[Keya]

Originally Posted by sunil123

KAPLAN scores: (unfortunately I got the old online session/format which has 2 CAT onlines and 6 computer version tests(...watever that means)

I.CAT Alice 1 (computer version): 610
II. CAT online : 530
III.CAT Alice 2 : 590

I am preparing from the following material:

1. completed KAPLAN online course
2. ETS 11th edition (I think ETS 11== OG??), I had completed nearly 30 % and just started working on KAPLAN 800, and then continue ETS.
3. I think I will work on 1000 SC, CR and RC. (time should permit, i have around 3-4 hrs a day and planning to take a week off before exam)
4. Ofcourse Prep. test.

Plz suggest me interms of material, approach and focus areas, it will be of gr8 help.

Hi Sunil,

If you ask me, you're on the right track. As far as material is concerned, I followed IMS, OG and Kaplan. IMS to get my quant in order, Kaplan for the verbal, and OG for overall practice.

As for approach and focus areas... well see, this is something that varies for every person, so the Key is to IDENTIFY what areas YOU require to focus on.
You could follow my 'graph' strategy, where I just plotted the number of questions I did correct or incorrect in each section. This helped me to identify the areas which were having a negative impact on my performance. You have almost 6 weeks to your exam. By now you will have already built up your 'base' so now is the time to eliminate the loopholes. It should take at most a week to analyse which are the focus areas.
Once you do that, let me know. If I can think of anything to help out, I will.

ATB
Keya

[Keya]

[quote=sethankur]

Originally Posted by Keya

Hi all PGuys and Pgals,

Whew!!! Finally!!.... I gave the GMAT today in the morning and hit 770 with Q50 V46.
The scores translated to 95 %ile in Quant and 99%ile in Verbal.
I started hyperventillating as soon as I saw my score... God Bless the Pearson co-ordinator who came up and advised me to click on 'End Exam'!!!


============================

please mail me the spidey gmat notes asap if you have at sethankur@gmail.com

thanks a lot....giving gmat this month end ....

Hi Ankur,

I've replied to your PM. Feel free to contact me for any discussion.

Thanks!
Keya

[Keya]

Originally Posted by chango

Hey congrats ma'm ...... well done indeed !!! ........ plz do write about ur prep and all ......

Keya i m taking my GMAT on 30th of this month ..... cud u plz tell me how to go about it .... .i hv jst strtd with OG 11 .... and thru with SC 1000 and OG 10 ...... but i m still facing probs in the verbal section .... particularly RC ..... plzzzz gv few tips to improve on tht ....... i m afraid to mark few answers in the RCs during the exam..... this leads to wastage of time and thus rushing thru the section towards the end ...... here r few scores of mine ....

GMATprep 1 : 710
GMATprep 2 : 690

Princeton 1 : 710

Kaplan : (snipd)....not worth mentioning also ..... :neutral:

hope u read ths post asap and reply soon ....... just a month left .....

in anticipation

Abhishek

Hi Abhishek,

First of all, apologies for being so tardy.

Well, your problem seems to be the RCs.
I think Kaplan Verbal and Kaplan 800 have a very good strategy for the RCs. They say that the idea is to read ACTIVELY, instead of PASSIVELY. Sounds wonderful.

Now I'll put it into 'Keya Language'

As you're reading, keep asking yourself "Why is the author writing this?" instead of what we traditionally focus on while reading .... "what is written?"

You know, the way we study, from school to professional life, is that we try to absorb the facts in what is written. We do this because we later have either to go give an exam which tests those facts, or to apply those facts in our work. That is the way we are conditioned to read.
And this is the biggest difference. For the GMAT RCs, you don't need to know what is written. You need to understand why it's written. Breaking out of the conditioned mode takes a lot of effort ( at least, it did for me), but believe me, it can be done if you just focus. The minute I used to lose my focus, I'd end up doing half the questions wrong. With focus, I've done even 96% correct.

