Well, someone had to pay - 770 (Q51, V44)

Thanks for responding..

You have a 51 in Q
Did you solve gmat prep questions as a part of your preparation ? or only the OG questions?

Well, I was pretty comfortable with GMAT quant. I've gone a lot deeper and have taught higher mathematics for sometime as well.

Anyhow, you need to be thorough with OG quant. I won't say it will prepare you for a Q51 (it might), but it will lay down the foundations and that is very important. GMAT prep questions are as important as OG ques. Apart from these, practice from quant question pack. All of these are official questions and you should be thorough/comfortable with them.

As far as Q51 is concerned, I believe that achieving it will require a bit more practice. Study from the GC forum and do as many questions as possible. Use tags to sift through topics and difficulty level. Do questions in Bunuel's signature. Practice 15-20 ques. at a stretch (according to the difficulty level) and learn new things as you take on new questions.

Hands down one of the best debriefs I've read. CONGRATS AND THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! :D

Thanks mate.. I have been solving GMAT Prep Qs and they do make me agile..

Jum,

Wonderful insights! Very Informative post!

What did you do differently to go from 35V to 44V? That much of a jump is purely amazing. I am in the same boat and hoping to do the same, but could not really put down my strategy together. Do you mind giving us some ideas about what really helped you (study methodology, approach to question, study materials, G-day experience, timing strategy etc. etc.) to improve that much?

Thanks
BC

Frankly, I think I screwed my verbal on the first attempt. I was a good 3-4 points short of my average verbal score during practice CATs.

Looking back on each section:

SC: from good to really good.

This is the most mechanical part of the verbal section and hence, I feel, is the most easy to improve.
The best trick is to use the black & white tests first - use SV agreement, modifiers, pronoun agreement, tenses, verb etc. - things that make the sentence either correct or incorrect. These are easy to pick up and the best way to eliminate sentences.
Then come to parallelism, active/passive (if required) - things that may or may not render the sentence incorrect. (You will see correct sentences that are passive or not 100% parallel). Having said that, parallelism is the single most important concept that you should be able to master. I do not recall now whether I had a very strong hold of the topic when I first wrote my exam, but, during the second time I was pretty comfortable with it - obviously, I had made so many mistakes during my practice sessions that I spent a lot of extra time on my 'special needs'.

After solving tons of problems, I was able to pick up GMAT-esque language and that helped me a LOT.

RC:
I just wish this were not there in the test. Though I have a pretty good accuracy on them, I hate RCs. SC and CR are a lot like puzzles; RC, on the other hand, is just that - RC.
I knew I failed on my RCs and CRs the last time, still, I wasn't able to give a lot of time to RCs. I inadvertently found myself practicing CRs and SCs.
I've listed a few strategies that I used in the third post of this thread. You may try those out if you find them useful.

Also, my two tests were a year apart. During that time I spent a LOT of time reading stuff on the net. I can't say if that helped or not!

CR:
During my first test, I was bamboozled by a lot of CRs. I practiced a lot of them for my second attempt. I've written this earlier as well - number of CR ques. practiced and the score you get, probably have the highest co-relation among all other ques. types (caveat: my theory! ). Once you do tons of questions you recognize the pattern of correct answers. 2-3 are almost always irrelevant; I always found myself fighting between the final two options.

I also revisited my mistakes/logs periodically - to note where I was making a mistake. At the end of it, I had almost memorized my error log - that is how many times I had to go over it (and no, I did not make few mistakes).

During my first test my CRs and RCs were bad because I wasn't able to concentrate on the text. In hindsight, it was absolutely rubbish prep at my end. Why would anyone not take tests with AWA/IR and simulate the real test conditions while practicing is beyond my understanding. I improved that and my concn. levels and stamina was intact the second time. Though I was worked up during verbal in patches, it was far better than the first time, where I was just staring at my computer screen and wasn't able to comprehend text.

In a nut shell, practice and review. A lot.

hope that helps.

Congratulations mate n woho.,what a debrief.
Have Banana + Gatorade + 1/2 Snickers from my pocket and please suggest me the book,except OG, i should go for in order to build in-depth knowledge of the quant section.
Hope you are having a good time at your school.
Please reply ASAP.

I think I've answered all I knew about quant material through my debrief and my reply to Sachin (a few posts above yours). If you are starting from scratch, MGMAT guides, OGs and GC math book can be a good combination.

Congrats! it is really very inspiring)

Congratulations.

Excellent debrief, thank you.

Good luck with your apps!

Thank you. Congratulations on the wonderful season and have a great 2 years in California



Thank you for the wishes.

really interesting debrief I loved the coach analogy!! :D

Have you self-made the postman-new in town-audit story ? Can you provide any reference, sounds like a good lesson.

Sorry, don't have one. That's one of the few things I remember from a (brilliant) prof. I had.

What an amazing write-up. Brilliant!!!

Specially the snippets from Coach Vince and Garry. Have bookmarked it to help me with my preparation.

Really enjoy this sharing, especially the motivation part. Btw, I also love Coach Flowers