750 (Q50,V40), IR-7, AWA-5.5 -- First Attempt

Question

Hi Guys,
Thought of sharing my experience of managing a decent score in my first attempt.

1. Background

I am an engineer and have done an MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai. I have work ex with a telecom major and currently am employed with the strategy consulting division of a consulting firm. Sometime during last year I decided that I needed to get another MBA for a plausible career switch. That however is not the reason why I am writing this. It's a story for another day.

2. Preparation

I gave myself 3 months to crack this exam. With hard work and a proper plan one can crack this exam with a decent score.
My routine went somewhat like this-
Weekdays: 2-3 hours per day after returning from office
Weekends: 8 hours per day

Materials used-
a. OG 2016
b. Manhattan SC strategy guide (the first two are ubiquitous i guess)
c. Powerscore CR bible 
d. Magoosh idiom book
e. GMAT club various question sets (mostly verbals, quants i didn't practice)
f. Arun Sharma CAT book for quants (had this from my cat days, some of the formulas here are killer)

Mocks used and scores-
 Kaplan Free Test - 680 (q49,v34) --> first ever mock wasn't too disappointed with 680, however quants is difficult than gmat and verbal is weird (no better word than that)
 Veritas Free Test - 680 (q51,v32)
 GMAT prep 1 - 720(q49,v40) --> first exam after having covered all the relevant topics. Gave me some solace that i was on the right track
 MGMAT 1 - 670(q45,v36) --> and crash landing, one of the most difficult mocks. However the low scores were primarily because i wasnt expecting this tough an exam
 MGMAT 2 - 720(q46,v42)
 MGMAT 3 - 680(q48,v34)
 MGMAT 4 - 730(q49,v40)
 MGMAT 5 - 690(q48,v38)
 MGMAT 6 - 780(q51,v45) --> first ever mock where i was at my best and did no silly mistakes (which is a rarity)
 Economist Free Test - 740(q54,v38)
 GMAT pill - 690(q50,v32)
 800Score - (q48,v41) --> didnt get the score as the two sections were separately taken, downloaded this from gmatclub
 Crack verbal -645 (q50,v27) --> weirdest exam as my verbal is dodgy but not to the extent of getting a v 27, however their disclaimer did say : you are likely to get about 100 points over this score
 GMAT prep 2 - 740(q50,q40)
 Babson College Free Test (Powered by Economist) - 740-770 (q50-53, v43-47) -->exam is tougher than the actual economist free test, but i guess their score estimation is right on the money

Overall MGMATs are the closest but their matter is difficult than the actual thing. GMAT prep questions are exactly of the requisite level. They also surprisingly predict your score quite accurately. Veritas' verbal is of the same level, quants is easier. Kaplan is just weird. Economist powers a lot of these free tests so it's worth giving it a shot. Some of their material is very good especially in CR. Don't even try crackverbal or 800score.

Other Resources-
Gmatclub is a goldmine of gmat material. Some questions might have wonky sources, however overall the matter you get here is unmatched. 4 days before the exam I also got a set of past DS, Verbal questions that'd appeared on GMAT prep software. That's an amazing resource. I practiced those before my exam and still couldn't finish them all.
Aside from gmatclub, the Manhattan forum is damn good. The explanations given by Ron, Stacey, Dan to name a few are really good. Plus if you are diligent enough you get access to a lot of good quality questions on these forums.
Notable mentions would include Mike of Magoosh, Karishma of Veritas, Shraddha of E-gmat (her articles are really good), Education Aisle (their e-book section on verb-ed modifiers is a killer). Few members who helped me are  sayantanc2k ,  popov . 
Few users whose posts i read to clear a lot of my doubts:  Bunuel , chetan
Another good forum is beat the gmat. Once you register with them, they send you a question everyday which was fun to solve. 
I also downloaded a mobile only app Prep4gmat. This one's good without being amazing. However, it can be a killer app if more developed properly.

