710 (Q-50, V-37)

Question

There are two things that I followed perfectly from GMAT Club
i) to follow the rule of not studying the day before the exam
ii) the GMAT Snacks post!!

Like most of you around here, was really struggling with pushing my score beyond 650.. Out of the 6 MGMAT, 4 Kaplan and 4 GMAT Prep(2 tests taken twice), i crossed 650 just  thrice  !! was starting to get nervous when I got 640 and 620 on GMAT Prep on the final week before the exam, but I knew that SCs were my weak-spots, followed by CRs and RCs. But today, just an hour after my exam, I am glad that I got 710 on my real GMAT.

So how did I prepare 
I started preparing for GMAT a couple of months back.. I used to study for 2 hrs atleast a day with the OG during my early days.. within a month I completed the full OG and Verbal OG. Working in a software concern does no good to ur preparations. So, I told my team I would be needing leave for 3 full weeks(15 working days to be precise) and somehow got that done. This was very important for me, because I had no thoughts about my prioritizing my studies and work.. just had to concentrate on studying.. It was these 3 weeks when I did work really hard. Doesn't mean that I studied 10 hrs a day, but a minimum of 4 hrs a day atleast.. I was really strong in Q, hit 49 consistently.. so i was concentrating more on my verbal.. 2 weeks before my exam it was time to prepare for my AWA. bumped on the chineseburned thread posted by bb in a forum.. Its an awesome guide to get started with AWA and I followed it literally for my exam.. Also, I took the final 4 tests(2 MGMAT, 2 GMAT Prep) with AWA. It helps you analyze your stamina.

Some pointers

1. I used the GMAT club forums extensively for CR and SC. I usually open two windows, one for CR and one for SC. Do 2 problems of SC, switch over to CR do a couple of them, come back to SC and so on.. the reason is because thats how the real GMAT is.. You very rarely get 3-4 questions of SC/CR straight..Secondly, i found that doing so was little refreshing to my brain instead of constantly looking for grammatical errors in a sentence/flaws in the reasoning..

2. For people who are little lazy, this might be a good one. On my mobile phone, i had this in my screen background.. "Study HARD. Crack 700. Destination *ur fav univ name*".. believe me, this works. every morning when i feel lazy to get up, i look at it and the next moment I am up brushing my teeth.. it works. period.

3. During the breaks in my real exam, before entering back to the test, i told this in my mind "let me kick this stuff.. its now or never" saying it to you with force, gives you immense confidence and you are ready to face the challenge....

4. Finally, pray for luck to favor you on the day of the test. I know people who had put their heart-and-soul in this GMAT preparation, but failed to make it to the 700 and I also know people(including me) who have not put so much of hard work (in comparison to those guys) crossing 700 quite easily.

Last but definitely not the least, there were few guys who helped me out with this preparation. So thanks to all those who posted questions, and those who answered them in the discussions.

Thanks specifically to bb, nusmavrik, noboru and tommy..

Cheers, 
Sridhar

nikhilkatira · Answer

Gr8 score and nice debrief.

May I ask you to comment on the level of difficulty of quant and verbal in actual test ?

sridhar · Answer

Hi nikhilkatira.
Quants was pretty ok to me considering that its my strength. I am not sure if you have tried MGMAT, GMAT Prep Quants. Its on the same level. Infact, this was by far the best i had done in quants considering that i made very few guesses in quants.

In Verbal, it was as the same standard as GMAT Prep. Couldn't find much of a difference. Infact I felt SC, which was a weak-spot, to be simpler than expected. So on the whole, i felt the level of difficulty was much on the lines of GMAT Prep.

Hope that helps.

nikhilkatira · Answer

Thanks Sridhar.

