Tips to secure 96 percentile @ gmat

[worldpeace]

Hey everyone, just a few days back I gave my gmat and was able to score 730/800 ( q48, v42) after 4 months prep time. Since this forum and articles and posts by Stacy and Ron on this forum helped me a lot during my preparation , I felt obliged to share my strategies and tips on this forum. BTW I am still awaiting my awa and IR results so will share them once they are available.

A little about my background: Indian female with around 2 year work ex in IT and ME degree... co curriculars and GPA's are good though not extraordinary :)

I was in no way expecting to cut 40+ in verbal as I am a non native speaker but was expecting 37-38 but I guess sincerely watching Thursdays with Ron study sessions did the trick :)



So here is the list of things which helped and which didnt and hope it helps you too :)

1. Thurs with Ron : Highly recommended. Still cant believe that the videos are free

2. Manhattan guide books: Good strategy books .Dont forget to make notes from them

3. Kaplan premier 2013 : Again good for beginners but dont expect to cross 700 by depending on it only

4. kaplan 800: skip .... questions are far far away from the real thing.. no need to waste time on it.

5. OG book: the bible... no need for any comments :D

6. Cat tests (sorry I dont remember the scores but I was consistently scoring 49+ in quant on manhattan tests so was obviously expecting 50+ on the real thing and was obviously disappointed with only 48 out of 51. )

Gmat prep 1: 650 (q 49, v31)
Gmat prep 2: 750 ( q 49, v 42)

Manhattan ones - Good and next to the real gmat
Kaplan tests- Good for practicing and timing
Princeton tests- Stay away . quant is wayyyyyyyyyy too easy . so easy that even a 5th grade student can solve them. Real gmat quant is much more elegant and requires much more logic.

Other tests: good only if you have a short concentration span like me and want to practice sitting for 4 hours at one place :D

7. kaplan verbal guidebook: good but not necessary

from my experience real gmat quant is much more sophisticated . manhattan quant requires intensive calculation and good for practice but nothing comes near to the real gmat quant. not even gmat prep tests

hope this helps. Let me know if anyone requires any more details

[biswas_sandeep]

Good to hear about your success.
Wish you all the Best.
- Sandeep