Hello everyone: (Excuse me for the grammatical errors and for a long post) Just gave my Gmat yesterday…Got 710 (satisfied to some extent but would have been great if I had got 10-20 more.). Although the score is not that great, I wan…
Hello everyone:
(Excuse me for the grammatical errors and for a long post)
Just gave my Gmat yesterday...Got 710 (satisfied to some extent but would have been great if I had got 10-20 more.).
Although the score is not that great, I wanted to post my experiences since Pagalguy has helped me in many areas.
Now, to start with, I had given Gmat last year, got 670 (49: 31).
Was not satisfied with my score, so, planned to give it again. My weak area as is evident from the score was Verbal. I used to do a lot of practice for everything but the results were not coming in the mock tests.
Then, I analysed a few things and went through numerous threads in PG about the experiences of other people.
Anyways, I shall present to you my strategies and a few things which I found very useful.
Quant(My Quant was good but I had missed the last question in the previous attempt.):
1. I had heard a lot about a Quant book by Arun Sharma. Bought a new one and it surely did provide me insight to some worderful concepts especially Number System and Inequalities. Each section in Arun Sharma is preceeded by a solid presentation of the concepts. After the concepts, you get practice questions for three levels of difficulities. I practiced only LOD1 and LOD2(most of the times, GMAT questions come from these two levels.)
2. Probablity and Permutations & Combinations: This was my strong area. Before my first attempt, I had some kind of a phobia about these topics. Last time, I had studied these was in 11th and 12th Standard. Just wanted to attack these topics. I got my 11th Standard maths book and started working on the the basics. Then got an advanced probablity book(don't remember the name) and started practicing. One thing I would say is, if are good at Permutations & Combinations, Probablity is a cake walk for you.
3. Geometry: I would like to share an interesting thing with you. I am sure many of you might be doing it already. Once I started my quant preparations with Arun Sharma, my approach to quant suddenly changed. I would never memorize a formula (except for the basic ones ofcourse). Now, especially in Geometry, there are lot of formulas, regarding chord, secant, tangents, circular quad, incircle,circumcircle and many others. I worked on how these formulas have been arrived at. This gave me a better understanding of each and every topic.
Now, onto Verbal..
1. CRITICAL REASONING: Only one book is enough ...CR Bible. Its such an amazing book. It gives you detailed analysis of each and every question type possible. It tells you how to identify a wrong answer or a sucker answer. According to me, this should be a must have book, as far as critical reasoning is concerned. The book does not have enough practice questions but once your concepts are clear, you can do practice using other resources.
2. Sentence Correction: I wasn't that weak on SC but wanted to improve upon this section too. I studied from Manhattan SC Guide. Its a good book and gives detailed analysis of each and every SC section.
3. Reading Comprehension: About this, I would suggest, the OG. In Verbal, I started with Critical Reasoning, then Reading Comp and finally Sentence Correction. I have to say that after studying CR, I found RC easier. One reason for the same can be that In CR Bible, where focus was on each question type, I looked for the same in RC where there were very few question types. Actually I can list the RC question types here: Inference, According to Passage, Tone, main point and sometime parallel reasoning.
All in all, it was not an easy ride for me.
For a first timer, 4-6 months should be enough to crack the GMAT..
I have spent a lot of time on PG for PS, CR and SC practice.
There were some great posters here with great explanations.
I would like to thank everyone, who made this possible.
Thanks PG...
hey... nice work mate!!!
congrats on ur score.
ur post definetly helps newbies like me.
Congratulations on your score Vunsuk_2010.