GMAT Result

Here is my debrief for my GMAT exam.

Here is my debrief:

Background: Indian Engineering background and hence a neglect towards the Verbal was there from the very beginning. Started for the GMAT on previous occasion as well but had to drop it because of professional and the personal reasons – Last year 2005. Used this forum but not religiously. Most of my posts are split in two time frames – Last Year Sep-Dec and this year from june-july. Anyway, Last year I identified the SCs and RCs as my worst nightmare and after a gap of four months, I had to include CR in that group as well L.

I came to NY/US in May this year and was taken aback with the hectic lifestyle. Finally I decided to apply in one Indian school which had apparently the last date as Aug 10. So after settling out in NJ, I searched for the available dates ASAP. It seemed that 31^st July was the possible date for me. Moments after registering for the GMAT, I logged onto Amazon and ordered Manhattan SC, Manhattan CR/RC and 11^th Official Guide to GMAT. So in nutshell,

• Target: 700+
• Time: 6-7 weeks
• Arms & Ammunition: 1000SC/1000CR and all the guides. This was continuously updated going forward.

I knew three things had to be followed. Kill SC. Kill RC and Kill CR. Maths was not a problem. Only thing was that I needed to work on my silly mistakes. Anyway, prep material came by mid june and I started with the Manhattan SC. Honestly, I didn’t find it much interesting.

KILL SC Strategy: I made my SCNotes on top of PSahil and Spidey Notes and incorporated the Manhattan SC fundas which were not there in these two notes. Next, I started hunting 800Bob and Erin posts. More often than not, you will find a rule attached with an explanation. That’s the key. Copy-Paste all the relevant discussion and highlight the Erin/Bob’s explanation. Similarly, I made an Idiom Notes on top of an already existing Idiom List and jotted/collected all the SCs which I got wrong because of the Idiomatic usage. These notes, I revised weekly and in the beginning I revised the Idiom Notes – at least every alternate day. However, all this didn’t improved my accuracy level in SCs drastically. It was the solving/pounding 1000SCs which helped a lot. But before pounding 1000SCs, I made sure to cram every rule, every idiom, every *** I can and then solve it. Only to see that still there are rules which needs the attention.

KILL CR and RC Strategy: Anything which appeals to logic is not difficult. This belief alleviated the fear of CR but RC’s persisted as I had never been a consistent reader. I started pinging the gurus in this forum left and right and one advice I would like to quote from stucco-“What would you do if you take part in Olympics? You prepare more than what you are required to do on the D day?” Hence he suggested to direct my CR energy to LSAT material. I found this most logical and upgraded my arms and ammunition with few LSAT papers. I procured them from scoretop site. There were some 20 but I had time for only 5-6. However, after solving those 5-6, I was comfortable in RC and CR and more important than anything, I was confident. I can say this because there was a change of attitude when I solved 1000CR after practicing LSAT material. Not to mention-attitude was positive. J. Try this and if you are not satisfied, Let me know. I will definitely try to help you out. J

QUANT: I practiced quant not with the objective of understanding quant but with the motto of working on my silly mistakes – specially DS. I had some material which was supposed to be the toughest in GMAT-Some Math archive of Manhattan and I solved that first before starting with the GMAT level. Again, there was a top down approach for the difficulty level as practiced in Verbal.

Battle Prep: All this battle preparation left only one week before I could identify another less popular problem – the stamina syndrome. I had given only one full length test {and omitted the AWA part in the test} only to discover that concentration was abysmally low in the last 45 minutes – supposedly most crucial for Verbal. So final problem was identified as stamina. To mitigate the risk due to this problem, I gave in 6 Full length exams in last six days. Three Manhattan and Three Kaplan. Score doesn’t matter but the ability to sit consistently for four continuous hours did.

Here are scores anyway. Manhattan 670/700/690. Kaplan 570/640/590. And in the last two days-Sat/Sun. I decided not to give any test, against the popular consensus of giving at least both the GMAT Prep test-at least.

G Day: Sitting for two and half hours of test after your full office day is nothing more than trying your sadistic instincts on yourself. But in process, I had been prepared for the worst. I could not find any lack of concentration till the end. One more thing, for AWA, I read the most neglected part of Official guide-AWA and its two sample solutions and referred 800Awaguide.pdf a little. The end of exam cam surprisingly early, it was 26 minutes to spare in Q –EXPECTED and 26 Minutes to spare in V-HRADLY EXPECTED. Deviation from the normal - I didn’t received any boldface CR in the entire exam and I received 4 RCs as compared to normal three with four questions each and last one was having only 3 questions. I didn’t counted but felt that there were more SCs than CRs and CRs level were normally tougher than OG. Anyway, after seeing the score, I felt like – “Never won the battle but finally won the war”.

Final Words: Strong believer of Open Source Foundation and really hate when courses like Manhattan, Kaplan charges fortune for nothing. Would like to help anybody in terms of material/guidance/assistance/support. Not to mention I have plethora of legal and illegal material for every part of the exam, which even I could not complete in the brief time period. Anyway, doesn’t matter. So please let me know whether I can be a help to you in anyway. I think, I can specially help people, who have a weak VERBAL instead of QUANT as for QUANT, I don’t feel the problem. Only condition for the help is that you in turn have to help others in a similar fashion – basic premise of open source.