I had my GMAT on 13th Sep. Scored 730 (Q50, V3
.
I booked my date 20 days back and started preparation 10 days before exam.
Since 10 days were not enough to go through many books. I didn't purchase anything. My roomie had photostats of OG 10th ed. So I read OG.
1) Maths- There are some pages for maths concepts in OG. I went through those concepts and did question from 200-460(problem solving) and last 100 from data sufficiency.
2) Verbal- Luckly I got a good grammer book wren and martin. I read 1st section of wren and martin. and managed to go through almost 180 questions in OG (for SC).
for RC I couldn't do any thing. But I had some some fundas for RC from my previous cat attempt.
For logical analysis I solved last 30 questions from OG.
3) For analytical writing I went through Do/Don't list available online.
One day before exam.
I went to edinburg (Test center is almost 250 Kms from city where I stay), Didn't want to take any risk on last day.
I had printout of Do/Don't for essay writing. wanted to go through them in night.But I almost wasted my evening. Went out for dinner with some of my friends. Scotland vs France and Endland vs Russia match added my wooes. Still I manged to read few pages for essays. Beleive me that list is amazing. In essay do/don't are really very important.
I had my exam from 9:45 on 13th. Essays were good. I found maths section difficult. Few questions in end were formula based. But since I hadn't gone through any maths book specific for GMAT. I had hard time solving them.
In verbal SC was easy compared to RC/LA. RC gave me hard time. I was used to cat essays. But I found CAT essays are different from GMAT essay. In cat essay tone remain almost same. But In GMAT essay (although size is smaller compared to cat essay) tone changes with every new paragraphs. I think I did many mistakes in RC.
LA was fine.
After completing my test I waited almost 2 mins whether to cancel the test or view the score.
Finally I decided to view the score.
I was happy to see score more than 700. But same time I was disappointed. I started to blame myself for casual approach for such important exam.
But after 1 day I am not thinking much about retaking the exam. My friends advised me not to retake exam. and If I retake then I may miss dead lines for few universites.
Overall I found OG is very good. Questions in OG and questions in actual GMAT test are almost of same level.
I need some advice from you guys.
I am applying to 5 US universities. 2 are in top 10. Should I apply to top 10 or be more realistic to apply colleges below 15 in rankings.
I have average(or below average) academics scores.
10th 81.4
12th 82
entrance exams rank in JEE entrance, Roorkee entrance , DCE
Did engineering from DCE (73 %)
working with a consultancy firm for last 5 years (18 months outside India)
worked with few NGOs (in India and outside India)
extra curr :This is bad
No extra curr during school(except for few quiz contests)
college (certificates for winner of few technical events at DCE and IIT Roorkee)
Professional- Few awards for proposals/best practices.Represented my company in few events.
Linear Mode