3. Few Tips

Here are a few tips that were handy for me. 
1. Make a note of all the important maths formulas at one place. Do the same with Verbal rules
2. Keep noting down wherever you are making an error to explicitly address those areas before the exam (is this same as what gmatclub calls the error log? didn't use the errorlog format per se)
3. Practice mocks with an emphasis on time. I think the biggest reason I didn't panic any time during the test was because at all times I had more time than what was needed. This was purely because I practiced being faster than the clock during the mocks
4. Practice as many questions as you can. Even though I practiced everything from Brutal SC to 1000 series, I would ask ppl to stay away from those banned sources. There are enough materials on gmat in various forums not least gmatclub. Practicing helps you acclimatize with as many alien situations as possible. That's a huge advantage while attempting the real thing . Even if you get questions correct keep matching your thinking with what experts think on gmatclub, manhattan forums just to be sure you got the right answer because of the right reasons.
5. Have faith in the Pearson Vue software if any glitches occur. My software went kaput twice. Once the system froze but it restored itself, the other time a manual reboot was needed. It however didn't affect my scores (that's what I felt). Perhaps because on both the occasions the glitches happened toward the beginning of the sections.
6. Keep calm at all times. Midway through the exam I sincerely thought my quants performance wasnt as good as it could have been (as is evident from the score). However, keeping myself calm allowed me to not over think and attempt the verbal section with the right mindset. It's all in the mind really.
  4. The Exam

AWA:  The passage (it was literally a passage) was quite lengthy. It had around 7 lines, which is a rarity as far as my experience goes. However, the argument was simple and as stated by many before me the assumptions were evident and I thought I could make a good fist of it (got the scores - 5.5).

IR:  This section was fairly simple. In fact simpler than a few mocks that I had given. The questions were pretty straightforward and out of the 12 questions only 3 needed complicated inferences to solve them. I had always had a trouble with time in this section, hence on the d day i decided to skip one question (calculated guessing) to give myself the boost of finishing it within time. However, this strategy wasn't needed as the questions were simpler than I thought they would be.

Quants:  This was a strange section because of the following reasons:
 a. I was getting an alternate of a tricky and an easy question. That got me thinking that maybe i was getting a few of them wrong. However, looking at my scores and my reading of my GMAT prep results i wouldn't have gotten more than 7-8 questions incorrect. 
 b. At least two questions were doable by using formulas. I dont think I got even a single question in my two GMAT prep attempts which were solvable using formulas.
 c. I thought the quants of GMAT prep exams were difficult than the actual thing. Maybe i got questions which i liked solving.

Overall this section was fairly simple and didn't need much brain storming. I felt i rushed it a little more than I needed to as i finished the section with 4 mins left on the clock. Maybe by judiciously using those mins I could've gotten a few more questions correct. One weird thing however was that my break timer was conspicuously running down faster than a normal watch. No bias here am so serious.

Verbal:  It's the weaker section for me and hence I concentrated harder than I usually do. Verbal was also slightly strange for a few reasons:
 a. I dont think i have ever seen more than 12-13 RC questions in any of the GMAT prep tests (or MGMAT). I got 16 on this one. It worked to my favor as I was pretty consistent with my RC
 b. CR was twisted and tougher than the GMAT prep tests. My CR had only 1 assumption and 2 strengthen questions. This combination is again a rarity as far as my experience with mocks go. Most of my CR questions were Evaluation of argument and Weakeners
 c. SC was fairly straightforward with almost no question directly testing the idiomatic usages, which i'd mugged up frantically. Most of them tested modifier usage and parallelism. SC was stranger because I have been told by many verbal books that for giving examples we need to use "such as" instead of like, my verbal set had 3 occasions were they used "like" to introduce examples though none was a part of the underlined segment

Overall verbal was a simple section. Here too I finished with 7 mins left on the timer. I again had an eerie feeling that maybe i could have gotten a bit higher by using those mins judiciously. From my experience of GMAT prep scoring I think I got 7-8 questions incorrect here.

To conclude, I would say with the right strategy this exam is doable within a finite time period. Honestly if I can you too can.

