Gave GMAT today Nov 7th 2009. Scored 540(Q 47, V19)

Question

Hi All,
I gave my GMAT exam today and was totally dissapointed. Having said that, I kind of anticipated this bad score.
I scored 540 (Q 47, V19).
 
I gave few practice test in the last 2-3 weeks .

GMAT Prep 1; 3 weeks ago --680
GMAT Prep 2; 3 weeks ago --590

MGMAT 1 ; 2 week --570
MGMAT 2 ; 2 week --590
MGMAT 3 ; 2 week --630
MGMAT 4 ; 2 week --620

GMAT Prep 2; 1 weeks ago --500
GMAT Prep 1; 1 weeks ago --590

As you can see from my above score , I am just a 600 guy. Yes thats true.. Merely a 600 guy.
But in my actual GMAT exam today, I scored just 540.

In all my practice test, for Quant , I scored an average of 47. thats exactly what I got in final GMAT.
I have been very weak in Verbal. Gmat Prep predicted my avg verbal score to be 22 and MGMAT prep said 30. Finally I scored 19.

So all in all, Gmat Prep is a good indicator of Quant & Verbal....

To all the people taking the GMAT exam, believe me... GMAT Prep is the only best indicator of your actual score.

Offlate I was reading through forum saying, Quant has become extremely tough n all. These are all just myths and not true. The difficulty level of Quant is same as OG12. To my knowledge and observation, nothing has changed.

Coming down to verbal, I woudn't say Verbal was tough but I guess I am not good at verbal. Now I am exploring new avenues for Verbal. I would like to review Manhattan SC, Powerscore RC and then re-appear for GMAT. Can some one suggest apart from the above 2 verbal books, what else do I need study? And yes, I will also refer sahils-spider notes.
What is the path to success for high verbal score? Any inputs will be highly appreciated.

diogoguitarrista · Answer

Hello dude,

I am not a specialist in Verbal, but I had some improvement in this part.
I bought Manhattan SC and it really worth.
Also, I used OG Verbal as a parallel study.

I am still having some difficulties with RC, but I think some test strategies from Kaplan Premier (which I bought as well) would help me.

I almost forgot to say: for CR, use Manhattan SC and RC strategies.

Good luck!

bigoyal · Answer

hi rehmaninn, what books you have done so far before attempting the gmat test ?

rehmaninn · Answer

Thanks for your advice people....

I badly need to horn my verbal skills.

For my 1st GMAT attempt, 
for SC, I studied Manhattan SC and OG12.
For CR, its was just OG12
and frankly speaking, did not study RC.

In all my practice test, on average , I get 9/15 correct in SC. 6/14 in CR and 4/12 in RC. This way, I was aspiring to get around 30 scaled score in verbal. Because I did not dare to dream higher, I screwed up big time in actual GMAT and scored a mere 19.

I need to improve on all three aspects. 
My analysis on
1) SC : Given that I have already gone through Manhattan SC, I understand the basic SC stuff. But need to improvise on tricks and trade for SC. I guess foundation for SC was okay but not enough practice. Mere 140 questions from OG12 are not sufficient. hence I now plan to do SC 1000. What do you guys suggest? Do you know any site which has 1000 SC questions with detailed explanations? or do you think there is fundamentally something wrong in SC approach?

2) CR: Again for my 1st attempt, I practiced just OG12. Repeatedly went through OG12 CR questions and ended memorizing rather than reasoning. This is something really bad with OG stuff. You go through again and again, and u r mind seems to remember answers. Clearly, practice is the key. I need to do more and more questions or may be I need to study the famous "Powerscore CR bible". What do u think I must be doing? Is it lack of practice or wrong book selection or wrong approach ???

3) RC: I did not study this section at all and this turned out to be very costly. After going through forum, I have came across RHYME's approach. Want to practice RHYME's approach and be confident. Further went through "Hemanthsood" article on forum list. he kind of emphasized "3RC's a day keeps fear away" !!! I need to be very active and resolving 3 RC's everyday !!!

Please let me know, if my analysis and outcome are correct? is there something very important that I am missing?

bigoyal · Answer

Here is a link to all the top rated verbal books:
best-gmat-verbal-prep-books-reviews-recommendations-78094.html

In your book lists, I don't see a book which could build your basic strategies and concepts of GMAT Test topics. You should have started with Princeton Review or Kaplan Premier book. Though neither of these books are very great books, but it familiarizes one with strategies of GMAT and also gives understanding of each and every topics. The OG12 and GMATPrep tests are good for practice, but neither of these cover any strategies.

You may like to get either of Princeton Review or Kaplan Premier and go through the book once.

Also, my suggestion would be:
1. Go through Manhattan SC book twice. Prepare notes for all the important concepts and keep revising your notes while attempting the OG questions.
2. Go through the CR bible, understand the concepts. CR is something which you cannot attempt by memorizing. You need to build the reasoning. Prepare notes for the categories of the questions.
3. Attempt OG12 once again. Try to understand explanation for each and every question. They have beautiful explanation given for the questions. If you are not able to understand the explanation, post it on gmatclub forums for more discussion and explanation. Never leave even a single question without understanding the concepts behind.
4. Get a OG Verbal review for additional practice. I would suggest to attempt this book twice (if time permits).

rehmaninn · Answer

thanks bigoyal...

I will start with kaplan premier and start noting down the strategies...
As suggested, I will start building notes of concepts being tested. Yes I will go through Manhattan SC, OG12 and Verbal review again.

Will post in this forum if there are any difficulties... Thanks a bunch

"Will chase GMAT verbal till I kill it or get killed... !!!"

GMATBootcamp · Answer

@rehmaninn

What was your approach to study math and verbal? Did you just read through book material and solve OG practice problems?

If this is the case, simply reviewing more GMAT books and solving a thousand more problems may not yield the improvement that you're looking for. In my experience, most students that spend a few month studying without any significant score improvement have been trying to learn through repetition - reading different gmat books and doing a ton of practice problems - and this isn't exactly the most effective method to study for the GMAT.

I recommend doing practice problems for a couple days, and then tracking your answers with some type of progress tracker or error log. Make sure that you're not only noting # questions right and wrong, but also the reasons why you got these questions wrong. Maybe it is because of a careless error, or maybe its a fundamental concept mistake. At the end of the week, review all of your logs and look for patterns of mistakes. Devise strategies to overcome these mistakes. For example if you're consistently missing certain parallelism patterns, I might write down the rule for parallelism and include a short list of all of the different parallelism problems i missed. Continue doing practice problems and review this rule every couple of days or so. After the second week, you should start noticing that you're not making the same mistake again and see some real score progression.

bigoyal · Answer

I agree with GMATBootcamp. Error Log is very very important regardless of whatever books you follow.

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Gave GMAT today Nov 7th 2009. Scored 540(Q 47, V19)

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