Survived the GMAT! 750 (44V, 49Q)

[blaquerose]

I've just come out of my own harrowing experience (Oct 6) fairly unscathed, and thought I'll give some tips to those who are panicking over GMAT prep... you WILL survive!

My own story - I'd started looking at the Official Guide (OG) casually in mid-September, and began cramming for real, for 2 weeks straight Sept 21 - Oct 6. My advice is that it's better to just go for gold, and be tight and focused on your preparation process. The adrenaline on the day also really helped drive it home for me i.e. I absolutely gotta ace the thing on the first try.

A few tips:
1) Resources / timing allocation
(a) OG11.
- The Bible! A useful tip (which I was not aware of until 2 days before my own GMAT ordeal) is that the most difficult questions for each section seem to be parked at the back.
- E.g. there're ~200 Critical Reasoning questions - if you're finding the first 50 too easy, skip right to say, Q 170 onwards.
- I was getting almost all the earlier questions right on the OG (but messing up my GMATPrep (which of course is adaptive), so was feeling frustrated as to why I was finding OG boringly easy, but GMATPrep incredibly challenging.)
- Turns out that once I skipped to ~Q170 onwards, I got a fair number wrong, then scrupulously pored over the explanations at the back of the book.
- Really improved that way once you review your work.
- In fact, I only did about 60 questions for each section (PS, DS, CR, SC, RC) out of the entire OG, cos I simply didn't have time to finish the 1,000+ questions in the OG.
- I am not suggesting you cherrypick this way if you've LOADS of time, but personally I studied for 2 weeks intensive cos I'm trying to get into Round 1 (and only decided in September 2008 that I wanted to apply for 2009).

(b) GMATPrep.
- You get 2 free when you sign up for your test date. Use them well. I actually fired up the 2nd Practice Test twice and found that you can do it again (although there are some repeats).
- Apparently this is pretty accurate. It certainly was the case for me.
- The upside is also that GMATPrep's layout (colours, format) completely resembles what you'll be getting on test day, so it's sort of nice to familiarise yourself.

(c) Manhattan Forum Search.
- Awesome and very under-rated tool.
- In my own experience, I found it CRUCIAL to review my answers after every test. Test taking is all well and good, but you gotta learn from the questions, cos GMAC repeats concepts and "types" of questions, even if they don't repeat the exact question (duh).
- Given that GMATPrep, unlike the OG, does NOT give you explanations behind the answers, I'd spend up to 3 hours searching MGMAT's forums after every GMATPrep test I took, to make sure that I understood the concepts behind the questions I'd just tackled.
- I also found it v useful to keep a word doc list of all the "lessons" I'd learned.
- E.g., I never knew until GMAT preparation that any length of a triangle had to be shorter than the sum of the other two sides. Or that "like" is used as a comparison whereas "such as" is used to list examples in the GMAT world.
- MGMAT's forum is insanely helpful - there are all sorts of tips and real OG and GMATPrep questions posted, and the answers come with explanations from the instructors.
- Beyond that, they have great short lessons to bring you up to speed on certain concepts. E.g.: http://www.manhattangmat.com/strategy-series-probability.cfm - just one example out of many helpful guides.
- I must've spent more time on MGMAT's forum than I did practising questions on the OG, and I consider it time extremely well-spent. (Thank you MGMAT! How can I give a paypal donation or set up an altar of appreciation?)

(d) Prep Programs.
- I did not pay for any lessons with any of the Prep programs. I'm sure they are useful, although as mentioned, my problem was lack of time.


2) How much prep / how many tests should I do? What are typical scores?
- I reviewed the Math concepts in the OG, and then did about 60 practice questions from each section of the OG (i.e. ~300 for all 5 sections)
- After I was more comfy with the concepts, I did 5 prep tests (3 GMATPrep (one repeat), 1 MGMAT, 1 Kaplan)
- Kaplan's practice test is pretty lousy IMO - it didn't seem adaptative and the Math was way too easy. Also not sure how their scoring works, because although I got all but 2 questions right on their Quant section, they scored me at 44 for Quant (?!)
- In hindsight, you don't need to do that many tests. I think 1 MGMAT and 2 GMATPrep are more than enough.
- Otherwise, my scores were all over place:

MGMAT: 640 (Sept 21), 43Q, 34V. [I was REALLY depressed when I first saw my score. My advice is that MGMAT is harder than GMATPrep, so do NOT be discouraged if you see low scores.]
GMATPrep (End Sept and Early Oct): 710, 710 [Forgot the V/Q allocation]
Kaplan (Oct 4): 680 [Forgot the V/Q allocation]
GMATPrep (day before my test, Oct 5): 760 (but I suspect it was this high cos there were repeat questions) [V46, Q51]


3) Recognise your strengths/weaknesses and work on them
- My weakness was Data Suff - I hated the thing, so I spent more time focusing on it. MGMAT's AD/BCE and BD/ACE elimination strategy is very useful (more info elsewhere in this forum, so I won't repeat it).
- Otherwise, improving on your weaknesses is all well and good, but IMO it's equally useful to play to your strengths.
- I knew verbal was my strength, so I focused on making sure I really aced verbal (brushing up basic grammar, combing through MGMAT's forum, learning about GMAC's take on what they perceive as "correct American English" - it's not always intuitive).


