Hello to all the people, I have been a silent spectator till date of this forum. Finally done with GMAT . Thought so it might act as a boost to a few of others. My Score GMAT : 720 ( Q:49 ; V:41 ) AWA : 4.5 :huh: My Background I’m …
Hello to all the people,
I have been a silent spectator till date of this forum. Finally done with GMAT . Thought so it might act as a boost to a few of others.
My Score
GMAT : 720 ( Q:49 ; V:41 ) AWA : 4.5 :huh:
My Background
I'm also one among the many IT engineers who is looking for a way out of this Industry.A Computer Engineer from a very reputed institute of North. Have been working with a top Indian IT firm since past 2 years . Nothing great to boast of in job. Have done a bit of extra curricular in college.
My Prep
My preparation started in May. It was just a time pass sort of preparations at that time. Gave my GMAT Prep 1 at that time. Scored 560 in it. Bought Kaplan Premier GMAT book and went through the strategies in a very light way. Did not kick start my preparation until 24th June,the day when i took my Gmat date as 15th Sept.
May- June was mainly dedicated to 1000SC's, 3000RC's, 1000 CR's. Although they put me into the prep mood, they were not of a great help as no explanation for answers was given and at times the answers were debatable. July was the time when i got my prep into 2nd gear. Studied on average for 2 hours everyday. Even on weekends schedule remained the same. I had prepared for CAT last year so that helped a bit. The books which one should follow are given in the order they should be done
1) Kaplan Premier/Comprehensive : Excellent for basics,methodology
2) Manhattan SC : a must must book. Helps a lot
3) Manhattan CR : CR's were a cake walk once i did this
4) OG 11 : A Bible, all the types covered
5) Verbal Review
6) Quant Review
7) Kaplan 800 : again a must.Dont feel demotivated but pick up all the points from it.
Be careful not to drag preparation for more than 2.5 - 3 months. As my date approached i really found it difficult to concentrate on same old type of problems.
Mocks
Gmat Prep 1 : in may 560
Gmat prep1 : 10 days before 720 ( Q : 50 , V:39 )
Gmat Prep 2 : 2 days before 700 ( Q:49 , V : 40)
i was a fool not to practice more. You should not commit this mistake.
My G-Day exp
The test was scheduled for 1:15 . Woke up at 5:30 as i had to travel to Mumbai for it.Dont know y as soon as i started in bus the nervousness started descending on me. By the time i was at centre , a good 1.5 hrs before, i was not sure of my self. But the initial period where i was made to go through the rules helped me to calm myself. Test started with an Argument , which i took apart comfortably. The problem started with Issue, No matter how hard i tried to get it right,it just went from bad to worse. I'm sure my AWA has suffered due to Issue.It was just a bad exp.
Took a break,had some water,relaxed a bit and then started on Questions. triple checked answers for first 10 but tht meant i consumed too much of time. At tht time the nervousness came back to haunt me. All was fine till 15th que but then things just spiralled downward and the end result was very poor. My advice take quant seriously, It ain't that easy.
took a break had few Tiger Biscuits, did some stretching and got down to verbal.Everthing looked familiar.RC's and CR's should be well practiced as these r easy to ace. Don't neglect them.I wasnt expecting to ace it but then at the end 41 was satisfactory.
At my level of seriousness it was a decent score, though as soon as i was done with Verbal i knew i had messed up. I could hv scored 30-40 more had i held my nerves. But i was really helped my 2 months of bench preceeding my exam.Though i didnt make use of tht time for study, atleast i had a free mind wenever i sat down
Aiming for Fall 2010..as right now i just dont have a good enough profile
All the best to u guys. Hope so u can learn from my mistakes.
Just need an advice , can this score be considered good enough for Top 30 types
P.S.
Just dont go by QR/OG for Math.I paid the price for just going through these. Math 1-15 were easy but 16 -27 gave me a tough time ...30 -31 were so easy which made me sure that i had messes up big time in Quant.
Congrats for the great score man!!!
Of course with a strong application, you can apply very confidently to all the Top B schools of US plus ISB.
Thanks for the descriptive post, it will truly help us!
Cheers