What to make out of a 680

Finally after a anxious half day, I finished my GMAT retake with a 680 (Q48,V34). It seems like a more respectable total than my previous take. Still increasing my total by 20 points (only 1 point in verbal made the difference) hopefully makes my $250 investment in the retake worth it in the long run. The score comes close to  the average of many schools like Tepper and Mccombs that I'm targetting. No ISB and Haas though! (sigh). Also the propects of scholarships has me worried.

About the test itself, the quant section was very close to the OG level of difficulty. While I practiced with Grockit and Manhattan, I certainly felt the manhattan level is slightly higher than the actual test for quants. So if you can do Manhattan, you would have a high probability of achieving that score for quants in the real test. I finished with 7 mins to spare, which I could have used in the verbal section, if only it was allowed. The verbal in manhattan however is accurately as tough as the real test. Getting an RC when I had 5 questions left and only 10 mins was no help at all. I was nervous throughout the verbal section, with frequent anxious glances at the timer ticking away. I can guess that a lot of that played on my productivity. But so be it. Its done and dusted.

I hadn't practiced the Analysis of Issue and I wasn't happy with my essay for the Issue section. The Argument essay went well since I had practiced it well. Hopefully the score of one compensates for the other and I get something respectable.

The last week I really stepped up my prep rather than lower my guard. Thanks to Random wok who gave me that piece of advice. I solved all OG, OG verbal guide questions again and went over the Manhattan idiom list. While I think this was good to improve my confidence levels in Math and SC, the CRs unfortunately were not any help since I knew the premise of each argument when I read them again.

Another plus this time was my last GMAT investment of Rs 85 on a can of Red bull. The last time I faced fatigue in my verbal section. I just couldn't wait for the test to end. This time I was alert all through. Maybe it works for some, and doesn't for others. I've never really had a red bull till yesterday, so its not proven to work every time.

A list of what I used as GMAT resources :
OG 11
OG verbal and quant guides
Manhattan SC
Powerscore CR bible
Grockit standard membership practice questions (CATs are buggy, more on that in another post)
Manhattan CAT practice tests
Kaplan free online practice test and CAT CDs
BTG DS strategy overview series

Now, onto to the next chapter. Re-assessing my school choices and getting started with the school essays.
Watch out for my review on the soon to be launched NEW Beat the GMAT practice questions. I also have a few premium accounts up for distribution !

Face the demons - Review All, Round off & other learnings

Click to download my new Math desktop wallpaper

This week I took a Manhattan GMAT CAT. Just prior to my first GMAT test, I had taken the MGMAT free CAT and was unable to finish the quant section. The verbal section was completed in a complete rush, owing to my not having answered 12-15 questions in the quant section. I was so disappointed with the poor score of 580, I had decided that some of the GMAT forum members who say that the score you get in the MGMAT is not as important as the practice, were right.

Now that my studies and mock CATs have resumed I thought it would be useful to give the MGMAT CAT a try again. After buying the paid CATs, I gave my 2nd CAT and again faced the same difficulty. Far too many tough questions coming to me in a row, I couldn't keep pace. Lost out in a similar way by not answering the last 10-12 questions and got a 590. I spoke to a MGMAT user, who eventually went on to get a 760 and he believed that the MGMAT could be completed in time and that should be the aim. I also so a few other fellow bloggers post their MGMAT scores and thought maybe I need to face it fairly.

This week I took the MGMAT CAT 3. I guess owing to a lot more quant practice (remember my GMAT take 1 score of Q48 isn't so bad in itself), I kept a focus not on the timer, but on the questions this time. My aim was solve and move to the next. I have to get it right in the first attempt to solve, else I take my best guess and move on. This time I felt I performed well. I was getting more and more DS problems on number properties. Got a score of 650 (Q 47 , V32). I was glad I even got something with a significant score difference. Faced the demons and now for more to go!

My next aim is to review ALL my verbal questions across all Grockit games and CATs I've taken and write a comprehensive word document on all my points of failure. Most SC questions across tests/exams, tend to repeat with the same mistakes being tested and I'm going for trends. I'm also reviewing a few of the notes from other GMAT takers, ones I've listed in 'GMAT notes/resources' in the Resources Tab. Sometimes the explanations they have amalgamated for my mistakes make things more clear.

For Quants, a friend of mine who has got a 730 with a Q50 has advised me to study my tables uptil 24 and Squares and Cubes until the number 20. I can understand his point when he says you tend to then recognize numbers very quickly, during factorizing or division. Another great tip he gave me was to check if the answer choices are significantly different in value, and if so, try to round of numbers to solve problems quicker. I did try this late last night on a practice game in Grockit and it worked for me. My timings reduced. But I think it should be done with some caution.

Next week, on for more CATs. Hope some of my learnings in this post are helpful to all of you GMAT takers. Good luck!

GMAT retake study - CR strategy

Far too many distractions these days with the festival period on in India. A much needed vacation with family, during which my father re-united with his engineering college mates after 40 years, was great fun. But now I've really lost track of my schedule for my GMAT retake.

Just done with my Critical reasoning. This time I've actually studied strategies for it, rather than blind attempts solving the CR puzzles. I think I've increased my understanding of what to focus on and improved my accuracy.

Book to recommend, which someone recommended in the forums, is the Powerscore's GMAT critical reasoning bible. I think its to CR what Manhattan SC guide is to SC sections.
For each question, it breaks down :-

• how to distinguish between the premise and main conclusion and secondary conclusion in the stimulus
• what to focus on in the stimulus for each question type
• what to consider out of scope and what is not out of scope for each type of question
• what are the many answer choices that seem tempting for each question type, that are actually wrong.

I will be going through the OG 12 sample questions entirely today and hope to start the SC review.

On a lighter note, I've posted a snap here that I clicked at night. That's the moon, if you couldn't figure it out, making the @ symbol.