Gmat 760(50q 42v) debrief

Hi everyone, I am just another silent observer who gave his GMAT on the 24 of Feb. Since the debriefs on this forum had helped me alot I think that it would be appropriate for me to share my gmat experience over here so that it might benefit someo…

Hi everyone, I am just another silent observer who gave his GMAT on the 24 of Feb. Since the debriefs on this forum had helped me alot I think that it would be appropriate for me to share my gmat experience over here so that it might benefit someone else.

As the title says I got 760 in GMAT and a 5.5 (not so happy) in AWA.

For the AWA I ran out of time for the first essay, which was an easy essay in which I wrote alot but in the end ran out of time and that impacted negatively on my score. Apart from that the second essay was out of this world. So in a nutshell i blew the only opportunity i had to improve my AWA score. But nonetheless 5.5 is still decent I guess.

Now for the real gmat stuff.

I took 3 months to prepare for this test, though I must mention that I was not serious about Gmat till 10 days before the exam. So my 3 months might as well translate to 1 month of someone who studies seriously.

Materials used.

I have an elder brother who gave the gmat exam in 2006 and got 770 and 6 in AWA(damn him). So I had all his material which i started first.

1)Princeton review - started with it and finished it pretty quickly, good as a refresher but not so good for final preparation.

2)Gmat OG 10 - Useful book, make sure you keep track of your time and accuracy while doing this book. Don't just do it to finish it quickly rather do questions in lots of 20-25 and give yourself 10 mins less than what you would actually get in the real gmat for those questions. (Try to keep your accuracy high) (For sentence correction questions, after you are done with all of them read all the explanation at the back of the book even if you got the question right, this helps a lot)

3) Kaplan premier- bit tough especially in the verbal section and in that too in the RC section. I am good at maths except for number properties which screwed up my Data sufficiency section otherwise I could have easily got 52 in quant. Follow the same strategy here as in OG but you can ignore the SC explanations.

4) Manhattan SC- had heard alot about this book and it was actually helpful but it is not a magic book that will increase your score if you want a higher score you will have to study this book in conjunction with a grammar book, which i didn't but in retrospect i realized that i should have done so.

5) Gmat OG 12- the new version of gmat OG got my hands on it around a month before the test and devoured each and every page of it, a lot of repeats but since i was not so serious originally i hardly remembered the questions.

6) Gmat Verbal review- Again a good book used it in conjunction with the Manhattan SC book. Good practice for the exam apart from that nothing special.

7) Kaplan 800 - 2006 edition- this is a relatively tough book (though not very tough) and i would recommend that you do it 15 days before the exam because the it preps you to face harder exams and then the actual gmat appears to be easier than it actually is.

Gmat Quant review- Again good practice.

9) Veritas prep- took the course at a horrible center not of much help didn't attend half of the classes and most of rest were canceled. Had it been delivered properly it could be a good revision.


Practice tests in chronological order

Gmatprep 1 Given before any preparation skipped awa and did not time 710
Gmatprep 2 Given after the veritas course again no awa and not timed 710
Gmatprep 3 Given after princeton and OG 10 timed and with awa 710
Kaplan 1 given after Kaplan premier timed and with awa 620
Kaplan 2 Given after manhattan SC timed and with awa 590
Kaplan 3 Given after OG 12 timed and with awa 580 (got demotivated postponed gmat)
Gmatprep 4 (older version 6 repeats) 760 but as i said i had a few repeats which i had got wrong originally. But was motivated again and re-scheduled the test ($100 lost for nothing)
Manhattan 1 given after Gmat verbal review timed with awa 680
Manhattan 2 given after Kaplan 800 timed and with awa 690
Manhattan 3 given after gmat quant review timed with awa 690
Manhattan 4 timed with awa 710
Kaplan 4 (was motivated with a 710 in manhattan) timed with awa 560
Manhattan 5 Timed with awa 710

Finally actual Gmat 760

Hope someone finds this useful.

congrats man... for the awesome score..... u seemed to have taken up the studies in a systematic way man... and that's a good part.

Best of luck for apping

kudos buddy..!
99th percentile is awesome!

All the best

Congrats man!
ur debrief was useful!