So, when you start reading the RC, make a roadmap (this is a Kaplan Strategy. I've started my younger bro on it, and he swears it makes a difference).
In other words, as soon as you read the first para, stop and ask yourself... "what is the author trying to say?" The first para will undoubtedly be either the introduction to a viewpoint, or will present two conflicting view points, or will in some way give you a clue to what the author is leading up to. Try and define this in your own language, and keep it in your mind.
As you read each para from the second para till the last but one para, stop and ask yourself " What is he trying to say here? How does it tie in with the first para/para before this? Is he giving me additional information? Is he refuting something he said earlier? Is he giving examples? Is he laying down a hypothesis?"
When you read the last para, ask yourself " How does this relate to the intro para and the 'body' paras?

If you need to jot down answers to these mental questions, do that. I know I never was able to keep it all in my head.. and exam pressure makes my head a wind tunnel, so everything would get blown away anyway ;-)

Once you've read it 'actively', you'll have a 'roadmap' for the entire RC.
A few more seconds, and a quick look through your roadmap will make you reasonably sure about what the author's main point is, what the inference/conclusions are, what the tone is, etc.
Once you start answering the questions with all 'activity' going on in your head, you'll start getting more questions right. Give yourself at least 4-5 days to get into this 'Active' groove.
Once you start answering more questions right, it'll build up your confidence...
And soon you'll be saying... "RCs?? Piece of Cake!!!"

ATB
Keya

[aim-wsc]

great strat.:-)
thanks for sharing great posts

[imjimmy]

Hi Keya,

PS 98.3%
DS 95.3%
CR 96.8%
RC 92.4%
SC 91.5%

Great Score. Those accuracy rates, for the OG, that you posted are just amazing. No wonder you got a 770.

Did you obtain those 90-95% accuracy rates by solving questions in the time limit?

Do you have any idea on how to improve the CR accuracy rate. I have spend nearly a month targetting my verbal - chiefly CR(my main weakness). Hence i thought that i was pretty good here..

2 days ago i did the last 50 CR questions for both OG and Verbal Review. Gave myself a generous time limit of upto 2 minutes per question..
The results were very dissapointing(for the 100 questions) :
OG accuracy - 85% Verbal Review Accuracy - 84%. Avg time spend - 1.84 minutes per question.

Any suggestions on how to get to the 90% levels here. I am even trying to target the LSAT CR's or maybe Kaplan 800.

Please let us know how the real CR's in the actual GMAT are constructed. Are these very similar to the CR's in OG. Are they tougher... Or different in pattern?? Are the argument stimulus short and tough to comprehend..

Thanks.

[rpradeephere]

Hi all...

I gave my Princetone-1 and acored 740 (Q46,V47) though I had made just 2 mistakes in quants and 5 in verbal. I am not sure why my quant score plummeted like tat.

I am aiming for 730-750 in the real GMAT and will be giving it another 20 days. Planning to give 4 Kaplan CAT's, 3 more Princeton CAT's, 1 Cambridge CAT, 2 Powerprep and 2 GMAT Prep in the next 15 days.

1) Can junta give a rough range of scores i need to score in the above tests so that i can assume I am good enough for a 730-750. Guess in Kaplan my aim must be to score 650-670. Am I right? How about Princeton and others.?

2) What can I make out of my Princeton score? I found the paper pretty simple.

3) I knew one friend of mine who got 730 (Q50,V3 and another just 690 (Q51,V37). How come such a wide gap in final scores for such a small difference in actual Q & V scores?

4) How come people get different final scores though the break up in quants and verbal is same. Sometimes the difference is just 10 points, but at times i hav observed differences as high as 30. Then how is the final score calculated?

Gmatiers.. I would be grateful if Keya,Amit and others can throw some light on the above queries.

Cheers,
RPK

[seemantparth]

Originally Posted by imjimmy

Hi Keya,



Great Score. Those accuracy rates, for the OG, that you posted are just amazing. No wonder you got a 770.

Did you obtain those 90-95% accuracy rates by solving questions in the time limit?

Do you have any idea on how to improve the CR accuracy rate. I have spend nearly a month targetting my verbal - chiefly CR(my main weakness). Hence i thought that i was pretty good here..

2 days ago i did the last 50 CR questions for both OG and Verbal Review. Gave myself a generous time limit of upto 2 minutes per question..
The results were very dissapointing(for the 100 questions) :
OG accuracy - 85% Verbal Review Accuracy - 84%. Avg time spend - 1.84 minutes per question.

Any suggestions on how to get to the 90% levels here. I am even trying to target the LSAT CR's or maybe Kaplan 800.

