GMAT 750 Q51 V40
Dear friends
I took my GMAT on 7th Nov and I scored a 750 (Q51, V40, IR8). Quite relieved to end up with this score in my maiden attempt. My special thanks to Arun, Joydeep and everyone in CrackVerbal for their support.
I took my diagnostic mock on 28th September and had scored a 700. But I had got 14Qs wrong in Quant (8 DS) and 13Qs wrong in Verbal (7 SC, 3 RC & CR). So clearly my DS and SC needed serious efforts.
What worked for me :
1) Choosing the study material :
There is an ocean of study materials for GMAT in the web. Since I had limited time (40 days in all), I decided to concentrate ONLY on OG and CV books.
Learn the concept –> Try the questions from OG Verbal/Quant –> Analyze where I’m going wrong –> Try the questions from OG13.
I found questions from OG Verbal and OG Quant to be easier than OG13 (main book).
2) Maintaining the regularity in prep :
I decided to spend 2-3 hours everyday, no matter how hectic work got. This helped me maintain the continuity of prep and pace my prep well.
3) Plan the Official MockTests well in advance :
A friend of mine had recommended MGMAT mock. In the 6 weeks, I took 6 mock tests (3 official, 3 MGMAT). MGMAT did not help me in terms of content. Infact, questions were more ambiguous and tougher (I felt). However, it did help me build the mental stamina for a 4 hour test.
4) Thorough Analysis of ALL answers :
I solved the questions from OG, maintained an error log. At the end of every round, I analyzed my mistakes. That way, I found parallelism and idioms as my weak spots. I went through the solutions and corroborated my understanding by going through various forums (CV and GMATClub). I also analyzed my right answers to check whether my reasoning was in-line with the official ones or was it plain luck.
I solved the ones I got wrong during practice, 3 days before the actual test. One would expect to get these 100% right. I got only 70% of them right !! So I knew what kind of questions to “make an educated guess and move on” during the actual GMAT 🙂
One tip for everyone. I recommend you suggest people to take Test 3 and Test 4 of GMATPrep (available in CrackVerbal centers) before Test 1 and Test 2 (free ones). Few of the tough and challenging questions discussed in classes and given as assignments are pretty similar to questions that came up in my test 3 and test 4 (more in Test 4). So I did not know how to judge my performance in mocks (I thought it was inflated).
My best wishes to everyone. I want to quote Arun’s wonderful statement, “Good score comes not by solving infinite questions. It comes by solving finite questions but analyzing each of them thoroughly”.
Hi Raveesh,
I am really happy for you! I think you have worked really hard for this. Also, you were able to analyze your mistakes very well.
Arun