score 720-(Q49 V40)-My strategies for Busy people

Question

Hi All,
Today I appeared in GMAT and scored 720 (Q49 V40). I am 32 years old working executing and I was hardly able to put 2 hours a day for my preparation.
My experience could be useful for others like me.

I will not say much like many other. If you people find my experience useful, let me know. I will elaborate.

Quant: When I took my first Maths practice question sets I was not able to reach more than 55%. Later I realized it is not because Maths was too tough in GMAT, but because there are traps in questions. They make you you commit errors. So only solution is practice at least 20-30 EASY question each day for few weeks and analyze your errors. Once you are able to do EASY questions fast and correct, you can score 80% quant easily.
1)One Chinese or korean document on Maths practice I downloaded from this forum which raised my actual Maths score to 90%. (See second post of Vivek at the link:
https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... stests+zip
Answers are also avaiable somewhere in the forum. )
2) Probability and Permutation/Combination: 800Score stuff is really good at least for this section.
3)Standard Deviation: Use search option in this forum with key word "Standard Deviation" and solve questions. Normally GMAT asks kind of Standard Deviation questions which can be solved just by looking at it after some practice.

Verbal: English was my big weakness. In my first English practice test I scored more than Maths however unlike Math, despite lot of practice there was not much improvement in score. Note that It takes long time to develop knowledge of language. Here I adopted several processes to compensate for for my weakness. Like process of elimination for SC Just by looking at it , understanding CR on the line of explanations provided by OG, and figuring context (Reading first few lines and starting lines of last paragraph) of RC before reading it fully. I can explain these techniques more if someone is interested.

Recommended book: OG latest edition.
Best approach for busy/working people. Give 2 hours per day (and more on weekends). Do few questions each day. Analyse results whether you do it right or wrong and try to remember explanations given in OG.

snow wolf · Answer

Congratulations on a great score.Everyone wants to read your debrief.Good luck on ypur apps as well.




 Congrats again.

ashkrs · Answer

Hey dude ..congrats a bunch...great score ..you know what you have just inspired me more...i am 32 too ...worked so many years and targetting for mba now ..seing people like us on forum is really great and motivating ...debrief soon ...ciao

ashish

Ozmba · Answer

I am retaking the exam to bump my Verbal from 36 to atleast 40!!

Your suggestion about SC/CR sounds good, but would be helpful if you can elaborate .....

RC---Any more Gyan would be great

Between...Congrats for the great score!

Ozmba · Answer

Any links please??

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

See post of Vivek at the link: https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... stests+zip Answers are also avaiable on the same page. --------------------------

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

Ozomba, I also fought to increase my verbal from 34-35 to 40. My target was 40 and I just got that. I adopted following approaches

SC: before reading answer choices, just skim through these 5 choices and identify what is varying in the choices. This will give you clear vision that what is being tested here. Normally GMAT tests 2 concepts at a time in SC. Say for example Idioms and subject-verb relationship together. By looking at choices you would see that there will be 2 choices with one Idiom and 3 choices with another. Once you know which Idiom is correct, you can eliminate other 2-3 choices. 
Then you look for another variation in remaining choices in hand and pick best one.
One example:-see problem 60 in OG-11. there are two kind of variation - 2 choices with "to" and then 3 choices with "for" and "of". You know that "to" is correct, so leave the 3 choices. Now in these two choices A is more parallel so answer is A. Adopting this approach you can end up with correct choice fast. This approach works with 70/80% of SC.

RC and SC: I will write it soon.

ashkrs · Answer

What is this stuff ? Can you let us know from where you downloaded this. One Chinese or korean document on Maths practice I downloaded from this forum which raised my actual Maths score to 90%.

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

See post of Vivek at the link: https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... stests+zip Answers are also avaiable on the same page.

ashkrs · Answer

do you have answers for this DS and PS questions. I see the answers jpg but there is no option for download. If you can upload that that would be great .
Thanks.

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

try to search answer in the forum. It must be somewhere.

umbdude · Answer

2 hours per day for how many weeks/months?
how many practice exams did you take?
Thanks!

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

I kept 3 months for me. Because I felt I can not keep myself motivated longer than that. However 3 to 4 months is enough for GMAT.
 I did 2 test of GMAT prep and 2 Kaplan test and 1 800score free test.
Basically 1000SC,CR,RC,PS,DS are good test in themselves. You can do 25 questions in a limited time frame (say 2 minutes per question). If you start getting 80% of them correct, this means you are ready for exam.

ian7777 · Answer

That's awesome! I wrote all their probability and permuation/combination stuff, and I'm THRILLED to know you liked it!

Any feedback, if you remember?

Congrats on your score!

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

Just one feed back Ian777: add more questions for practice. Ohterwise its too good...

fawreel902 · Answer

Hi guys, 

Im just wondering, what kind of question difficulty on quant do I need to master to get at least a 40? Is it enough just to know the medium questions and easy ones?

vsaxenaGMAT · Answer

fawreel902, it is more important to focus on easy questions because most of the question GMAT asks are easy question. They constitute large portion of your score. Once you are able to solve 90% Easy questions with accuracy and well in time, you may concentrate of tougher questions. To raise your score above 35 you would definitely need to solve tougher questions.

fawreel902

Hi guys,

Im just wondering, what kind of question difficulty on quant do I need to master to get at least a 40? Is it enough just to know the medium questions and easy ones?

fawreel902 · Answer

Thanks vsaxenaGMAT. So if I want to get a 45 on my math quant for instance, how hard are the questions on that level? I particularly am not that great at thinking outside the box, Im ok at computational skills. Im thinking that if I am able to get 10 hard questions right on the test, 17-18 medium ones and the rest wrong I can still score a 45?

ian7777 · Answer

Unfortunately, there's really no way to answer this question to that level of specificity. Some things to remember about the test:

1. Scores are based on percentile. A 45 is roughly the 78th percentile. That means you have to do better than 77% of the population taking it. That's not going to be decided by a simple calculation of number of easies and number of mediums, but rather by a complex computer code that ranks you on a number of different things.

2. The test is a CAT. That means if you get one wrong, it'll give you an "easier" question, one that's lower scoring. So you can't really tally the number of mediums and hards, because they affect each other.

Broadly, though, if you want a 45, you are going to have to be very adept at all levels of GMAT questions. You may not have to nail the toughest questions the GMAT will put out, but you will have to consistently answer a number of questions correctly in a row, medium or hard. And, you can't plan which topics will be easier questions and which will be harder.

I agree with what vsaxenaGMAT wrote about answering the easy ones. That's important, because doing that would build your foundations to answer tougher ones. But the GMAT is a very tricky animal, and at the end of the day, you simply have to be prepared across the board for all topics at all levels of difficulty.

ian7777 · Answer

Let me also add one thing. Scoring well on the GMAT is DEFINITELY dependent on not getting multiple questions wrong in a row. So in your scenario, 10 hard and 18 medium, leaves you with 9 wrong on the test. If you got all 9 wrong in a row, you will get a MUCH lower score than if they are scattered around the whole exam.

I know this from experience. I have deliberately missed 12 questions on various GMATs I've taken, and depending on how I spread those 12 around, my score changes. But it's always 12, 1/3 wrong. I've gotten a 770 before getting 12 wrong.

The main trick is to try to never have more than 1 wrong in a row. If you miss one, find, but try to recover and get the next one right. That's the ticket to success on the exam.

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