My GMAT experience

[joeyono]

Wanted to post my GMAT experience, these message boards were extremely helpful so I thought I should contribute. Not sure if this will actually help anyone, but here goes...

Took the GMAT on the 10/22, spent 2.5 months studying, really locked in the last three weeks. Work 70+ hours per week so probably studied two hours every other night for the first two months with 3-4 hours on the weekend and a practice test every other weekend. Then the last two weeks studied 4 hours per night (key in preparing me for the mental marathon that is the GMAT) with a practice test every week.

Goal initially was a 700

MGMAT CAT1 : Q43 : V39 - 680 (8/4/11) - W/O AWA
MGMAT CAT2 : Q47 : V41 - 720 (8/14/11) - With AWA
MGMAT CAT3 : Q45 : V37 - 680 (8/31/11) - W/O AWA
MGMAT CAT4 : Q44 : V39 - 690 (9/10/11) - W/O AWA
MGMAT CAT5 : Q46 : V39 - 700 (10/2/11) - With AWA
MGMAT CAT6 : Q48 : V45 - 750 (10/10/11) - W/O AWA

GMAT PREP 1 : Q48 : V40 - 710 (10/13/11) - With AWA
GMAT PREP 2 : Q50 : V40 - 740 (10/17/11) - With AWA

Actual GMAT : Q48 : V42 - 730 (10/22/11)

Comments:
Most of my studying revolved around reviewing problems from practice tests and working through the OG. Used a few of the MGMAT guides in areas I struggled with (sentence correction, geometry, word problems). I tried to make sure I understood the mistakes I made on the math and went over each question I missed or guessed on multiple times.

On the 6th MGMAT CAT, I ran out of 700-800 level questions which accounted for the inflated score

In my opinion, the MGMAT quant is absolutely more challenging than the actual GMAT, but the concepts it tests are the same. The questions may be tougher, but if I didn’t work through the MGMAT quant, I would have been much worse off. The GMAT Prep math felt similar to the actual (personally I thought the actual test was a bit more challenging than the GMAT prep).

Verbal felt about the same across the board. I will say that I was very solid on RC and CR from the beginning, but terrible at SC. I really focused on SC over the last three weeks which impacted my verbal score. Got lucky and didnt get any elaborate science passages for RC. Best way to study for SC is to just review a bunch of sentences and try to get a feel for mistakes the GMAT tests on. I couldn't tell you the first thing about past participles or subjunctive verbs or whatever the rules are, I'm a native English speaker so I went with what sounded right as my base and supplemented that with a lot of practice. Not sure if thats a good idea, but its what I did...can't be much help on verbal.

Four pieces of advice
- Don't get caught up worrying about whether the GMAT is getting harder - I about had a panic attack when I read posts on that. Remember, the people that post USUALLY either had a horrible experience or a really good experience. The test is similar to every practice test I took, might be tougher to get a good score with all of the improved study guides, but the test felt the same to me.
- Take the AWA's - it’s a freaking marathon when you sit down to take the test, you need to be focused the whole time, and focusing for 4 hours is rough if you aren't used to it.
- On practice tests, review all the problems, not just the ones you missed. The sheer number of problems (and answer explanations) that I reviewed on sentence correction really helped me.
- Lock in the date of your test early, I waited way too long to schedule my appointment, once it's locked, the sense of urgency drives better study habits.

Hope that helps someone and good luck!

[miteshsholay]

thax a lot for the useful experience

[samjames700]

Hi,
I am pursuing MBA 4th semester and also doing [url=http://blog.dilipoakacademy.com/
]GRE Test Preparation[/url], I spend daily two hour online practice and four hour in weak end.