The GMAT journey - Part III

A bad day?

Day before the test, I decided to stop studying at 11 pm. I woke up at 8:30 in the morning. Spent only 15 mins looking at the AWA templates. I had a 2pm appointment and I reached the test center at 1 pm. The lady wouldn't let me take the exam without my passport. I did not expect the officials to be this strict about the passport. But, as it turns out they were. If you are NOT a native of the country, please carry your passport along. I wondered whether this is a beginning of a bad day. But calmed myself and drove home to grab my passport. I reached the test center around 1:45. No more surprises. Started the exam at 2 pm. I spent couple of mins to relax my body and mind.

I was prepared with my templates for the two essays - argument and issue.

Quant: In contrast to others who found the quant section to be tougher, I found it to be at same level as the OG11. I was extra careful in the exam and I caught 2 mistakes. I had one tricky question (between Q30-35), but fortunately I had more than enough time left on the clock. The question had a picture of a square containing 9 squares of different sizes. The size of two squares was given, and had to find the size of one of the squares. This was more of a puzzle than a quant question. As I had atleast 20 mins left, I could afford to spend five minutes on this question. I got it correct. Surprisingly, the questions got simple and not harder which made me worry that I might have answered some question(s) incorrectly. I pressed on and finished the section with 2 mins to spare. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to see a score of 51.

Verbal: The difficulty was on par with the difficulty of GMAT and PR CATs. Got a boldfaced CR after 30th question. I was confident that I was doing reasonably well. 3 of the 4 RCs were short. I followed my strategy of skimming the passage first and then reading it the "GMAT way". The CRs were not any harder than the ones in GMATPREP. My verbal score in my test scores was between 34-39, so I was not too worried. BTW, you can see my GMAT test scores at: http://www.urch.com/forums/406039-post204.html (Practice Tests vs. Real GMAT)

My heart was pounding when the scores were being calculated. I was confident that I'd done good enough for 700+. I almost jumped when I saw ...... 740 (Q51, V38) appear on the screen. I needed few secs to realize and shout woooo hoooooo!!!! Not a bad bay at all!!!

The GMAT journey - Part II

Where do I stand?

Without any prep, I took a practice test and scored 650 (Q44, V34). I felt confident about the Quant section as I could score much more after refreshing key concepts. It was obvious that I had to improve in the verbal section.

I describe my apporach for each section:

VERBAL:

SC: In the beginning my hit rate was around 50-60 percent in the sentence correction. I spent most of the first 3-4 weeks preparing for the sentence correction section. I spent most of the last 3-4 weeks reading and understanding the reasoning from OG 11. I really loved the OG11 explanations. The explanations on testmagic forum are quite good. Just before the exam, I was able to answers more than 80% questions correctly. Manhattan SC guide was another valuable resource.

CR: I was able to get most of the questions from OG and PR correct, but not all from Kaplan. I was not too concerned about this section. I went through all the questions and explanation carefully from OG11 and OG - verbal. I didn't have enough time for the 1000 CR.

RC: This section was my weakest in the beginning. I had problems concentrating on the long and boring passages. I had to improve my reading speed and comprehension. I tried out a few strategies, which didn't help much. In parallel, I worked on improving my reading speed by not vocalizing. Here is what worked for me: I skimmed the passage in 15-30 secs and then re-read the passage carefully, before anwering the questions. The reason is that as you skim the passage the brain absorbs some data and as you read the passage again, the passage looks familiar to the brain, which results in better comprehension. Furthermore, if your brain thinks that the passage is interesting, then it will absord more information. Improvement in the RC section boosted my confidence.

QUANT: No extensive preparation besides the OG11. Did not solve any MJJs. I used to look at postings on data sufficiency occasionally on the testmagic forum. During my practice exams, I realized that I was able to solve the questions correctly, but fell for the trap occassionally. Sometimes the question, asks for the value of x/2 instead of the x (it must have happened to you, right?). I decided to read the questions (even the easy ones) twice, if possible.

To be continued....

The GMAT journey - Part I

I took the GMAT on 26th Dec, 2006.

With almost ten years of professional experience, I reached a plateau with an urge to ascend the rungs of corporate ladder. For this an MBA is an ideal vehicle. For an MBA the first step besides instrospection is taking the GMAT. So, after some mulling over the MBA or not question, I decided to take the GMAT and work on shortlisting institutes later.

I wanted to give the GMAT my best shot and didn’t want to take the test twice so I decided to prepare for almost 10 weeks. Beyond three months, I felt that its hard to stay focused and as a result the performance may suffer. I had taken a few competitive exams in the past, so I was comfortable with pacing myself. I played competitive sports as a teenager and understand importance of achieving peak performance on the exam day. I had a strong quant background and used Testmagic forum very often to sharpen my verbal skills. The forum has so much material, but I didn't have enough time read.

I purchased the following books: OG11, OG - verbal, Kaplan - Premier Edition, PR - Cracking GMAT, Kaplan - verbal, PR - verbal, Manhattan SC guide.

My strategy was to study the Official Guide (OG) material towards the end, and hence started with Princeton followed by Kaplan. Reading the OG in the last 3-4 weeks made sense to me, as the questions from OG are "real". There is a definite pattern and logic to the OG questions.

To be continued....

Enter the blogger

Greetings!!!

I have been thinking of blogging for a while now. Well, I just decided that today is the day. I have a few things (experiences, reflections) from my not so distant past that I'd written up, which I'd like to share with everyone. So, I'll let the blogging start....