730...the story so far

[shekhar]

730 ... it was a battle won by me against myself. it was a mental tussle in which i came out triumphant against the toughest enemy that is "myself".

all the study material in Green

Study Material

KAPLAN 2006 Premier Edition
If you're aiming for 700+, this is the one. The sectional tests, the full-length tests are challenging enough to set your standards high.

KAPLAN Verbal Workout
Difference between 650-680 & 700-700+ is your performance in the Verbal section. Nice book to get the SCs categorization in your head.

Online Link
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/gmatplus/gmat.html
Nice questions for practice.discussed some doubtful ones on PG. Mostly OG questions. Helped me utilize my time in office.

The big bro of all : OFFICIAL GUIDE (10th edition)
Absolutely essential. Did all SCs & CRs. Some last 100 questions on RC.

KAPLAN'S GMAT 800
Good in the sense that you come to know, what are actually the tough questions. The SCs will spin your head here but patience is the key. Solve,check & then understand your errors & correct ones too. Explanations given are simply superb. I finshed it completely. The PS & DS too.

CDs : KAPLAN, some portions of PRINCETON.



CREDITS :

nikhildoegar, akshatprakash,PsychoD,Baba Yaga,Simba n so many others who've made PG a beautiful community.



My Background : B.Tech(ECE) 2004 passout from G.N.D.U., Amritsar & currently working with an Indian S/W firm in Pune(joined June,2004).


i think it's the one's mind who is one's best friend n one's most formidable adversary too.
the preparation part...specifics...they are very trivial compared to what is required to be mentally charged up & as one says 'the right attitude'.


PREPARATION SPECIFICS
started mid-July along with CAT preparation , knowing that maths part would be taken care of by this. it was the verbal part which i wanted to prepare so as to leverage it in CAT.

Started with KAPLAN Premier edition,
moved to Verbal Workout.
Office time : the online link.
Then OG. started it by doing 10 questions daily each of SC & CR daily, then moved to 20 questions each.
GMAT 800 for last 15 days.

one very effective advice which I read here given by nikhildoegar was " never be ruffled by the scores in the test(as u'll read later in the post)...concentrate on finding your weak points....

my weak point
surprisingly CR...i (still persisting with this problem....but reduced the error %age) get lost in the written matter i had to really try hard "to read the question stem first...somehow it was not in my habit

Problem Solving
It is under control. Be sure to read the question stem very carefully. While solving remember "what is actually asked". You always has enough time to actually solve the question. Use that time towards your accuracy. Aviod silly mistakes here.

Data Sufficiency
Guard yourself against some "obvious answers". Like the option (c). Make sure the question 'is' answered by using both the statements. Many a times (e) is the answer when you think it is (c). "RECHECK" your answer. You have enough time for it.

Critical Reasoning
Practice enough to improve accuracy. Reading explanations while preparing is very important.
Process of Elimination is also the key here. You can easily find the options which are "out of scope", "extreme". Use scratch pad if necessary to mark that option(s) out. Nothing worse than wasting time reading the disqualified option(s) again.

Sentence Correction
For the ones who're into the early part of their preparation: make a habit of writing correctly. the emails specially. always listen to proper english news channels. viz NDTV 24*7, CNBC TV18 so as get correct english into the head.
Practice,practice...read the explanations while preparing. It's good to get the categorization into the head. Any GMAT book will give you that. In my case, Kaplan.
Practice reading vertically through the options to look for the differences in them.

Reading Comprehension
This is something which has its roots in your habit. Consciously read tough materials. Not that you've to be voracious reader but the ability to wade through a passage looking for specific details like 'passage flow', 'the scope', 'the tone'. Practice getting the 'skeleton structure' of the passage in your head like figuring out sub-topics viz. the purpose of each paragraph,getting rough idea of 'where' an idea is located. This will help while you're solving the questions.
Simply breeze through any statistical data.This will save hell lot of time. For questions,you can always revert back to those statistics.
I feel you can really save a lot of time in this portion in VA section. Once you read the passage well, 3-4 questions can be done 4-5 minutes.

One risk of practicing RC from paper-based tests is that you may be tempted to answer the next questions before solving the current one.Be conscious enough of this trap.


The Tests which I gave
A total of 5 full-length tests.
KAPLAN tests. 3 of them. Scores in order : 570, 630 & 610.
PowerPrep : 2 tests. Scores in order : 740, 710.
PowerPrep tests after OG.

Important points regarding the tests
It is so very important that tests should be taken with the mindset of improvement & knowing one's weak points. Yes, do give yourself some target before a test but then do not get bogged down by scores.
Do give sectional tests. They're a great help in mind conditioning & timing.

Some unusual trivia
Somewhere along the preparation, my accuracy differed on paper sectional tests & tests on CDs. So i shifted more to the sectional tests on the CDs.