Please let us know how the real CR's in the actual GMAT are constructed. Are these very similar to the CR's in OG. Are they tougher... Or different in pattern?? Are the argument stimulus short and tough to comprehend..

Thanks.

Hi Friends!

the Keyas technique of plottinh accuracy is quite cool.i plan to try it n see for myself.

Still, i have doubt.

>how to compare the accuracy levels achieved in materials from completely different sources.Say--Princeton & Kaplan.my accuracy varies from 60 to 90 % and that makes me crazy.

i hope some of u would pitch in with ideas, What do u say Keya?


Cheers

>

[amitnsitian]

Originally Posted by rpradeephere

3) I knew one friend of mine who got 730 (Q50,V3 and another just 690 (Q51,V37). How come such a wide gap in final scores for such a small difference in actual Q & V scores?

your info is not correct. i have a 710 with 51 QA n VA 34.690 (Q51,V37) is just not possible....

[Keya]

Originally Posted by imjimmy

Hi Keya,



Great Score. Those accuracy rates, for the OG, that you posted are just amazing. No wonder you got a 770.

Did you obtain those 90-95% accuracy rates by solving questions in the time limit?

Do you have any idea on how to improve the CR accuracy rate. I have spend nearly a month targetting my verbal - chiefly CR(my main weakness). Hence i thought that i was pretty good here..

2 days ago i did the last 50 CR questions for both OG and Verbal Review. Gave myself a generous time limit of upto 2 minutes per question..
The results were very dissapointing(for the 100 questions) :
OG accuracy - 85% Verbal Review Accuracy - 84%. Avg time spend - 1.84 minutes per question.

Any suggestions on how to get to the 90% levels here. I am even trying to target the LSAT CR's or maybe Kaplan 800.

Please let us know how the real CR's in the actual GMAT are constructed. Are these very similar to the CR's in OG. Are they tougher... Or different in pattern?? Are the argument stimulus short and tough to comprehend..

Thanks.

OK, I'll take your questions one by one

1. No, I didn't do those questions within a time frame. I did the OG while I was at work, ... I swapped my coffee breaks for questions :-) I would have people dropping in at my desk asking questions about work, so I seldom got more than 20 mins at a stretch to do the questions, and at times it was difficult to concentrate. I mainly used OG to determine my problem areas, and then used Kaplan and IMS material to block the loopholes. I used the last 15 days, when I took time off from work, to build up speed.

2. Kaplan 800 has some good strategies for CR. They have classifed the question types, and that helps to direct your chain of thought, and that goes a long way towards picking the right answer choice. However, I may not be the best person to advise how to do CR well... apart from keeping the question types in mind, I didn't work much on the CR... I seemed to be able to solve most of them intuitively. I have long been known in my family for splitting hairs in an argument, and being logical to a fault... looks like that nasty trait actually helped :-).
But again, Kaplan 800 did help to take my accuracy level from 92% to 96%+.
My advice would be-- don't do the last 50 at one go, or target them first... start out with the easy ones, and work your way up... it gives your brain time to 'condition' itself to thinking the GMAT way.

3.As for the actual GMAT questions... they got tougher as I went along. The last four took me 16+ minutes to solve. So I can say that the GMAT really does get tougher if you're doing the questions right. The ones in the beginning were mid OG level. The last few... well, those were some of the toughest I have ever done... I needed to take notes to solve them. I also got 3 boldfaces. The first I got was the 7th question, and the last I got was the 37th... the 37th one was way more difficult than the 7th one.

Anything else you need to know... just yell ;-)
Keya

[Keya]

Originally Posted by seemantparth

Hi Friends!

the Keyas technique of plottinh accuracy is quite cool.i plan to try it n see for myself.

Still, i have doubt.

>how to compare the accuracy levels achieved in materials from completely different sources.Say--Princeton & Kaplan.my accuracy varies from 60 to 90 % and that makes me crazy.

i hope some of u would pitch in with ideas, What do u say Keya?


Cheers

>

I really can't comment about Princeton, since I never touched their material. However, I'll say that Kaplan is quite tough... but it really builds up your verbal. Once you start scoring well on Kaplan, you know you've hit the bulls eye.

Keya