Here's a long post I wrote more than a year ago on another forum, thought it might be useful here too.
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Background:
I wrote the IIM CAT in 2001 , jus out of college.In the mock CATs I was consistently in 99percentile and 90th rank in IMS all India test ,whatever that meant, I fancied my chances. D-Day however was not my day.Some personal issues and a lack of effective test-taking mentality nailed my chances.
This time around was different , and thanks in no small measure to all the people who share their experiences on this forum,my attitude helped me attain a great score.
This year , after months of dithering ,I decided to go for it.
My job involves 70% travel and I was not able to commit time to preparation.(kinda psychological thing )
I was not very confident about my preparedness.
After doing some research on these forums, I realised that the amount of preparation required for the gmat is not really as much I had initially thought.
Still , I felt full time study works best for me.
A friend suggested that I take a month off and study for the gmat.
This sounded like a plan.
I applied for 2 weeks leave and started proper preparation on 8th June.
For those who find study after a work day tough,I recommend taking a week off for that last lap.
If you are serious about taking the GMAT test, book a date and prepare.
Preparation without booking a date does not work the same way.
Again if you do follow this approach, be sure to schdule your gmat in the last days of the month so u can still use the momentum from your leave if you want to retake the test.
Preparation:
Began with the Powerprep, scored 760 (Must mention that I had done some on and off preparation before, so this is not a totally gmat blind score)
On workdays , I prepared for about 2 hours a day from 8th June to 8th July.
Weekends , I spent maybe 5-6 hours.
Workdays , did my best to start study by 7:30pm.
During this initial phase I used Powerprep,Kaplan and Kaplan 800 in that order.
Last september, I had worked for a while with the Arco GMAT CAT.I wouldn't recommend it.
Initially, I was travelling and it took a while to get into the groove.
Constant visits to these forums helped me a great deal.
The valuable tips I read here contributed a lot to my strategy and preparation.
From 8th July to 17th July, I did not spend much time preparing.
This was in part because I was complacent that my 2 weeks of leave would be sufficient.(a more efficient approach would ve been to be consistent in my prepration and take 1 week off .With another 4 days from the weekends, its ample)
Since I had neglected my preparation, I wanted a booster and gave the Powerprep2 , scored 770.
With that shot in the arm , I went and bought the Official Guide to the GMAT.
Worked on the different sections for about 2 days each,with
OG,Kaplan,Kaplan 800 (reviewed it in the last few days) and
Gave Princeton and Kaplan tests everyday during the last week at the same time of the day that my test was scheduled.
Test day: 1pm exam
Woke up at 7:30 am, which is early for me ,forced myself to sleep another hour.Dint want to feel drowsy during the exam.
Had brunch at 11am and a cup of tea at 12 before setting out,picked up a chocolate and water
12:30 , entered the test center and filled in the forms.
I had made some notes about my frequent errors etc , went thru these very quickly,as I waited to be shown in.
All the while,I reminded to take deep breaths each time.
Started with a not-so-good
AWA Issue .I lost focus - was not able to decide whether I wanted to support the author,some dithering later I started , but could not find a good example to illustrate my point.This essay was less than satisfactory.I did not have time for a spell check.
The Analysis of argument was much better.Finished it with 8 mins to spare and spent the time to embellish and revise.
5 min break , went to the rest room, drank water, ate half a bar of chocolate.Remided myself not to analyse the
AWA performance.Deep breathing again for abt 20 secs.
Started Quant with some very easy questions.Had to remind myself to go slowly.
This was a problem that I had faced during my practice tests.I found myself succumbing to the same.
I slowed my pace.Still finished the first 10qns with 55 mins to spare.
At this point I found myself wondering if I had made silly mistakes in the first 10 .I brought myself back to the task at hand and continued.
Most of the questions were very simple , surprisingly,I did not get any probability or Data interpretation questions.Certainly nothing close to the esoteric stuff on some forums.I again found myself wondering whether the questions were all simple because I had screwed up the first 10qns.Just kept at it.I misunderstood one of the questions and wsted 4.5 mins on it.The question said a number is x.y - in all my GMAT preparedness, mistook this for x*y . Finished with 20secs to spare.
5 min break ,went to the rest room, finished the chocolate and drank water.Decided not to think about the how the test was going.More deep breathing for 20 secs or so.Started with 4 SC , the RCs were relatively simple - again I started wundering if this was a refelection of my preformance.Quickly snapped out of it.With 10 qns to go , I was distracted again by the thought that I will soon have to look at my score.Managed to quikly duck that distraction.When I had 3 questions and 4 mins to go,I was hit with a boldface , a nasty one , under the circumstances.I noticed my breathing was very irregular.Took 3 secs to calm down and made an educated guess.Finished with 4 secs to spare.I laboured thru the survey questions , jus wanting to see my score.Stood up,pumped my fist in the air a coupla times and stared at the screen for 10 secs.
Lessons learnt:
1> Attitude is everything.
I did not want to repeat my CAT experience.I focused on improving my test-taking mentality.I knew that the pressure of taking a practice test is not the same.I repeatedly read the stress management sections in Kaplan(it takes less than 10 mins to go thru this section).I also found the stress management section in the Kaplan workshops extremely useful.