One last question: Because you emphasized on Snacks..I want to know what you had during the breaks ?

sridhar · Answer

I took Oats Porridge, Gatorade energy drink and snickers choc. (Though I forgot to eat snickers and gatorade

) Had 1/3 of the Porridge before my exam began, 1/3 after my AWA and 1/3 after my Quants. Remember two things with regards to snacks 1. do not to stuff yourself too much.. 2. try these snacks during ur practice test itself and choose the best and that fits you. Hope that helps

ankateif · Answer

my story Q50 V40 740.

gmatprep tests 690 (720 when i repeated) and 680
kaplan started at 600 7th test was 760 and had an extra 12 minutes to spare in the q section. 8th and 9th test 690 and 710
A Q test I did the night before the exam: 47-49 range.
Doing the test the night before the exam was not a good idea. 
Finished the Q section on the actual test in 70 minutes. Usually it was hard to me to finish the Q sections of the Kaplan CATs. When I finished and had the extra 5 minutes I felt very confident. In my opinion I believe I was lucky and had questions that was easy for me to answer.

srivicool · Answer

gr8 score and gud luck 4 B-school search!!!

glad to know that difficulty level is same as GMAT prep. i took a diagnostic brushing up the basics of Math and solving few problems on CR. got 510 ( 43- Q , 19 - V). my time management was very bad in verbal . i had to guess the last 15 questions.. i was so engrossed in reading some RC's which had few questions.. i would appreciate if you can share your experience on time management in Verbal. 
also, can you tell when exactly u took ur GMAT. as i heard that gmat is getting tougher n tougher...

thanx in advance..

resh · Answer

Congrats Sridhar !

resh · Answer

True, I read the AWA post by chineseburned yesterday too.
I just gave my GRE recently (the AWA is similar) and I scored 4.5.

This post has just the right details put concisely to structure Issue and argument.

Hope you score well in AWA. How long does it take for the AWA result to published?

All the best !

sridhar · Answer

srivicool and resh, was away for a couple of days. so bear with me for the late reply

srivicool, time mgmt is a very imp aspect atleast to non-native english speakers. as u might know, leave questions unanswered in GMAT brings ur score down drastically than answering those questions wrongly. So if u find urself in such a situtation atleast guess the answers. my strategy was simple. I was very poor in my SC, i gave my heart and soul to it but with no positive response. So a day before my GMAT i decided to concentrate more on my CR and RC as those two were comparatively simpler. Two, once in a while look thru the timer and check if you are in a good position.. may be u can check the timer at the 15th, 25th and 35th questions.. approx u shd atleast have 45 mins, 25 mins and 10 mins respectively on 15th, 25th and 35th questions of your verbal.. Hope it helps.. resh, thanks. and to tel you how popular chineseburned AWA template was, the two guys who sat next to me before we entered the hall were using the template !!

AWA generally takes 2 weeks to get published. will surely keep posted about the score here.

resh · Answer

Wow !!That is interesting

Thanks sridhar. All the best with your application process !!

vittarr · Answer

good scores!!!

Cornelius · Answer

Well Done. Great score

sridhar · Answer

Hey resh. Got the online official score reports today. Got a 5.5 in AWA !!

I think the hardcopy of the score takes 2 weeks. Not sure though.. ATB to your application process too .. Thanks vittarr and Cornelius

resh · Answer

Awesome score sridhar! With a good SoP and recos, you should be all set to make it to one of the real good universities.

By the way, have you shortlisted the universities you want to apply to?

srivicool · Answer

sorry for the delayed response frm me too..

thanks sridhar for the tips on time management..

for me in CR and RC, the accuracy was 60%. 
in RC it is improving.. it is around 70% in SC.

For RC, i am taking 7-9 mins for reading the passage, 1 min for easy - medium questions. for few questions which are difficult ones, i take 2 mins. did you follow any specific time limits for RC ?

thanks again n congrats on an Amazing AWA score!!!

sridhar · Answer

Hi resh. Thanks for your wishes. I am looking to apply for NUS as one of the univs. But I am keeping my options open.. Have to do a research on the univs before I finalize on the univs

Will let you know after sometime... srivicool. I didn't have any specific time limits for RC. I would ask you to go thru the Manhattan GMAT RC guide if you wish to improve on your RCs. I used that for my prep.

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