and-enjoy-a-good-read-76079.html by bb (thanks for that very useful info!). I read most of those classic novels. I started reading daily editorials on NY Times.com, Washington Post.com, and articles on sciencedaily.com, wikipedia.org. I read and only read from Oct'10 to Feb'11. I read uninteresting articles during different times of the day. For instance, as soon as I would wake up, I would start computer and read an astronomy or biology related article on Sciencedaily.com. I would do the same thing when I would be extremely tired and wanted to go to bed. This habit forced me to improve my concentration and comprehension. I could see some improvement in my comprehension and reading speed.

My interpretation of variation in my verbal score:
My nemesis in verbal in most mock-tests were a few sentence correction questions related to clarity of meaning, conciseness and a few CR questions that I would somehow never completely grasp. I knew I had to make fewer than 10 mistakes to be at V38 in general (as I scored V38 in GMAT Prep I with 10 mistakes.); however, I would sometimes make as many as 12, causing my verbal to go down to V35 as happened in GMATprep II. As far as I understand, there is a very fine line between V35 and V39 (at least I observed it with my mock-test results). A couple of mistakes on easy questions can bring your score down by as many as 4 points.

Actual Test Experience:
I felt that the actual test was very much in line or I would say easier than the GMAT Prep. For AWA, I used Chineseburned AWA templates. I can't thank enough for those wonderful templates. I owe my 5.5 to those templates for sure. I did not have any timing issues either in Quantitative or in Verbal. In Quantitative, I did not face a single question that I did not know how to solve. However, it had been very difficult for me to contain my careless mistakes to 2-3 to score 51 during the practice tests, and I think same thing must have happened during the actual test. Somehow no matter how hard I concentrated, I would make 4-5 mistakes. Verbal also went very smoothly. I am sure I must have made mistakes on SC and CR questions, even though they were not out of the world sort of questions. All the RCs were however a breeze. I could comprehend them completely and pre-phrase answers to all the question I faced.

Mental preparation for the test:
GMAT is very draining physically as well as mentally. I made use of all of my mock-tests to make myself mentally tougher. In the end, I was very successful in keeping my calm even if I encountered something out the blue. I would take a couple of deep breaths and focus. This habit improved my chances to get that question solved correctly.

Am I satisfied with my score?
Not totally; however, I do not have much to lament about. My final score is very much in line with the GMAT Prep scores. I also understand that if I can not get into a school of my choice with 710, then probably 730 will also not help me. Hence, I have decided to concentrate fully on the other aspects of my application.

I hope this debrief was helpful to someone. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I wish Good Luck to all the future GMAT test takers. If you attack this test strategically, you can definitely reach your goal.

Thanks all!

e1s · Answer

you have a nice score, that gives me hope! thanks

skbjunior · Answer

Thanks l0rrie! Good luck for your GMAT.

skbjunior · Answer

Good luck to you e1s!

sagmat5 · Answer

Congratulations :-D

& Good luck with your Applications.

nravi549 · Answer

Good luck

skbjunior · Answer

Thanks sagmat5 & nravi549! Good luck to you too. :-)

agdimple333 · Answer

Congratulations and all the best for your applications.

rg1 · Answer

@skbjunior- Congrats for your score. However, I've a question. I saw your verbal score varied from V22-V43 in practice tests. How much did you practice CR/SC before you could internalize strategies? Do you think you really internalized the strategies and made them second nature? Did you attempt 1000 SC, 1000CR? I wanna know that how much 'quantity' is enough for verbal?

I had a horrible time with verbal, however, I felt that I'm doing good in verbal during the real test. This is real GMAT trick when you don't know how good or bad you're doing during the real test. I think I missed some good chunk of questions, but I've no clue which questions I might have missed.

Alchemist1320 · Answer

congrats

and wonderful efforts....you gave tons of test...

Im also worried on verbal...will take some heart from you

How will you compare MGMAT tests and Real GMAT ?

rg1 · Answer

@ Alchemist1320- May I suggest you not to quote the full debrief? It makes the post unnecessarily long. You can always quote a specific section if you like

.

Alchemist1320 · Answer

agree...corrected now :-)

skbjunior · Answer

Hello rg1,

Before November 2010, my comprehension skills and overall verbal skills were poor. Hence, you can see variation from 22 to 39. (not that I improved my score much after I improved those skills; however, I always scored at least V35 and felt confident during tests.) Also, GMAT Life, GMAT simulator, and 800 score tests are not very close to the real test. I used those tests only to improve my test taking temperament and to practise more questions.

To internalize the strategies for SC/CR, I basically used Veritas Prep material, OG, and practice tests. These materials were enough for me to reach V35. I never attempted 1000 SC and 1000 CR. For SC, you have to manage 1 min (or more for a tough question) such that you pay attention initially to both grammar and meaning and in the end to the conciseness. I forgot to mention Powerscore CR Bible. It is a must-have book if you want to improve on CR. After I read that book, I changed my strategy of tackling CR questions. I started reading the argument first and then question stem. If you can figure out the weaknesses if any in the argument before looking at the question stem and prephase the answer before looking at the answer choices, then chances are greater that you will end up solving that CR correctly and that too in the least possible time. I can't emphasize enough how important is prephasing for CR and RC. Answer choices are phrased such that you might end up picking a very attractive but wrong choice. And, you won't even know that you missed that question. In my case, my not-too-bad ability to prephrase helped me remain at V35.

During break before verbal started, I always went over my strategies for CR/SC/RC in my mind. It is very easy during the test to get off track and not follow strategies precisely. That is what I used the practice tests for. I taught myself to remain as calm as possible no matter how hard the question is. If you remain clam, then the chances are greater that you will stick to the strategies.

Good luck for your preparation! When are you planning to take the test?

skbjunior · Answer

Hello Alchemist1320,

My MGAMT verbal scores are very comparable to the GMATPrep scores and the actual test score. However, qualitywise I think real GMAT questions are framed differently and sometimes are not as fuzzy as MGMAT's, esp. CRs. I always got at least 5 CRs wrong in MGMAT verbal. However, in both the GMATPreps I got only 2 and 3 CRs wrong respectively. Regarding SCs, I think that it is easier to find errors in MGMAT SCs than in real GMAT SCs. RCs also are much clearer in real GMAT with more or less similar difficulty. MGMAT tests are great a way to practise strategies though.To give you the perspective, if I got 12 wrong in MGMAT, then out of them 5 would be CRs, 3 would be SCs and remaining 4 would be RCs. When I got 12 wrong in GMATPrep, 6 were SCs, 3 each were CRs and RCs.

rongali · Answer

congrats ...best of luck for your application process

rjkaufman21 · Answer

Wow nice job. I'm hoping for a score around there.

chandu4gmat · Answer

Congratulations on your success! All the best for your applications!

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Debrief: 710 Q50 (93%) V36 (78%) AWA 5.5

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