Last few days
It was OG + GMAT 800. PowerPrep tests for morale boosting.
Remaining focused on the bigger picture. Now i was not thinking about what score i'll get. Simply solving questions, understanding the explanations. That's it.

18th the G-Day
16th evening : revised some probability, formulae of alligation etc.
17th : a look at GMAT Idioms( from Kaplan Verbal Workout), went through my mistakes in OG (only SC though), some GMAT 800 questions.



The Test


quant was easy...started with a sitter in PS.got 4th question on probability ...was a bit happy about that...wasted some unnecessary time but got it correct. finished quant with some 3-4 minutes to spare.


got a good break.. chocolates(mmm..my fav.)..2 perks n one 5 star ..
took some 7 minutes..got some encouraging words from the co-ordinator "you're already late..n this long break..this is misconduct"...


verbal section...i tried hard not to get into the guessing game whether this question is harder than previous one or not...you can probably make out in quant section...but here it's a serious NO-NO
I really did save time through RCs which i invested in CRs & SCs.


hilarious stuff...penultimate question...clock read 00.05 ...man...5 seconds only..how could this be...randomly clicked on it..last question ..clicked randomly again...clock 4 minutes 48 seconds ...surely...penultimate question ..wrong..i didn't even read it...gave nice time to last one...submitted it with 2 minutes left...
Was expecting anything above 700. some doubts in VA section made me sure of not getting 750 something.
ended up with 730. q :50 & va : 40 . q: not max....was expecting max score in quant...must've been some silly mistakes.

[Crash_test_dummy]

Congratulations on your great score

[Crash_test_dummy]

congrats. post edited

[shekhar]

got my GMAT score card yesterday..am a bit bogged down by AWA score it's only 4 . man..how would it affect my admissions..?? i dunno but i was confidently expecting 4.5 'at least'.

hey crash test...apni posts edit karr de yaar..u know..a bit conscious about visibility factor on PG.

[Crash_test_dummy]

Originally Posted by shekhar

got my GMAT score card yesterday..am a bit bogged down by AWA score it's only 4 . man..how would it affect my admissions..?? i dunno but i was confidently expecting 4.5 'at least'.

hey crash test...apni posts edit karr de yaar..u know..a bit conscious about visibility factor on PG.

4 isnt very bad...it represents "a competent analysis of the subject at hand with minor flaws in laguage and thought". so it cant be that bad i guess. and if you`ve done well on verbal, then it kinda compensates for it.

i didn`t understand what u meant by the visibility factor of my post or something...can u plz explain.

[shekhar]

Originally Posted by Crash_test_dummy

i didn`t understand what u meant by the visibility factor of my post or something...can u plz explain.

i am referring to the earleir posts of urs' on this thread. i'm requesting u 2 edit them coz the content on which you had replied is not there anymore as i had edited my GMAT exp. post. i am talking of 'my' visibility factor. since i've cut the crap out of my GMAT exp. post so don't want it to be seen in the replies too...got it buddy..!!

[ambansal]

hey buddies,
call me the latest addition to pagalguy.. great place to be at..
hmm.. the story here is interesting.. and you know what ...it more or less looks very familiar to mine.
vis-a-vis the 730 GMAT.. (me too).. the chocolates during the break (me too).. the discouraging 4 in the AWA (me too ..).. So Shekhar dude... seems like we're sailing in the same boat.
did you get anymore feedback from anybody else on the AWA score? What schools are you planning to apply?
cheers,
Ambrish

[shekhar]

nice too see somebody with same GMAT score..
watts ur profile buddy..??
i'm in pune,working for a s/w company..total 1.5 yrs. of work-ex till date.
so i have decided not to apply this yr. & aim for fall-2007. u must be apping for fall-2006 na....i've hell lot of matter to discuss.
so the koschan comes back to you mate...to which schools r u applying...??

[ambansal]

haaa haaa.. guess I am talking to myself.. buddy me too applying in 2007..
I am a software engg.. working for an MNC.. in hyd for the last 3 yrs now..in the ERP financials domain (2002 grad from REC Warangal).. I dont want to be in a hurry only to end up in a curry as far as my MBA is concerned , plus I want to analyse and research the right school for me FULLY before i join. yahoo id ambrishiscalling@yahoo.com , aim id : ambansal and google talk : ambrish.bansal.. lets go in for more tete-a tete
too confused on where to apply.

[shekhar]

ERP financials..wud u plzz explain in detail..ORACLE or SAP..?? ...u know why..i'm working in SAP BW ..completing 2 yrs. of work-ex..bond expiring...wud like to switch jobs...me being so frank buddy here ..check your PM for my company name..n reply me there only.. ur company name

well, you could have applied to ISB n got thru easily..aiming for US only kyaa?? US MBA is damn expensive...so only solution, acc. to research done till now, is taking a university loan+try for scholarships.