My GMAT DeBrief

The same post is also available here

There u can see people congratulating me :-)

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Hi Folks...

I m done with it and with a pleasant final screen on GMAT showing 730....
However, I strongly feel a 50/40 combo should have yielded 740 ..... Thoughts ?

here goes the story >>>>

Background

Indian IT professional... Working for 5 years almost ... thought of MBA after sensing stagnancy in career...

Decided to give it a shot in 3 months and started in mid June ...
Paced my preparation after scheduling the appointment in first week of July....

Preparation

GMATPREP, old paper based tests, BTG Forum , OG 11
OG 10 , 1000 CR , Kaplan ,
Dint buy anything except Princeton.. Tons of stuff is available on net …

First 10 days went in getting acquainted with table n chair...

Started off with Princeton .... An ok kind of book but anything was good to begin the journey ..... Never referred it back after June…

Maths was my strong point ( though not as strong as that of folks here on the forum ).. So i did not really prepare much on that ... Just solved few old paper tests and some OG 11 questions whenever I needed a break from verbal …One thing which I would recommend to everyone who is good at maths is that TARGET 51 and work for it .... What I did was just 4 days before my GMAT i browsed thru each question on maths sections of this form which had GMATPERP/POWERPREP in the subject.... I dint solve them but still this helped me brush up my concepts and also helped to focus on GMAT level difficulty questions ..... I am sure this site has 80% of the GMATPREP software solved ....

Verbal was my weak point … I am ok in English but poor in MBA English … I still make mistakes… I started off with Princeton then MGMAT SC and moved on to solve OG 10 ( tracked my results )…
At the end of OG 10 I was comfortable in CR , OK in RC and SC…..
Apart from this I used to browse questions on the forums ( BTG being the only forum I used…. Hope Being is correctly used )

Next step was focusing on SC notes by some stalwarts … Saahil, Spidey , Rajat , Vamshi ( not as popular as others but a must read for someone who is poor in English , brilliantly explained concepts and terminologies)… After that I felt better in SC… Atleast I was able to improve in the easier ones with almost 100% accuracy…

I started taking tests in early August.. Took Kaplan tests and almost decided to quit when I saw my scores… After 1.5 moths of preparation my Kaplan scores were 590 , 600 , 610 and 590 respectively…Only consolation was QUANT ( 50 , 48 , 39 , 50) …. At this point important suggestion.. Plz take a GMATPREP before starting ur preparations… Then took a GMATPREP and was happy to see a score of 700…Took its retake and with few repeated questions scored a 730.. so I thought I m somewhere in 680 700 range and still need to improve…

Started solving 1000 CR a set a day just to make sure that I don’t lose touch on CR …I just did the 24 sets which are related toGMAT… Soon paced on it and finished it in 8 days.. Wanted to do 1000 SC but was afraid that since some answers were wrong I would end up shaking my concepts … moved to solve SC questions from ARCO and Kaplan and Powerprep instead….

Started off with OG ll and was surprised that I did quite well in that … In SC and CR I was touching close to 85% accuracy which was sufficient to catapult my score to 720+ …

Last weekend before the GMAT I took GMATPREP and scored 760 and 760 ( in the retake) … Maths was a 51 but it was because I already saw all maths questions on the form ….

I could not study in last 2 days … Was too excited to study and spent this time in cooling my nerves and boosting myself….

For AWA I read out all the docs available on this site and also the doc which has a sample essay to the 200+ official AWA topis… Hats off to the author of that doc..I created templates of my own… Copied good words and nice sentenctes in a place and kept revisiting them ( bcoz I knew I cud never think that way I had to mug them)

The test day
I am not a morning person so I took and evening time 5:30 to 9:30…
Got stuck up in traffic and it spoiled my mood…. Tension overshadowed my confidence and continued to do so till I reached there just 15 minutes before test time…

Centre was good…

Splashed my face and felt better …Cudnt buy anything to eat bcoz of time crunch … This is very important bcoz you yearn for food during the test … Still I utilized breaks… took splashes of water….

AWA were from the official list only.. Wrote ok essays ( I expect to get 4 atleast…. Am keeping fingers crossed)

Quant started of well and except 2 questions I knew the approach to solve all of them…
Educated guess on these 2 ( which I m sure went wrong) and some silly mistakes (which are my birthright) helped me reach 50 …. Though I was sure that my quant will be atleast 49 I was happy to see 50 finally.. In all my tests I finished with well 15 minutes left… I triple checked first 15 questions and made sure that I utilize full time… I corrected my mistakes in 3 questions …… That surely helped….

Verbal – This was the only test where none of the questions were repeated for me …but started of well.. Had RC at question no 5 and could comprehend it… I cruised along.. One important tip here … Forget the question as soon as you click confirm.. don’t think about any question which you have already attempted… this kills time and confidence and concentration …. If at all u want to think then think that what u did was right and its time to focus on the one in front of u right now….I selected atleast 5 A’s on SC which kind of caused concern but I continued… CR’ s were OK and except 2 I m sure it went well… I was not able to comprehend 1 RC towards the last and probably got it all wrong …. I finished off with 57 seconds to go …

Then some BIQ screens and then I selected report scores… my head was down with fear and anxiety and when I saw 730 … I was on 7th heaven…

Ohhh what a day … 730 is an achievement…..

Lessons learnt

1) KAPLAN RC’s are bad to practice.. They will kill ur confidence if u are an OK performer… SC and CR should be done if u target 700+
2) Take a test before starting preparations
3) Keep track of mistakes
4) Keeping COOL is more important then all the prepaation
5) Confess your weaknesses and focus on them but keep polishing your strengths

Acknowledgements

A big thanks to ERIC for maintaining this…. A perfect place … Best part is that it is GMAT only ….. Very well organized and driven by excellent members… Special thanks to JAYHAWK2001 , GIVEMEANID , BENY ( for thrashing my AWA’s so that I cud focus more on it) , GABRIEL , CYBERMUSINGS and many other folks ….

BTG Rocks !!!