Hey Mate,
Really good to see your strategy and approach, a big congrats.

Keep Rocking....

Hi everyone, had a small break and now I am back. I think I need some advice from all of you. I have recently done my BCom (3 years) in melbourne and now I am doing my Masters in applied finance (1 year) again from melbourne. After this I want to do my PhD in finance (not interested in MBA)form one of the top 15 US b-schools. I have no work experience whatsoever and both my degrees did not include any research work.

What do you think my chances are of landing into a fully funded PhD program in the said schools based on my Gmat score of 760, undergraduate GPA of 4.0/4.0 (actually it is 82% but as per gmac that classifies as 4.0 based on a four pass grade system) and on a graduate GPA of at least 3.5/4.0(I don't have the result yet, as a matter of fact I haven't even given the exams yet!!)

Hi
Can u advise me some good books for AWA.

Hi,
can u advise me how to improve SC score??

Hi,
Firstly congratulations on your score.
I would like to ask a few questions relating to preparation:

1. Are there repeat questions in OG Verbal Review and OG Quantitative Review that is covered in OG12.

2. What is more recommended for additional Maths practice(apart from OG12) OG Quantitative review or Kaplan Math workbook?

3. How many tests are included in the Kaplan Premier?

4. How frequently should you take the tests?

Regards,
Jaspreet.

hey congrats buddy for a nice score......
i have a query....actually i am preparing for cat .....have a good accuracy and and speed in quant and di....not so good in verbal......i am planning to give gmat in august(towards the end of august)...that leaves me with approx 4 and a half months......can u please advice me which books will be good for me.....
i have already placed an order for og 12th edition and kaplan premier with cd.....

Hi
Can u advise me some good books for AWA.



Jignesh I didn't prepare for AWA except for the essays I wrote while giving the practice exams and I guess therefore I got 5.5 and not 6.

So I can't really advise you on that, but if you want to work on awa try writing one essay every alternate day within the time limit and get it checked by someone who is good at it. Thats all I can say.
Hi,
can u advise me how to improve SC score??


With SC try to get a feel of it first maybe do the princeton review book (sc sections) then get the manhattan sc book, a good grammar book and gmat verbal review and work your way through them. No need to read the entire grammar book just read what you don't understand in the Manhattan sc book.
Hi,
Firstly congratulations on your score.
I would like to ask a few questions relating to preparation:

1. Are there repeat questions in OG Verbal Review and OG Quantitative Review that is covered in OG12.

2. What is more recommended for additional Maths practice(apart from OG12) OG Quantitative review or Kaplan Math workbook?

3. How many tests are included in the Kaplan Premier?

4. How frequently should you take the tests?

Regards,
Jaspreet.


1) No I don't think there are any repeats.

2) If you have done all that and you are good with it then you don't need any other book. But if you really want to improve try the school text (the year in which we did permutation and combination) do only the probability part of it. You can also get practice questions on the net or least that is what I hear (I never tried to get them.) have you done Kaplan 800, if not do it, its kind of a reality check (though it is not the reality, but it brings you back on track)

3) 4

4) I started taking test (that is regularly) in the last 1-2 months of my preparation. I started with one a week to one every alternate day and then took 2 tests of consecutive days before the exam.
hey congrats buddy for a nice score......
i have a query....actually i am preparing for cat .....have a good accuracy and and speed in quant and di....not so good in verbal......i am planning to give gmat in august(towards the end of august)...that leaves me with approx 4 and a half months......can u please advice me which books will be good for me.....
i have already placed an order for og 12th edition and kaplan premier with cd.....



well in addition to that maybe you would find manhattan SC and gmat verbal review to be of some use.

Hi,

Firstly thanks for all the insights. These are really helpful. I have a question about the Kaplan Tests you gave. Were these the online tests that come with the Kaplan Premier edition? OR were these the old CD based Kaplan tests?

The reason I ask is that I read on some forum that the CD based tests were really difficult as compared to the actual GMAT & you could expect an atleast +50 score on the actual GMAT. However, the blogger mentioned that Kaplan has reduced the difficulty of the online tests to get them more inline with the actual GMAT.

Thanks!

hi madforgmat
congrats 4 G8T score. thanks for discussing your methodology
bye