Regards,
Banerjee06

sourcex · Answer

Wow. That's a pretty great score. I gave my GMAT yesterday only and I agree with you on the verbal part. In my case, I had about 4 boldfaced arguments with lenghty paragraphs and the options were also too lengthy. I hardly got 2-3 strengthen and weaken but more of twisted type CR. I did pretty bad in verbal but managed to score full in Quant.

banerjee06 · Answer

Thanks man.
I can sympathize with you.. 4 bold faced with lengthy arguments, that's killer. I had only 1.
However,congrats on the quant score.. I guess I'll have to accept that silly mistakes and I are inseparable.

Atb with your applications though.

Posted from my mobile device

Atb with your applications though. Posted from my mobile device

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi banerjee06, hearty congratulations for the wonderful score! Good it worked for you. From a time management perspective, many students prefer to have more SC, since a SC question typically takes almost half as much time as a typical RC question does. This is something that seems to be increasingly true: more Evaluation of argument questions, especially for people who are scoring well during the exam. That really is strange ; in fact, I just pointed this out when a fellow poster posted a OG 2017 question here (especially-in-the-early-years-new-entrepreneurs-may-need-to-find-reso-220342.html). Again, the saving grace was that this was in the non-underlined portion. However, this is something we, as GMAT instructors, need to closely watch out (you are of course, off the hook now:)). Thanks for acknowledging our book Sentence Correction Nirvana . Glad it helped. Good luck with your application!

banerjee06 · Answer

Hey thanks. 
I too prefer SC because of the time thing.however in exam in the heat of the moment it was nice to know that unless I screw up majorly in inferring some part of the paragraph I had a reasonably good shot at getting a 90% accuracy on 16 questions of rc rather than the usual 12-13.those fine margins I guess matter. My experience with SC suggests that if u know the rules and applications they are a breeze, however if u don't then chances of u getting them wrong (a non native speaker) increases. I just think law of averages will make me tilt everytime towards more rc matter over SC no matter how good I get at SC.

I guess the trainers over the next few years will need to keep an eagle eye on the verbal matter that gmat comes up with. I could sense that the matter and the general question ratios of various topics are changing slowly but surely.

The document u guys sent indeed helped in clearing atleast one concept. I promised I would recommend it to others if I found it helpful and so I am doing it.

Posted from my mobile device

gmathopeful25 · Answer

If you look at the explanation for problem 65 of Verbal Review 2nd Edition is says "While there has been some disputes over the use of like to mean "for example," this is an acceptable use." The original sentence used like to introduce examples. In other words using like to introduce examples is ok according GMAC. One thing people need to keep in mind is that test prep companies have come up with a lot of so called rules for SC that have later been proven to be wrong. This is just one example.

GMATPILLBILL · Answer

Congratulations! Great debrief. Best of luck on your future endeavors!

banerjee06 · Answer

gmathopeful25 : I agree with you somewhat. I think the pattern of the questions is changing somewhat. GMAT is making incremental changes continuously. However, the tutors' rules are all we have at this point to depend upon. I think without those rules at least I would find myself in some trouble. Let's give the tutors some credit for analyzing the trends over the years and coming up with some guidelines for us(non native speakers especially) to follow.
I guess the tutors will have their task cut out as I did see the pattern to be conspicuously different from what I have encountered in the mocks.

GMATPILLBILL : Thanks a lot.

manlog · Answer

I took a look on the problem 65. I think that this case is quiet specific, and namely this is indicated in the explanation. The main reason - here aluminium and other metals are not only examples, but also a type of commodity. In ordinary case such usage is still not acceptable IMO. I saw somewhere in official books, that like is not acceptable for the introduction of examples.

gmathopeful25 · Answer

You can always say examples are a type of something.

banerjee06 · Answer

manlog : That's the exact point I was clarifying. I saw three questions in which "like" was used to introduce examples. Maybe gmat is changing the rules slightly, we wouldn't know without analysing a larger data set than just 3 questions. But it was alarming for me. Thankfully it wasn't involved in any underlined sections.

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi gmathopeful25, a large part of the  rules  that test prep companies  preach  comes directly from the  patterns  of official sentences themselves.

