TEN! Yep 710.
What has the world come to? Even with a 'good' score of 710, I wasn't sure of enough people reading my post. I am not a sucker for attention but since I had written such a long post (incidentally only my SECOND post on PG), I realized that I wouldn't be happy if not many gained from reading it! Hence the teaser title!
That's the magic of this world called pagalguy.com where a school topper is the average guy and the average guy is... well let's not even talk about him (me?).
Getting down to business... I took my GMAT egggjhactly a week ago and I have some tales to tell... maybe more 'gyaan' than 'tale'... so this post is probably more of value to those who are YET to take the GMAT than it is to those who have 'been there, done that'.
My prep started approximately 5 weeks back when the Powerprep CD arrived in mail. I had nothing to do that day so I took the 'TEST 1'.
Score: 700. Thought in my head: That was easy.
How wrong I was going to be proven! Yes, I did score a 710 finally but that was after a good deal of improvement.
Anyway, lemme cut the chase and give you some inputs that you should find useful during your test prep. Here goes...sectionwise...
Quantitative (my score:50, 95 percentile):
For almost all people that I've come across (Indian's at least), this is the more scoring of the two sections. If you've been preparing for the CAT by any chance, you should kick yourself real hard if you score anything under 46 here. However, there is one area that you might not pay as much attention to during CAT prep - DS. And as will be accepted by most, accuracy percentage in DS is lower than PS. The trick to all algebraic DS q's is to keep a few things in mind:
1. Always sustitute numericals for all the variables - makes life much easier.
2. Always, unless clearly seen as unnecessary, consider 3 different values for each variable - a negative integer, a positive integer (preferably not the mod value of the chosen negative integer) and a fraction between 0 and 1. This will cover almost all the possibilites that the question wants to test you on.
3. Keep in mind: zero is even, it's neither neg nor positive and it's an integer.
Problem Solving (PS)
Welll.... piece of cake. Just one tip: learn the formulae's
(distance, area etc) in coordinate geometry. And be familiar with the diff kind of probability q's.
Before I took the test, I had a question in my head - if I were to get the first 20 (e.g) math q's correct, wouldn't my upcoming q's be VERY TOUGH?? After all, I have had the difficulty bar raised 20 TIMES! My answer is 'no'. If you ask me, the
difficulty level curve FLATTENS after the test takes you to a certain(high) level of difficulty. I scored a 50 and I can tell you that I didn't face any more trouble with the last 10 q's than I did with, say, q's 20-30. Does any prev test taker disagree?
Verbal Ability (my score:37, 83 percentile):
Well, personally, I was surprised at the 37 - I thought my VA section had gone really well. I was 'sure' about my answers for at least 80% of the q's. And usually, when I feel good about a section, I am right. This goes to show why the verbal section in the GMAT is special! Unless you give it the required amount of attention during your prep, it has the ability to PUNISH you real bad (probably my case :-\ )
ReadingComp:
Well, when I started my prep, I would not be able to complete reading ONE GMAT RC passage without having TEN random thoughts entering my head. Some say that there's only so much RC prep that one can do. These are people who have always had great reading comprehension. Not me. Mind you, I wasn't bad... just that I wasn't really good at it. And that's what you have to be if you have to excel with GMAT passages. They are a tough read and the questions can get tougher still. By my last prep test, however, I was doing MUCH better. My advice for you is not to try to pull out boring, dense articles from all over and read them (most of us might not have the time or resources to find them) but to try to make a concerted effort, EACH time you read a passage during your prep, to keep your mind concentrated on the passage and ONLY on the passage.
CriticalReasoning:
Well, this is one area where you can't really prepare much. To me, it is an intelligence test. To be able to think of all the assumptions and possibilities or to be able to recognize the answer choices most relavant to the situation at hand.
Either you know it or you dont. SentenceCorrection:
Definitely the area where one has to put the MOST concerted effort amongst the 3 areas in the verbal section. And why do I say so? Because (if you raised a brow coz I started the sentence with 'because', then you need lotsa SC practice!) this is the section where you can raise your performance the most, given equal effort. However, as I've already said, you should put more effort at SC prep than the other two. Unfortunately for me, I realized this quite late and couldn't familiarize myself with all the vagaries of GMAT SC. The only way to succeed here is to practice as many SC q's as you can. More important still, you need to check the explanations. Don't sit re-assured if you get a lot of SC q's correct during prep - your prep material may be too easy, with 3-4 answer options clearly wrong. Here, KAPLAN rules! Very close answer options and the explanations are good too, at least as compared to
PR (Princeton Review). My SC performance curve was still rising when I took my GMAT - bad timing I know.
Unfortunately, I cannot recommend any internet sources for SC q's coz I didn't refer to any (mistake)! In summary, my advice is to practice SC a lot (try scourging the internet for material) and be able to judge whether your good SC scores during prep are attributable to a good knowledge of the subject or to the easy nature of the questions.
My scores during prep (in chronological order):
PPREP>>> 700(5 weeks before G-DAY), 700
PR>>>>> 710
KAPLAN > 610, 590, 640 (the days of woe...)
PR>>>>> 760
KAPLAN>> 630 (Yes, KAPLAN is tough! But good!)
800score> 700, 730, 670, 700, 650(day before G-DAY)
My QA scores would move in the 44-53 range. My VA scores would move in the 29-42 range. Remember, there might not any perceptible trend in your scores in either section coz the difficulty levels varied not only from one set of prep material to another but also within the same prep material.
Here's how I would rate these materials:
(Max 5 stars, more stars better)
PPREP>>>> QA*** VA***
PR>>>>>> QA** VA***
KAPLAN>>> QA*** VA****
800 score>> QA**** VA***
One big advice for people yet to take the test: Take at least 4 full tests before G-DAY. By 'full' I mean the whole 2essay,2section - 3Hour 45Minute ordeal. The sum of the parts is NOT more than the whole here! The first few times I took the full tests, I was a 'spent' man by the time I was a few q's into the verbal section. My brain, by then, was working as smoothly as rusted machinery. However, after 4-5 such full tests, my lasting time had gone up considerably and I would even be able to review the test right after completing it.
Before I sign off, here's my profile:
B.Com grad with 3 years experience in the BPO industry.
Acads: school- very good, college - average.
Here are the schools I am aiming for:
Judge, ISB, ESADE & Said >>>>>: Stretch...
NUS, Nanyang, Warwick, Cranfield: Hmmm...
Manchester >>>>>>>>>>>>>> : Safe...
Need to do some more introspection and research and I should be down to a final list of 5/6.
Hope I could provide some gyaan which'll help some of you in taking a better shot at the GMAT than I did.
Cheers!
KrYpTiCKluE
Re: My GMAT score: Seven Hundred and.... (read on) -
03-11-2005, 07:19 PM
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