[ahbeng]

prats23 - i did not take any professional help. but had a very good friend check the essays for content and another friend for the style and overall presentation. If you are doing it yourself, its important to have 2-3 people (who are good writers willing to lend their time with all their heart) proofread it for you. If you are applying to more than 3 schools have more 'fresh' pair of eyes look at them, because people do get tired of reading the same content again and again !

rahul_shukla - dude seriously !

[rahul_shukla]

Hi prats23
Can you still suggest how was the score calculated.

[new_DreaMEr]

Originally Posted by ahbeng

ITS OVER!! cant believe wasted so much time over this !!
anyways since i picked up a few tips from this forum, time to give some.


BOOKS
---------
PR - best theory of all, did everything available, good if you are doing a crash course!
Kaplan - ok, skipped more than half of it, could have skipped altogether. has a lot of mistakes.
OG - well you have to do this for the sake of doing it!

ONLINE TESTS
-----------------
PR - 720(51, 39) - This was a pretty good estimate of my final score
Kaplan - 700, 650, 650, 640 - dont get worked up on the scores, its a known fact these ones are killers.
GPrep - 710 - The level of difficulty of this test is pretty close to actual GMAT.

AWA
------
Wrote two essays, one of each type, to get a good feel of the structure. Can skip it actually.

Timeline - four weekends, last one spent doing all the tests. I think could have done in 3.

What i think is important
----------------------------
1. DO NOT, i repeat do not, make silly mistakes in quant. Make a list of all silly mistakes you ever did during your prep and review it before the exam or something. 2 is both even and prime - got me an unbelievable number of times !!
2. In the end, it boiled down to more of an endurance test for me. Its very important not to get mentally exhausted.
3. Dont get worked up about kaplan scores.
4. Eat and sleep well before the exam. Believe in yourself !

Good luck!!

Hey!!
Firstly congrats on a gr8 score....

just a silly question...
Is there only 1 PR book or there are variants (PR comprehensive, PR 2008 ,etc etc) .. and if there are than pls suggest..

[ahbeng]

Originally Posted by new_DreaMEr

Hey!!
Firstly congrats on a gr8 score....

just a silly question...
Is there only 1 PR book or there are variants (PR comprehensive, PR 2008 ,etc etc) .. and if there are than pls suggest..

Yeah yeah there are !! i am not sure about 2008 versions, but for 2007 i did 3 PR books, one was only with maths, one with verbal and one with everything. the practice questions were different as far as i can remember. if you like studying from PR, its a good idea to do all 3 books.

[rahul2842]

Hi,
Congratulations on the great score. Its a great achievement.

I too am preparing for the GMAT and plan to give it in the near future. I need some advice on Sentence Correction. I have gone through the Manhattan SC guide and then I started the SC-1000 questions for practice. So far I have attempted around 200 questions but my accuracy is not improving. I have put in a lot of effort on SC but still I am not getting the desired accuracy in the SC-1000 questions.

Wanted to check with you if you had attempted those questions? If yes then how was your accuracy? If not then what is the source of the SC questions you practiced?
It would be great if you can share tips and recommend the approach for SC.

Thanks,
Rahul

[ahbeng]

well i have to admit that SC was the most diificult part for me and took the most effort as well. i think it is very very important to get the theory right. i liked PR the best for theory and read it atleast 4-5 times in great detail. i practised from PR as well and my accuracy was pretty low at about 60% to begin with. i made a list of all mistakes that i was making, checked the relevant theory behind it and concentrated on not repeating them. this helped me improve a lot.

[rahul2842]

Hi,

Thanks for helping me on this. Also I wanted to know apart from PR where did you practice SC questions from. If I remember correctly, the PR does not have a lot many questions or is there a seperate PR verbal guide? The biggest problem with practicing from SC-1000 is that there is no explaination of the answers. It just has the correct answer marked without details of why it is correct and others wrong. I think SC would be the biggest hurdle as far as GMAT goes.

Anyway, so which schools would you be applying to?

Regards,
Rahul

[Amit Asher]

Hi,
My name is Amit. Will be starting to prepare for GMAT soon. Hence before i start wanted to ask you about Quant. I am a Chartered Accountant hence am out of touch with Math. I am very average when it comes to math so what is the ideal prep pattern that you would suggest for improving my math. Do you think i need to study Geometry and Alebra in Depth like in school. Also can you give me the names of the books to buy for my prep. I stay in Mumbai


Thanks
Amit

[ahbeng]

rahul - yeah PR doesnt have too many questions but it has explanations which really help. I did SC mainly from PR and OG.

amit - i just did what was in the books, no strategy as such. may be you should figure out which areas are weak points for you and then concentrate on those. btw, personally i find GMAT maths to be simpler than that in high school ! so dont fret about it too much ...all the best.

[ajeesh.aj]

congrats... and thanks for sharing your expertise