I remember that in an official guide many generations old (older than OG-10, as far as I remember), one of the explanations provided in the OG stated that an  object  pronoun cannot refer to a  possessive  noun.

With such explicit  hint , test prep companies adopted this as a  rule  until few generations (of official guides) later, we spotted  correct  official sentences that  violated  this rule. I would not call this a  contradiction  in Official guide. With time, perhaps GMAT just  evolves  in its preferences, and test-prep companies adapt accordingly.

banerjee06 · Answer

I will have to agree with educationaisle here. It's a great thing that the test prep companies do by analyzing the questions and coming up with patterns for us to prepare well for the exam. Can't fault their efforts. Having said that it would be foolhardy to keep referring to the old rules as gmat itself keeps updating their rules from time to time.

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

gmathopeful25 · Answer

This is the whole point. There are the core rules that always work (such as subject verb agreement) and other "rules" that test prep companies come up with based on reviewing OG problems

(1) Not only... but also construction was viewed as the correct version Non only... but was considered wrong. Then test prep companies found examples of where not only... but was correct so now it is now taught as being suspect (instead of wrong). Some test prep companies still teach it as if not only... but also is the only correct version.

(2) In sentences with ,which these companies taught students that which must be referring to the preceding noun and then later changed the rule to well which didn't have to refer to the prior noun, but could jump over a preposition and be referring to the noun before the preposition. Some prep companies still teach it the incorrect way.

(3) MGMAT had a rule concerning pronoun ambiguity that it later walked back when if found examples that were inconsistent with its rule. I don't feel the need to list more examples at this time.

HanoiGMATtutor · Answer

There are rules, and then there are tricks. The rules are those documented in books on writing such as the classic "The elements of style". The tricks are the patterns that people notice from observing past exam questions. The shortcomings of test prep companies are that they aim to teach students what can be useful right away and most of the time. Teaching proper English is a much more difficult task than teaching a set of rules: English cannot be learned through only reading books. And then the burden is shifted to the students to memorize these tricks and apply them on test day; sometimes the tricks don't work, but most of the time they do. If the student gets lucky, the tricks will do the tricks. (see what I did there?)

But it is easy for the GMAC to re-shape their questions so as to render these tricks useless, if they want to. The purpose of the GMAT's Sentence Correction portion is to test the understanding of grammar rules, not to test someone's ability to memorize tricks that are meaningless beyond the GMAT. Test prep companies and even private tutors sometimes, in teaching students the shortcuts to dealing with standardized exams, may lead students to learn wrong things.

Sometimes I see students post on this forum that they spent hundreds of hours studying for the GMAT Verbal, going through thousands of questions and trying to apply the tricks they learned from test prep books. I wonder if their time would have been better spent on learning proper rules of English grammar. Every single GMAT SC question can be tackled without knowledge of any tricks. Proper grammar rules, of which there aren't very many, and a sense of cohesiveness in presentation, which is very learn-able, combined, are sufficient.

banerjee06 · Answer

HanoiGMATtutor : I think thats a very very good viewpoint on how to tackle gmat and what tricks are. I agree it's very important to learn the rules than the tricks. Tricks can get you out of a tricky situation most of the times but their utility beyond gmat as you rightly pointed out is flimsy at best.

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi gmathopeful25, as I did mention in my post, this possessive pronoun thing was not just a result of reviewing OG problems; it was provided in the explanation, the official explanation. What else should test takers consider sacrosanct, if not the official explanation?

In fact,  you  quoted the official explanation in your earlier post, to state that GMAT does  not  consider  like  vs  such as  different, when it comes to providing examples. If in a future release of official guide, GMAC were to  violate  this stance and  prefer  an option using  such as  (over an option using  like ), when the intent is to provide examples, can the  test prep  companies be blamed for it?

HanoiGMATtutor · Answer

I'm very interested in this example. Is there any way you can look up this specific explanation?

EducationAisle · Answer

I found a scribbled note at my desk that Verbal review First edition, #86 is one such example.

However, I don't have that book anymore. If someone does, and can post the OE of that question verbatim, that would do.

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750 (Q50,V40), IR-7, AWA-5.5 -- First Attempt

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