Pleasant end of my GMAT journey â€¦ 710 (Q47,V40)

Question

Iâ€™ve been a passive participant of this board for last few months. Reading other membersâ€™ GMAT prep and test experience has been a routine activity during that time. These are very informative and encouraging stories. I hope my post serves the same purpose for someone else.

Background â€“ Iâ€™m 35 year old, finished my education 13 years ago in India and am working in Software Industry since. So itâ€™s been long time since I wrote any kind of examination. 

Test Day â€“ Reached test center in San Jose around 11.30 am for a 12.15 pm appointment and started test at around 11.40 am. Test center is very well organized and very smoothly run, quite impressed with it. 
AWA - was a good way to get comfortable with the monitor, chair etc.
Quantitative â€“ problems were little tedious compared to those on GMATPrep, but still those in GMATPrep should give you a good indication of whatâ€™s in store.
Verbal â€“ RC paragraphs and questions were lot easier compared to Kaplan, ARCO etc. CR were reasonable, although little tougher than those in OG 10. I came across some complains about SC being very different and testing something other than 6 basic rules. I donâ€™t completely agree with that. I found all the SC flaws to be logical and in violation of some rule or other.

Preparation - 
Time â€“ Started in early Jan, may be 1-2 hours a day. Then for last two months, bumped it to 3 hours a day.

Material â€“ 
Manhattan GMAT - bought all the 7 books from Manhattan GMAT, as I like to studying based on topics and subjects. Of the 7 books, I will highly recommend the â€œSentence Correctionâ€

selene · Answer

Congrats on your score .. And thanks for sharing your ideas with us .. All the best :king

gmatmba · Answer

great score, congrats

iced_tea · Answer

congrats...nice score

tl372 · Answer

Great score!!

Curious, why do you say that Verbal is the key (vs. Quant)?

tamg710 · Answer

tl372,

This could be specific to my case, but what I noticed during my preparation is that once you reach 45-47 zone on Quant, to get to 700+ you have to get 39-40 in verbal.
I figured, efforts involved in getting to 49-51 in Quant will be lot more compared to those involved in getting to 40 in verbal. (Note: I was in 32-36 range on verbal). Hence I did following to improve my verbal -
1. Took lots of practice tests, specially the difficult ones such as KAPLAN,ARCO. This helped a lot with timing. Although I was stuck at 31-32 in KAPLAN verbal, I was finishing verbal section with time to spare.
2. Did lot of CRs questions from LSAT book, they are more difficult compared to the those on real test, but they help a lot in building confidence.
3. SC was always my strongest, but I still kept practicing from different sources such as KAPLAN, ARCO, Manhattan GMAT and of course OG. As I realized if you stick to one source, you kind of get used to the flaws.

Again, this is all specific to my case and experiences with practice tests. IMHO Quant is important but instead of acing the Quant, getting descent Quant scores and then improving on Verbal will eventually result in higher overall scores.

PS: Thanks for all the responses; appreciation of ones efforts from fellow GMAT takers always means a lot.

haddy74 · Answer

which lsat book are you referring to? thanks..did you do lsat RC passages from that book too?

tamg710 · Answer

I used "Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT Preptests", it has actual LSAT test questions. I did not do much of RC from there. Also note that this book does not have answer explanations.

salama · Answer

Thanks for your detailed posts and congrats on the awesome score. I will be taking the exam myself on July 9th and was wondering if you can let us know a little more about the Quant section, in your opinion was it more like GMATPrep difficulty wise I mean, i know difficulty is hard to measure but I am jusy curious. Were the first few tough? I need a 550 to make it to the evening program that i am applying to and am kind of nervous. How do you overcome test anxiety during the exam any suggestions/feedback will be appreciated.

tamg710 · Answer

salama,

Quant â€“

I thought real test problems were as difficult as GMATPrep, may be a bit more tedious (needing an extra calculation or so). OG problems are a good indication of type of Quant questions you might get. 

To do reasonably well on Quant, you have to pay attention to minute details. Keep an eye for absolute vs. percentage, at least, at most etc. Even if you see the answer you arrived at in the choices, take few extra seconds to confirm that quantity you calculated is the one that is being asked. Typically correct answer is one calculation away from incorrect answer.

Test Anxiety â€“ 

For me, taking lots of full (CAT) practice tests turned out to be a good preparation for dealing with anxiety. I remember being anxious even before practice tests, although magnitude was not the same. So when stepping in for real test, I was kind of used to the feeling.


Try and keep positive attitude. After all the preparation, test is an opportunity to evaluate how well you can do (that too instantly). 

All the best â€¦ make the most of the preparation time left.

imjimmy · Answer

Which ARCO book are you referring to?

I have the Unofficial guide from ARCO. The CD that comes with this book, however, has only one practise CAT test.

Is ARCO good?

salama · Answer

Appreciate you taking the time. This really helps, I have taken the GMATPrep 
around 7-8 times now I know it sounds crazy but just want to do as many as possible as you have mentioned that is a good way to deal with the anxiety do as many as possbile until it becomes routine... Gives me some confidence to know that the Quant is similar to the GmatPrep i guess will have to give my 100% and see how it goes. 
One final thing should i just stick to OG11 and GMATPrep the last 3 weeks that i have left? Thanks again

tamg710 · Answer

imjimmy,

This is the ARCO book I was referring to ...

 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0768919266/sr=8-1/qid=1150387331/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-5761723-4774303?%5Fencoding=UTF8 

It has 9 full tests (6 in book + 3 on CD) I used the book tests for Verbal practice, and I think they were pretty good.


Salama,

3 weeks is still a lot of time, I would keep practicing from different sources and stick to OG during last week.

tl372 · Answer

Salama, thanks for your response and congratulations on being done!

I'm taking the exam this Saturday....been studying for the last 2 months so I hope my hard work will pay off. It's my 2nd time taking the exam and hopefully my last!

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Pleasant end of my GMAT journey â€¦ 710 (Q47,V40)

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