The Kaplan workshops are available on many forums.Do some research , there is a lot of free stuff available.
Most advice to take the day before test day off.I was using my paid leave , so I decided that I would prepare on the last day also.
I always found verbal more relaxing , so I left some SC revision and minimal CR and RC review for the last day, just so I stay in shape on those fronts as well.
Anyway ,48 hours before the test, I was finishing my Quant prep and was doing the last few PS/DS questions from
OG.Some of them are crazy.I found myself getting stressed as I was not able to do more than 50% of them .I stopped and went out for a jog.I repeated to myself that I had improved a great deal during my preparation and should not give too much importance to this occurence.I came back,watched a movie till 10 pm , got back to some review , but this time was cautious to avoid any building negative thoughts.I noticed that the last 10-15 in
OG-Quant are much more complex than the ones just preceding them.I did well to spot and remove this threat to my confidence level.
Read others experinces in these forums , learn from their experiences - psotive and negative.
Read a lot of 700 score stories.
Some other pointers:
At the test center , do not begin the test unless you are totally comfortable, even 10 secs of deep breathing before u click 'proceed' can help you focus.Stretch if you have to, before you sit down.
During the test,do not think about previous sections or question.
During the test,do not wonder why all the questions are so easy - and contemplate that meager score and its consequences.
Do not tell too many people that you are writing the gmat.The pressure from casual comments/questions can be more intense than you expect.
And most importantly , throughout your preparation , use the oft quoted Gita principle : "Do not focus on the results, just do your best"
Arrive at a realistic GMAT score that you can live with . even if your practice test score vary wildly , keep your comfort level score in mind , and do not let the pressure of you high or low gmat scores build on you.Someone on this forum had mentioned a hygiene range of 670 to 730.That a 670 was as good as a 730 for most univs.I kinda liked that attitude.
2> Track your progress:
The ideal was is to use the excel sheets available here and time your practice.
Note your errors , I found silly mistakes comtribute to 70% of my errors .
Identify concepts that you do not know and revisit them.
Make a list of all your main errors anf things to be remembered.Read this on test day.
My list included the following:
#Watch out for units (minutes,dollars)
#Watch out for percentages and numbers mixed in a question
#If Y is known and X+Y is asked , when you solve for X , remember that Y should be added.(This basically mean , read the goddamn question carefully)
#Sometimes linear equations/lines give the same equation again either by multiplying by acertain factor or by moving termsacross the equality.
#In DS , watchout for the case where only Stmnt2 is suff- This is a very common GMAT trap.(I had the tendency to club Stmnt1 with 2 and choose C , when the answer could be B )
# Do not carry over info from stmnt 1 to 2 (old one , but very important)
#Watchout for EXCEPT questions (In Verbal towards the end of the test it is very easy to lose focus and not read the question correctly , I noticed that in test there were some questions where the choices for a "weaken" question sometimes would have been a perfect answer for a "assumption" question)
#Remember all PS answers are provided in ascending order
...and much more.Making this list was very useful for me
3> Take the test at the time of the day you are most alert.I am not a morning guy.
Although in effect it cost me more(had to forego some flight ticket discount) , I still took the afternoon slot.
It was totally worth it.
4> Try to make your practice test experience as close as possible to the real thing.Eat the same chocolate , and keep the same routine in the break(wash face/stretch etc).Give practice tests.The pressure , especially during the Kaplan tests is a very good learning experience.
5> The process of elimination was most effective for me in the verbal section.I drew a grid before I started verbal.This reduced the number of times I had to re-read answer choices.
6> Not everybody may be able to finish all the test prepraration material they have.I was not able to complete 50% of
OG quant.This appeared to be a major sore at first , but I was confident my preparation from other sources wold be just as good.
I had read one some posts that many people bought
OG during the last week.I am not sure they finsished it either.
Remember, its not important to finish a set of material as it is to identify weaknesses and learn something new each day.
7> Do not be disheartened by the complxity of some questions in forum postings .Focus on the basics , review the basics periodically.
8> In quant, if you get a real toughie , breathe and read it again , this little departure from your go-go pace might just put the question in new light.Again , I found that many questions tend to lead me when I put pen to paper.If I started writing down the information and looking at it,maybe did some simplification of the expression,something emerged.
Picking numbers also works wunders.
Study materials:
Kaplan
Kaplan 800
OG
Princeton tests
1000 SC/CR/RC - practiced some 200 from each doc
Sahils
sentence correction notes
Spideys
sentence correction notes (I strongly suggest you make up your own notes as you go on)
Practice test scores:
Remember , use the practice tests scores that you see on the forums of other test takers only as one indicator.
Do not obsess over your practice test scores and try to correlate them with others practice/real test performance.
PP1 760
PP2 770
PR1 670
PR2 700
PR3 690
Kap Diag 710
Kap CD1 690
Kap CD2 640
Kap book 630
Kaplan tests , especially the CD based tests are known to be low scoring
Linear Mode
