GMAT 750: Experience and views

[Pramod Rao]

Hi,

Here is my GMAT experience.

Warning/important things to keep in mind:
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--Just wanted to highlight that I have an Engineering background and am quite strong in quantitative abilities so I did not read up anything for Math (just solved a few OG problems and did whatever came in the practice tests). So for people who want to focus more on Math this may not be very helpful. My only suggestion for math is to be careful in DS as some questions may be tricky and there is a chance of making silly mistakes. My weakness was verbal and my preparation revolved around it.

--In my entire preparation I never gave the whole exam as a practice. I always skipped the AWA section. I prepared for AWA only on the last 2 days, mainly because I had given GRE last year and I pretty much knew what to do. This method worked for me but it might not work for others.

--I am an analyst in the consulting domain and my working hours are crazy. So ~75% of my prep was done on weekends. I started my prep early primarily due to this reason. This made time less of an issue.

Scores:
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GMAT: 750 (Q:51 V:40 AWA: 5) -- Apr 7
-- Exam went extremely smoothly. AWA: completed each section with 3-5 mins to revise. Math had couple of tricky questions. Math section was tougher than GMATPrep, closer to Kaplan but less tougher than MGMAT by a huge amount!Had about 3 mins to spare. Verbal went well, had a boldface CR on the 18th and had about 5 mins to spare.

GMATPrep #4: 740 (Q:51 V:39 i guess) -- Apr 5
GMATPrep #3: 730 -- Mar 31
GMATPrep #2: 710 (Q:50 V:36/37) -- Around Mar 7
MGMAT #5: 680 (Q:47 V:36) -- Feb 24
MGMAT #4: 620 (Q:40 V:35) -- Feb 7
MGMAT #3: 650 (Q:43 V:36) -- Feb 5
MGMAT #2: 560 (Q:36 V:31) -- Feb 4
MGMAT #1: 610 (Q:44 V:31) -- Jan 24
Kaplan #1: 660 (Q:46 V:37) -- Jan 22
Princeton Free online test: 650 -- Early Jan
Kaplan Free online test: 650 (Q:45 V:38) -- Early Jan
GMATPrep #1: 690 -- Early Jan

Materials used:
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Important
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1) OG11 (Bible for GMAT - solved it once completely and went through tough questions again 2nd time...used an excel+MGMAT OG stopwatch to check accuracy and timing)
2) Manhattan SC guide (Bibile for SC -- went through this once in Feb and toward the end of March)
3) OG10 (used OG 10 Grid and MGMAT OG stopwatch to analyze performance extensively)
--Solved only SC and CR - Accuracy ~85% in both
--Had made modifications to the OG10 grid excel (after including MGMAT OG stopwatch data) to generate the accuracy for easy, medium, hard and the different sub-categories in SC and CR. This helped me clearly understand my strengths and weaknesses. Went through Manhattan SC guide 2nd time to improve on my weak areas.All of this was mainly done in March.

Not required
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4) Kaplan Premier: I did read it once quickly but it is not required in my opinion
5) In Feb I did do about 100 problems each from 1000SC and 1000CR but I discontinued them as I did not find them to be useful

Preparation takeaways:
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--Used GMATPrep #1 (from www.mba.com) and written OG11 diagnostic to see what my focus area should be. Found out SC was my focus area.

--Solved half of OG11 (SC followed by CR and RC): SC accuracy ~70% CR accuracy ~75% RC accuracy ~85%. Read Manhattan SC guide and solved the rest of the problems and SC accuracy was pushed up to ~82%. According to me CR and RC, unlike SC, can only be improved through practice and by remaining alert while doing such problem and that is what I did to push up CR accuracy. In SC there is scope to improve a lot since knowing about certain grammatical rules and common errors in GMAT SC's can help you avoid a lot of mistakes.

--As you can see I was giving a lot of tests till Feb end. Naturally, seeing the scores I was getting I got fed up. What I learnt was that there is no need to take so many tests. Plan your tests schedule wisely (especially how you use GMATPrep).

--So when I decided to slow down on tests. I went back to OG. I decided to solve OG10 sometime in Feb end since I had already completed OG11. Using the OG10 grid I solved quite a lot of SC and CR problems. Followed by Manhattan GMAT again to hit on remaining weak areas.This went on till end of march.

