Hi All,
This is Gaurav Singh from New Delhi,India. I am an electronics engineering graduate from the top engineering institute in India. I am currently working as a senior executive in a top MNC in semiconductor industry with 5+ years of work experience.
I took my GMAT on 30th sep and scored 660. I was totally devastated after the exam. I took total 50 days to prepare for the exam (with lot of responsibilities at office, I cannot afford to give more time than this.). I started off very rusty, but improved very quickly in Quant. I started with a score of 45 in Quant at the beginning and quickly started scoring 50..and towards the end scored 51 consistently in the last 4-5 tests.
In verbal section I started with paltry scores of 25-26...but with practice I was able to improve it to 38-40 towards the end tests. Unfortunately I couldn't repeat it on the final day.
Here are the results of my mock tests.
Princeton 4 tests (Got scores in the range of 640-650). Took these tests in the beginning of the preparation.
MGMAT 6 tests scored in the range of 680-720. (Took these in the middle of the preparation)
Took the GMAT prep towards the end.
First time GMAT prep:
GMAT prep1 710
GMAT prep2 690
Reset and took the GMAT prep tests again 3-4 days before the actual exam.
GMAT prep1-760 --> (3 RC passages were from OG11, so it did help to cross 750 mark)
GMAT prep2-720 --> (I felt this was very close to my actual level, since all the questions were new).
I referred to essay writing section from OG11 and Kaplan VR. I feel these two are good enough for AWA section and I easily scored 5.5 with the help of concepts told in these two books.
I was sure of minimum 710 score on actual test , but I feel few factors affected my performance...
1) The first and foremost..I'm not a morning guy, but my appointment was in the morning..so I was feeling lethargic during the test..It did affect a lot.
2) Second thing, since I am working full time as a senior executive, so wasn't getting enough time to study in the beginning and slogged very hard in the last 10 days to make up for the entire duration...Although my scores improved, but I was very exhausted towards the end. This did have an effect on the final day.
I am reappearing for GMAT tests on coming 16th december...This time an evening slot ;-) :wink:
Taking a little long break, roughly 2.5 months, since I have a lot of backlog at the office due to GMAT preparation. I hope to finish off the pending office things within a month i.e. by november end. I'll take another shot at the exam with a preparation of 45 days and make sure that this time I don't over-exhaust myself.
"Any piece of advice will be greatly appreciated."
Good luck to all of you.
Regards,
Gaurav Singh