4) Pace yourself!
- Speed is of the essence
- I used a simple grid where I gave myself 20 min per 10 Quant questions, and 18 min per 10 Verbal questions.
- On Test day itself, I scribbled at the top of my pad (for each section):
For Quant:
1 75 (min)
11 55
21 35
31 15

For Verbal:
1 75 (min)
11 57
21 39
31 21
41 3

- In other words, by the time I got to say, Q11 for Quant, I should AT LEAST HAVE 55 min left in the ticking timing on the screen. Etc.
- You can have a much more refined grid than that, but I didn't want to keep checking the ticking clock, so I found that tracking my pace using blocks of questions of 10 worked very well for me. Find what works for you!


5) Test Date
- Important to keep energy up.
- I put some jelly beans and granola bars in my bag and munched during the breaks. Also had some tomato juice (but I spose Gatorade or other would work just as well)
- Stretch during the breaks.


OK, hope the advice is somewhat helpful... and good luck, everyone!

[sumi]

Hey blaquerose,
Congratulations!!! mate thats an amazing score! I would kill for even a 700 :)

I am actually following the same tight schedule as you! I just don't think I could study for 3 months like this...... 2-3 weeks and then Im done. I did two MGMAT exams as soon as I opened up the books and got 610 and 650 but the timing was off (had to sneakily cheat in both of them because I was interrupted and time ran out!) I am planning to take the GMATPREP tomorrow properly timed with essays and depending on how I go I will decide if my 2-3 week plan is enough.

Thanks for the note about the easy questions in the beginning! Yup I just got to question 60 in RC and only got about 5 wrong(all lack of focus!). Noticed that you only mentioned OG11 as your resource book. Did you get the MGMAT SC book or the green math book or the purple GMAT books? The green/purple books are just MORE questions for you to practise.(or wait is it practice)

I like your timing strategy as well, will try that!

Cheers,

Sumi

[blaquerose]

hey sumi

how did you do on your GMATPrep? hope you followed through strictly with the timing this time!

PS, I didn't get the MGMAT books...
PPS, it's "practise" as a verb for me, cos I'm UK-educated, but GMAC may disagree... although who cares - GMAT is over! hah!

[sumi]

Speed is of the essence and you better believe it......

The interesting thing is that with Maths I really felt I was ALWAYS in control, I looked at the clock every 5-10 questions to see where I was and it was always was close to my goal. (made a bucket loads of silly mistakes but I can fix them and I know how, practise, practise, practise!, the key here is there was not a single question I could not do, I just went too fast and fell into their traps! )

Verbal on the other hand! Holy Cr*&, I could not believe how BADLY I had done. So I was going through the questions and everything was under control, looked at the clock I was moving along well. I was around question 10 with 55 minutes to go so no stress. I was around question 15 and I had 45 minutes still not too bad. Then I was at question 22 and the time said 20 minutes left and I was about to give up and stop the exam.... I did the only thing I could. I tried to catch up. I guessed(some educated, some wild) to try to catchup. Got up to Question 30 with 12 minutes to go. I knew I was screwed. I did next 5 questions in about 7 minutes. and so at question 35 I had 5 minutes to go. I did some more of the guessing game got to question 38. I did the two questions properly and then I looked at the the clock I had 1 minute 30 seconds left and finished the exam in a flurry.

Even though I am disappointed with my timing, I have to admit the adrenaline rush I got trying to finish the exam was amazing.

Reviewing my results in verbal I actually had not made a single mistake till Question 15. From question 22-> 29 which is where i started freaking out. I got 8 wrong with 6 in a row, I couldn't focus on the RC passage and neither could I comprehend it, bloody ridiculous. I see I made some errors between question 30-34 small errors, with correct ones thrown in as well and then after that everywhere I had to guess, I got them wrong.

My exam is currently scheduled for Saturday 25th and i am aiming for 700+ and that looks highly unlikely with my verbal timing so I am rescheduling it and giving myself another 2 or 3 weeks.

Anything you see I am doing incorrectly? Just to put my body through more pressure I purposely took the exam after working for 4 hours, doing 2 hours of RC questions and an hour of PS. I wanted my body to be exhausted so I could get a gauge on my verbal stamina.

One thing I should mention is that I still have not gone through the last 30-40 questions for each topic. Probably explains why my timing was all off.

Cheers,

sumi

[sumi]

Forgot to mention that I actually got 660(Q47, V34).