--I obviously had to do something with AWA there was no chance of me doing well in this section. So last 2 days I read Kaplan Premier's AWA strategies and some examples. I wrote one AWA section and I could complete it well within time. Nothing more was done.

Tests galore
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--I found Kaplan to be totally useless in terms of scoring!So no neet to feel sad seeing 680 or 650. Moreover, the answers they provide is not very convincing. The only positive is that their Math is closer to real GMAT than any other test. Had given two more kaplan test (one was ~580 other ~620).

--Manhattan: All though I consider Mangattan SC guide to be the bible I do not have the same opinion of the tests. The math is much tougher when compared to real GMAT. Problems are solvable but are time consuming (~5mins as compared to required 2mins). Personally, I was not at all worried that I had to guess last 8-9 questions because the questions were much tougher than actual GMAT. However, problems both in Verbal and math are provided with excellent explainations and I found that to be helpful. For e.g. bold face CR: you wont find it anywhere else in the materials I have mentioned but you do come across them in Manhattan tests. I did get one in my actual GMAT and the test prep helped.

--GMATPrep the next best to actual GMAT (All good things come in small packages!): Yes there are only 2 tests. So I had to use them wisely. But since I was so fed up to see my scores in Kaplan and MGMAT. I took the 2nd test on Mar 7 and got a 710! It did boost my spirits but i had ran out of the most important test practice source. What to do? Simple :P All I did was I restarted the tests. Like for test 1... I restarted the test around 4 times and found that math section starts with a different question 4 times. So I decided to give it one more time hoping that previous questions wont come up and it worked (1-2 questions out of the whole might have been repeated). Did the same for the 2nd test and it worked again! Did not work a 3rd time though :P So bottomline: Use them wisely!!

That was about my GMAT!!

Thanks and regards,
Pramod Rao

[Sudhan]

Great Score! Good Luck for your application process.

Thanks

[Guest]

Great Score Pramod!! Congrats.

Hi all readers, I took couple of tests till now and here are the scores.
Manhattan 1: 690
Man 2:710
GMATPrep 1: 660
Kaplan 1:580
Gmat paper: 640

I scores are so varying that I am unable to judeg my true potential.

Pl advice.

[Pramod Rao]

Don't take into account the kaplan score. Kaplan has a bad reputation of being low on scores so don't bother. Focus more on your accuracy in OG problems in each section. That will give you an idea of where you stand right now. Use the practice tests only to get familiar with the testing conditions and read the solutions for questions you answered wrong. In my opinion your main focus should be OG and GMATPrep tests and the rest should be used as means to improve your performance in OG and GMATPrep tests.

Hope this helps!
PR

[AG]

Pramod,

please share the modified OG10 sheet for everyone's benefit.

thanks
AG

[Guest]

:post deleted by administrator:

[Guest]

Now, thats the best you to show your frustration.

Dude, GMAT is not a piece of cake. You need to work hard for it.

Anyway, there are many grammatical mistakes in the sentences you wrote. Correct it and start your prep from here.

[Pramod Rao]

@AG: do let me know how you want me to send the modified OG10 grid? ... mail/upload at some site? I don't think I can upload anything here...

PR

[Guest]

Hi Pramod,
Please do send me the grid as well.
my email address is contactpksingh@gmail.com
BTW: Which shcools are you targeting at?
Thanks for assistance.

[Shriram]

Thanks for your post! It makes me feel a LOT better to see that MGMAT Quant is much harder than the real test. I have barely enough time to complete the section (that too after guessing about 4-5 questions) whereas on all other tests, time has never really been a problem for me. Here are my scores on the GMATprep/MGMAT tests so far:

MGMAT free online test: 730 (Q49, V41)
MGMAT CAT #1: 730 (Q45, V45)
MGMAT CAT #2: 730 (Q48, V41)
GMATPrep #1: 750 (Q51, V40)

Couple of questions:

1) How can I access GMATPrep #3 and #4? I only saw 2 practice tests on mba.com
2) Where can I access the Manhattan GMAT SC guide? Do I need to purchase that online?

thanks,
-Shriram.

[Guest]

its available at amazon.com and bn.com